LCD TVs..... Budget or not?

[irbdavid]

Thinking of buying a new TV, our old CRT one is on the blink. As we don't watch a vast amount of TV anyway, we don't particularly want to spend a huge amount of money on it, so looking at some of the lesser brand names. Is this a bad idea? The panels in these things all come from the same half-dozen manufactures anyway, and while I admit that for example the Samsung LCD TVs look a lot better from a style point of view, their specs on paper are largely identical to cheaper ones.

Currently looking at something from this selection:

AOC 27"
Mirai 32"
Elonex 32"
Teco 32"

The reviews those get at those sites all seem pretty positive - does anyone here happen to have any of them, or products from the same manufacturer that they'd like to comment on?

Cheers

 

[LeviG]

personally I would pay a bit more for a samsung/toshiba, having seen them in the flesh along with some of the cheaper ones the cheaper ones really do look washed (may just be settings need tweaking) out in my view.

 

[kuebby]

I'd say go with a cheaper one, they do have the same specs and in my experience have a very similar picture; the difference on the expensive ones are not worth 100s of dollars.

 

[brbubba]

I can tell you from experience, go with the name brand. I bought a 32" LCD TV over a year ago and first decided to save some money and get a Vizio from Sam's Club. Well it worked for about a month before it started acting very strangely. The sound would cut out and I would hear white noise, which would continue until turning the TV off then back on. It would do this about twice a week. It was annoying enough that I returned it and jumped on a Dell sale and got their 32" LCD TV. The difference in quality is tremendous! Every aspect of the TV was simply stellar compared to the Vizio, the remote, the casing, the stand, the onscreen menus, etc. You definitely get what you pay for.

If you do go cheap, I wouldn't walk out of the store without some sort of extended warranty where you can exchange it in-store!!!! I had a friend who had to deal with Philips' customer service and didn't have a TV for 3 months!!! And Philips is supposed to be a name brand!!!

P.S. Specs on paper mean jack squat in the LCD TV world.

 

[emw]

We looked around at a number of LCD brands - including Samsung, Toshiba, Sony, Vizio and Akai - and finally settled on the Toshiba since it had a good combination of price and features. Like you, this goes into an area where we don't watch a ton of TV, but we wanted to replace an aging CRT.

We actually originally purchased the Akai because it seemed to have a good picture and the price was right, but we had two straight TVs where the audio hiss was simply unacceptable. And I'm not that picky.

In the end, it's generally worth it to pay a little more to get a quality product, but I wouldn't rely too much on the picture in the store unless you can actually tweak it yourself. They're often not set up correctly, and I can imagine they might be inclined to make the more expensive (i.e., profitable) ones look better. Not that I have any proof of that, of course...