Vizio LCD TV - Cheap LCD TV Update

Question: What do all these names have in common:

Vizio, Kenmark, Viewsonic, Kogan, Syntax, TCL, Polaroid, UMC, Olevia, Daewoo, Westinghouse, iLO, Goodmans, TEAC, Norcent and Zenith?

Answer: They’re all so-called, cheap LCD TVs.

Sometimes these are also called “no name” or “value” brand TVs. Some of these LCD TVs are only available in only one country, or just a few countries, whereas others are available around the world.

Important Note: Although they may be called cheap LCD TVs, they’re not necessarily cheaper than the major brands in every case. Especially in the current economy, where the big brands - Sony, Samsung, Philips, LG, Panasonic, Sharp etc - are becoming more price competitive.

For example in a recent review by Choice Australia of 42 inch / 106 cm LCD and Plasma TVs the cheapest was from Sanyo followed by a Samsung model than Panasonic and Philips.

The value TV in the comparison was a TCL brand model, which was placed 8th out of 10 in the overall ratings. However, the TCL was $650 more than the 2nd placed Samsung and $600 more than the 3rd placed Philips TV.

vizio-and-samsung-lcd-tv

Anyway the question of interest to most people about cheap LCD TVs is are they any good? And that is a tricky question to answer.

The issues behind that question revolve around what are the buying criteria that are important to you.

A low, or at least competitive price is obviously important to many people, but what do you trade off to get a lower pric?

If you read some of the reviews on cheap TVs, some people love them, others hate them. Others never have a problem, other have failures and then have problems with customer support trying to get their issues resolved.

Overall, assuming you find the picture quality and feature set acceptable, probably durability/reliability is the main gotcha with cheap LCD TVs. And reliability / customer support is one of those things its hard to really know how its going to be until you need it.

In the July 2008 issue of Popular Mechanics they compared the Samsung LN40A650 LCD TV against the VU42LF Vizio LCD TV. The Samsung was more than twice the price of the Vizio at the time of the review ($2700 vs $1100).

The reviewer concluded that although the Vizio looked good by itself, when compared side by side with the Samsung the (large) difference in price was justified.

So this reinforces our LCD TV buying guide tips:

1. Define your buying criteria - size, features, budget range.

2. Research on the internet to get a shortlist of which LCD TVs meet your buying criteria.

3. Go and see the shortlist in the flesh, ideally side by side or at least within a short period of each other using the same source material

4. Negotiate the best deal, remembering the internet is not necessarily the cheapest. Also remeber to watch out for internet shonks, there are plenty around.

Good shopping.

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