 "Akai 32D20 HD Ready LED TV")
Akai’s new 32-inch LED TV is a pretty nice looking TV with what seems to be some pretty nice features. But there is one drawback; it’s not Full HD, just HD ready at a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. So what makes this TV special?
Design and Features
The TV itself looks nice enough with a silver matte finish and glass panel surrounding the bezel. It’s also quite thin and light, weighing in at around 12kg. The stand is really sturdy and is made to complement the TV; no wobbling around here. The TV, unlike most other TVs has the menu buttons at the back. Unfortunately, these aren’t sturdy at all, and feel like they’re going to pop off any minute.
Not bad to look at, but the performance leaves a lot to be desired
As for input options, this TV has plenty including two HDMI ports, two USB ports, composite, component, SPDIF and VGA. The USB ports can play back AVI, RMVB files and H.264, XVID and MPEG1/2/4. It also plays back JPEG, PNG and BMP files and WMA and MP3 for audio. And this TV plays back from not just flash drives, but hard drives as well, which is a complete win!
The inputs are pretty sorted
One extra feature this TV has is the Natura Light Technology with dynamic back-light as well as dynamic skin correction and motion compensation. It also has a dynamic contrast ratio of 100,000:1.
Performance
Using this TV is very easy, and I had no problem right from the time I turned it on. The menu could’ve definitely been designed better, but was easy to navigate. Even the remote is quite handy with presets for picture, sound, etc at the bottom. However, the remote does look really plasticky, so I would recommend not playing a game of catch with it.
A pretty sleek TV
When I watched a Blu-ray film on the TV, it seemed like the colours were a little too warm. I also noticed that the backlight wasn’t really very responsive, as it took some time to adjust itself when the scenes changed from dark to bright ones and vice versa. This is definitely not a good sign. However, the blacks are pretty deep. The response time for the TV was pretty positive and although there was some amount of ghosting and streaking, it wasn’t abysmal.
I also tried the TV out with the
Alienware Aurora ALX, and played Crysis and Left for Dead, and it was a pretty good experience. There was no lag with the mouse movements and the detailing and colours seemed pretty decent.
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As for audio, there’s a lot left to be desired, and if you do end up buying this TV, you will need a set of speakers at the very least. However, the dialogues were pretty in your face and crisp, so that’s one thing you can bank on when it comes to sound on this TV.
When I checked the settings, the brightness, contrast, sharpness and saturation were all at 50. So I carried on to the next round, which was the DisplayMate test. The TV scored pretty bad in most tests, but did reasonably well in some of them. For instance, it failed the Fine Line Moire Pattern, Video Bandwidth and Colour Registration tests with a score of 1.5/5, but did well in the Colour Scales (4/5) and Streaking and Ghosting (3/5). It scored a total of of 45% which makes it a very average TV.
The flimsy menu buttons at the back
Verdict
There are a lot of things that I don’t like about this TV. Firstly I would not ask anyone to pay as much as Rs. 39,990 for an HD Ready TV. There are plenty of Full HD TVs available for around the same price making this a very unfair deal. The TV has some other issues which could’ve been addressed to make it worth the money. The colours look quite uneven and inaccurate. In fact, it seemed like they weren’t being reproduced well as blues looked more like purple and everything looked a tad uneven. Even the backlight had major issues with keeping up when scenes changed from dark to bright ones. Everything about this TV isn’t bad though, as the black levels were quite nice and the response time was above average. Another thing that works in its favour is that it plays back media from hard drives, and not just flash drives. The TV looks great too, and is built pretty well apart from the menu buttons at the back.
A pretty nice looking TV
I give this TV 2 stars as it doesn’t really provide value for money and has its fair share of flaws. However, you could check out some other TVs such as the Samsung UA32C5000QM which costs around Rs. 38,100. It is a full HD TV and has functions similar to the Akai 32D20.
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