Sagem Axium HD-L32T review

Sagem is far better known for its mobile phones than its televisions, but last year the French company made an impressive showing with its Axium range of affordable, HD Ready rear-projection and LCD screens.

A new year means a new haul of Axium TVs, starting with this 32-inch LCD model. Like its older 27-inch brother, the HD-L27, it can display photos from a memory card, packs Virtual Dolby Surround technology and is compatible with high-definition TV -- the latter being an increasingly important string to a television's bow now that both Sky and NTL are poised to begin HDTV broadcasts. However, this isn't just a larger version of an existing Sagem screen -- it also sports updated styling and a handful of additional features.

Design
The first thing we noticed about the HD-L32 is that it's far more attractive than its sibling. Not that that's saying much: the HD-L27's exterior featured more moulded plastic than a Pete Burns lookalike conference, giving it an unwanted cheap air to go with its cheap £1,000 price tag.

The HD-L32 is a different prospect. There's still plenty of plastic on show here, but the fact that it's offset by a gorgeous glass desktop stand means that any impressions of cheapness are quickly banished from your mind. It isn't perfect by any means, though: Sagem has opted to place the speakers on each side of the screen rather than below it, adding a generous slice of width to the thing. We were also a little surprised to see a shiny panel placed over the screen, as these tend to reflect objects in the room -- the last thing we want to see when a movie fades to black is our ugly mugs goggling in the middle of the screen!

The main TV controls are located on the right side panel of the screen, while the left features a small selection of inputs and a headphone jack, as well as a card slot for the photo viewer. This is CompactFlash-compatible only, but Sagem has helpfully included an adaptor allowing you to use SD, MMC, XD, Smart Media, Memory Stick and Memory Stick Pro cards too, so most brands of digital camera should work fine.

The rear houses the bulk of the connections. There's an HDMI input for digital high-definition video, as well as two RGB Scarts, one component video and one PC VGA input, along with all the necessary analogue audio connections. All in all, it's a decent selection, but the inclusion of a card slot for upgrading to Top-Up TV would have been handy for those who want to enhance the basic Freeview digital service.

We found the remote design confusing, with controls placed in an illogical arrangement, but it's probably just a matter of getting used to it. It's certainly the right size -- not too big, not too small -- and an improvement on previous Sagem remotes.

Features
As mentioned previously, the HD-L32 is HD Ready, so it is able to display high-definition video in both 720p and 1080i formats. It's worth noting that the panel's native resolution of 1366x768 means that it doesn't do full justice to 1080i, though. You can feed it an HDTV signal through either the HDMI or component video inputs, although only the former will work with HDCP copy-protected material (such as Sky's forthcoming HDTV service, for example).