Excellent value, from purchase to operating cost, October 11, 2010

We had this TV for one month, we bough it here at Amazon.com
As the title for this review indicates, this TV set is an excellent value for the money.

Picture Quality
I will start with the picture quality, we got this set connected to a Dish Network HD satellite receiver and the detail is very good for 1080i picture, and depending on the channel since not all Hi Def channels provide the same quality material, this TV does not disappoints, for example, HD Theater and Discovery Channel, 2 of our favorite channels, provide some of the best HD material in the programing choices, the pictures is quite amazing on this quality broadcasts among others... Now with a Sony Blu Ray player connected via HDMI, playing some reference material such as "The Fifth Element Remastered" Blu Ray, the picture detail is simply as good as it gets... The colors are accurate, bright and natural looking, the blacks are deep and give a great look to the overall picture.

I also appreciate the HDMI jack in the left side of the TV, I use this to hook up my HD camcorder to review our footage prior to editing on my computer, this side HDMI connections makes it easy to connect anything from camcorders to Gaming Consoles etc without having to reach around the back.

The picture adjustments with the remote are very easy to navigate through after getting yourself familiar with it, one quick word here about the remote, the remote has quite a narrow beam, this means that if you are close to the TV (from lets 4 feet or less, as I was while setting it up for the first time) you must aim the remote at the infrared eye which is in the lower left of the TV, this is less of an inconvenience when you watching the TV at recommended distance of around 9 feet, at this distance the beam has a chance to spread and just aiming it in the general direction of the TV does the job. With that said, the Menu is well laid out and intuitive.

The Sound Quality.
This is the weak point of this TV, the default sound settings produce a less than desirable sound from anything you have your set tuned in to, however, if you go into the Audio Settings you can somewhat alleviate this by going in the Equalizer Advanced adjustments, there are 5 adjustment bars there of 120KHZ, 500KHZ, 15KHZ, 5KHZ and 10KHZ, in there what I did was to tune down the 10KHZ to minus 8, the 5KHZ to minus 12 (the lowest setting), the 15KHZ to minus 7 and then maxed up the remaining 2 on the left which are the bass settings, by doing this it diminishes the very high treble sounding small speakers that come with the set and this settings gives an overall fair sound for general TV viewing. Now for movies we have a dedicated 5.1 sound system connected via Optical Cable from the Vizio Optical Sound output jack, this works beautiful :) I had considered subtracting a star from the 5 given because of the sound, but after adjusting the default sound settings the sound is fairly adequate for general viewing so I left all 5 stars in there.

The remote.
As mentioned in the Picture Quality paragraph, the beam is very narrow on the remote, but this is only an issue if you are very close to the TV, if so you will need to aim the remote directly at the infrared eye on the lower left corner of the set, I was sitting very close while doing initial adjustments and that is how I came about to notice this, but once done, the viewing distance from our bed is about 12 feet or so, at this distance the remote operates just fine.
It is a fairy comfortable remote with a good layout of the buttons, it is glossy black, it does not have back light illumination, not a big deal to me, but one thing I wish it had was an "Sleep" button, since it is in our bedroom and when you get that sleepy feeling it would be nice to have easy access button to this feature without entering the menu, which is what you need to do to set up the "Sleep" feature. Again, not a reason to subtract a star from the rating, the remote does its job well, perhaps Vizio will add a dedicated "Sleep" button in future sets.

Power Consumption.
This set shines here again, I connected it to my "Kill-A-Watt" meter and depending on your picture settings, it can variate from 30 Watts to 100 Watts of power consumption, my set with my preferred settings uses 50 Watts of power, I have the backlight set at 45, this is a very bright set so a higher backlight setting is not really needed, but then that is a personal preference. On stand by, this set uses less than 1 watt, this is a highly energy efficient set.

Final words.
We are very happy with our purchase, I consider this some of my best spent entertainment dollars, great deal from Amazon, great TV set, well packaged and saving money also on the electric bill, if you need a TV set on this size range, you should definitively consider this Vizio, you will not be disappointed.

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Finally went HD!!!!, October 3, 2010

 

By John P. Tracy

The Mrs. said I had to wait for my 32 inch Sony tube TV to finally croak before justifying a new TV, and I am so happy it did (I swear I wasn't kicking the old TV honey!) I did a ton of research and found the Vizio Razor to be the best bet for the $$ (under $600 at the local wholesale warehouse), and I could not be happier. I also looked at the (non-LED) Vizio 37" LCD TV (E370VA) for about $150 less, but I was really attracted to the LED backlight technology, and considering what all these HD flat screens cost a couple years ago, I figure the expense is worth it. My 32" Sony was over $800 ten years ago!

Setup was easy, really the hardest thing is understanding the best way to hook up the TV to my Comcast DVR box and other components. Definetely use the digital connectens (HDMI to DVI on my older DVR Cable box), or you wont get the 1080p resolution!!! The on screen menu system and remote are easy to use, and the getting started guide (which I looked at after setting up the TV for giggles) was informative and covered the bases without being too confusing. I was amazed that the remote worked on my cable box with out having to input any codes, but I did have to set it up for my DVD, and that took a little research online at vizio.com.

The picture is so clear even on non-HD channels it is silly, but when you watch HD programs you really can appreciate the technology. The built in speakers are good, but I did connect the system to an old surround sound system I already owned so both the sound and picture are amazing. The system uses so much less power and space than my old TV, I wouldnt be surprised if my electric bill is lower! I just need a crane to get the old beast out of my house.