Logik L32DIGB20 review

Logik is the own brand of DSGi, the company behind Currys, Dixons and PC World. The 32-inch, HD Ready L32DIGB20 LCD TV is aimed at people on a budget. It's available for just £250 from the Currys website.

No munter

For a budget TV, the L32DIGB20 doesn't look all that bad. It's finished in a traditional glossy black and has a good-looking power indicator that lights up with a soft blue glow when the set is on. As with many cheaper models, however, the stand, which can be rotated to the left or right, feels quite plasticky.

The TV isn't found wanting when it comes to connectivity, though. It's got three HDMI ports, along with two Scart sockets and a set of component inputs, as well as S-Video and composite connections. There's also a USB port for digital-media playback. This USB port is something of a disappointment, though. It supports MP3 music files and JPEG pictures, but only the MPEG-2 video format, so you can't use it to view DivX or MKV files.

The TV comes with a long, thin remote that's comfortable to hold. While the soft rubber buttons initially feel rather spongy, they're actually quite responsive. The layout is generally good too, although we think placing the electronic-programme-guide button at the bottom of the remote was a mistake -- it would have been more conveniently located next to the central direction pad.

The menu system is quite basic but it's better presented than most and gives you control over a range of picture settings, including the backlight level, colour temperature, contrast, brightness and colour saturation.

The EPG looks pleasing enough, but it's very sluggish.

Given the set's low price, it's no surprise to find that it only has a standard-definition Freeview tuner, rather than a Freeview HD one. The EPG is a real mixed bag, too. It looks rather good and has a pleasing layout, but it's agonisingly slow to navigate and seems to randomly drop bits of programming data, only for them to reappear the next time you enter the guide.

Video nasty

With a native resolution of 1,366x768 pixels, the set is HD Ready rather than 'Full HD', but we don't think this is a deal-breaker in a 32inch model, especially given this TV's low price. Besides, we've often found that low-price HD Ready sets perform better with standard-definition material than cheap Full HD models, because the on-board upscaler has less work to do.

Unfortunately, however, the L32DIGB20's picture quality isn't all that hot. For starters, the picture presets are shockingly bad. In fact, they're the worst we've ever come across on a TV. Most of them are totally unusable, as the brightness is set so high that blacks look like they're light grey, and colour accuracy is all over the place. With some picture tweaking you can get much better black levels out of the TV, but this tends to result in reduced shadow detail. Also, while colours can be made to look more natural, achieving realistic skin tones seems to be beyond the reach of the TV. People's faces look like they've had slap applied by Sophie Ellis-Bextor's make-up artist.

The TV can deliver sharp pictures with HD content from Sky+HD or Blu-ray, but both high- and standard-definition material tends to suffer from significant noise, something that the telly's noise-reduction setting seems to do very little about. There's also plenty of noticeable motion blur during camera pans.

It's not all bad news, though, as the set's audio isn't too bad. It's loud and, if you play around with the equaliser in the audio menu, you can actually squeeze plenty of bass out of it.

Conclusion

While the Logik L32DIGB20 is very cheap for a 32-inch TV, its picture quality is too disappointing for us to recommend it. If you're after a set of this size with a rock-bottom price tag, we'd recommend you check out the equally cheap Technika 32-2010 instead.

Edited by Charles Kloet