Digital Trends

Vizio VO32L

June 10th, 2008 | by David Elrich

Even though the speakers have only 12 watts of power, the VO32L offers a variety of audio adjustments including an equalizer but there’s no way to adjust bass or treble. It does have an ersatz surround mode that’s barely effective—nothing as good as SRS TruSurround or Dolby Virtual Speaker.

Once I had the audio and video settings to my liking it was time to watch some TV. As noted, I quickly turned to ESPN HD and MHD since they have some of the best HDTV signals from the FiOS box. I also watched a variety of SD material as well. The Celtics had just beaten the Lakers in game one of the NBA Finals and I checked out many of the highlights. Even though the Vizio is rated 8ms and is not a 120Hz panel, I saw very little comet-tailing or blur of the ball heading for the hoop. Uniform colors and skin tones were right on. Switching to MHD I enjoyed Amy Winehouse in London, using the Rock audio setting. It was a good experience. Even Transformers on Cinemax showed few problems. Black-and-white classics on Turner Classic Movies did not have rich blacks but that was probably more the fault of the station rather than the display.

Switching to the BD player with X-Men: The Last Stand was a big let down compared to the plasma. This isn’t really a fair comparison since the Panasonic is 1080p not 720p, 50-inches and costs almost five times more. Still once you see a Blu-ray movie the way it’s supposed to appear, it’s hard to appreciate a movie on the smaller screen at lower resolution. However the movie looked decent with no motion lag and fairly decent detail. The Happy Feet BD disc also looked good but again paled in comparison to the bigger plasma.

Where it excelled was reflectivity—at one point I viewed the set with bright overhead incandescent bulbs glaring away and there was barely any reflection off the screen. Plasmas, on the other hand, really should be used in dimly-lit rooms.

The VO32L has PIP and POP with the remote letting you swap quickly between views. The remote has a Freeze button which supposedly will grab a frame in case you need to write down an address or phone number. For whatever reason, it didn’t work with HDMI 1 or 2. According to Vizio it only works with the RF DTV/TV inputs. Another negative: there isn’t quick access to a wide or zoom function on the remote to adjust picture size. Therefore I suggest the company make the Freeze button the Wide/Zoom key—simple, right?

Conclusion

This is a solid 32-inch 720p LCD HDTV that’s worth checking out. Buy it at Costco so you can return it within 90 days, no questions asked, if you’re not happy. As a bedroom set, it’s hard to beat but I wouldn’t choose it as my number one display—I’m still heavily in the plasma camp, even with some reflectivity issues. And 32-inches just doesn’t cut it for 1080p BD movies. Up until about a year ago Vizio enjoyed a big price advantage between itself and Sony. Now Sony has the 32-inch KDL-32L4000 for $699 ($689 in Wal-Mart). This means one thing—Vizio’s prices will continue to drop, making HDTVs more affordable for more rooms in the house—and that’s a good thing.


Pros:

• Affordable, good quality 32-inch HDTV
• HDMI cable supplied
• Reasonable quality for a second set
• Wide variety of video adjustments

Cons:

• Blacks really aren’t deep enough vs. plasma
• Owner’s manual, remote and OSD need refinement
• Sorry, I still like the plasma picture overall