This paper deals with ripple-free deadbeat controller design for single-input/single-output sampled-data systems. Given a prescribed settling time, the design problem is tackled by computing a ripple-free deadbeat controller that optimizes an H-2 performance criterion. This criterion accounts for the quality of the tracking response and for the control energy necessary to achieve the deadbeat behavior. Our main result shows that the optimal performance improves as the settling time grows, revealing a fundamental tradeoff inherent to this control technique. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.