great_badir
Posts: 4173
Joined: 6/10/2005
From: A breaking rope bridge in the middle of the jungle
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If you want lowest price without hampering quality too much LG are your best bet.
Despite the suggestions in this thread, I'd steer we'll clear of Samsung, cheap components at a not so cheap price (well more expensive than LG) . All three Samsung TVs I've owned (two LCD, one Plasma) have all bit the bullet within two years.
In general though, I'm a firm believer of you get what you pay for with electronics in general, and I'd definitely recommend saving up and getting a more expensive set, Panasonic being the manufacturer I'd recommend most.
I think you’ve been VERY unlucky there with your previous Samsungs – although I’ve never owned one myself (I’ve historically been a strict Panasonic and Sony bitch), the sets I am aware of in my world of friends and family have performed very well for years. Besides, LG and Samsung both effectively use the same components (at least they always did). I also have to disagree with the bit in bold – price wise there is little between comparative Samsungs and LGs, and both generally offer excellent value for money.
elab – Toshibas are adequate. I personally think you can get a better picture for the same (or not much more) money (although that Sainsbury’s offer sounds good, depending on what model) and they are totally a shadow of their former CRT selves (Tosh and Hitachi were the super-kings of CRT sets), BUT functionally they offer something that very few sets do, at least that I am aware of – with a firmware upgrade, they will play pretty much any file format thrown at them direct from the USB ports. They’ll even pick up everything on a terabyte hard drive plugged straight into them, when many makes get scared above 100gigs, if they recognise a hard drive at all (I’m looking at you, Sony). By far the worst thing about Toshibas is the sound, especially on the 32” sets, because, as I said above, the speaker is underneath the set and points downwards. If this is not a concern for you (i.e. if you have separate speakers) and it meets your budget, then I would say it’s a safe buy. And, at 32”, the picture quality is going to naturally be lower down on any list of concerns.
The general market at the moment:
Aesthetics aside (they’ll NEVER win a beauty contest, but) Panasonic are the best all round sets – stunning picture quality, excellent functionality, top build quality, just excellent;
The current crop of Philips models, from the last two years onwards, are also brilliant, with one or two of their upper-upper end sets competing strongly against equivalent Panasonics;
The high end Sharp Aquos sets are expensive, but very very good. The mid and low price Sharp sets you have to research to make sure you aren’t buying a dud (easy to forget these days that Sharp were, not so long ago, one of the el cheapo makes like Alba, Bush, Sanyo and Saisho);
Sony seem to be getting worse after moving their assembly from Japan to Eastern Europe a few years ago. Apparently, more recently, they’ve also stopped using their own components, which has affected picture quality greatly (I cannot confirm or deny this as I have not demoed any recent sets). However, you can still get the models from 3-4 years ago, which were brilliant (I CAN vouch for that, cos I’ve got one);
Samsung and LG – I’ve lumped them together because, in my opinion, they are much of a muchness, that is to say that you cannot really go wrong with either. As I’ve said, Samsung sets typically have by far the worst on-board sound of any current make, but everything else is fine.
With JVC now effectively no more, the rest is basically your no-brand cheap Chinese rubbish – the sort that do a 46” TV for less than £200. AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE – honestly, some of these sets I’ve seen set up in some homes are a joke and most have a noticeably terrible picture and would, probably, break if you looked at them the wrong way. Having said that, Technika is a brand I know nothing about, other than its existence, and have no experience of.
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