New Flatscreen Issues
 

Apologies if this is a bit off-topic, but please send me to the right place if this isn't it. . .

I bought a Sansung syncmaster 22' flatscreen about a month back and just took it out of the box a few days back. I'm pairing it with my 13' MBP, Logitech keyboard, etc. After a bit of fiddling (the instructions was atrocious), I got it to connect and display properly. However, the color, frankly, sucks. Even at the highest resolution (1900 by something, I'm away from it right now), the contrast is poor and it's not outrageously sharp, especially compared to my MBP. Have I done something wrong? Are my standards too high? Is there anything to do about it?

Many Thanks.

Did you mess around with any of the settings to see if you could try and make it sharper (on the monitor)? Also since it is your first time plugging the computer into the monitor I think that doing the auto adjust or a reset on the monitor sometimes sorts out a lot of the funky problems that sometimes occur. Then it is just a simple matter of tweaking and fine tuning it to your liking.

Settings Adjustment
 

Yeah, I poked around a bit--bumping up sharpness and contrast as far as I could with only marginal impact. . .I'll try the auto adjust/rest thing when I get back. . .

If you have it connected by VGA instead of DVI, it will be fuzzy and color may be off. Sorry to say but Samsung spends more money on advertising than on the products. I prefer NEC.

Is 1920x1080 the highest native resolution for that monitor? At 22", often the highest resolution is only 1680x1050. You can run the monitor at a higher resolution if your video card supports it, but because the actual number of pixels on your screen might max out at 1680x1050, higher resolutions would probably make the screen fugly in various ways.

I have a Samsung 24" at a client site and a 26" at home with my Macbook and it works great for the price. I use a Pantone Huey Pro to calibrate the colors and after that it closely matches the color on my built in display. The monitor is on the default / automatic settings and the color calibration is all done with software.

The highest resolution on your 22" is probably 1680 x 1050. If you're not using that resolution things might be off.

I also think you might be expecting too much for a cheap monitor. If you need wonderful color you'll be spending around $1,000 instead of $150-$300 on the Samsung display. Didn't you see the monitor in the store before buying it?

Maybe your display is defective.