ViewSonic 32″ LCD TV (N3246W) Review

By andy | October 13, 2007

Well I did say there would be a review coming soon, and here it is…. short – but a review none the less! The review is split into the following distinct sections:

Installation
General Viewing
Additional Devices
Summary

Ok so here goes…

Installation
Having never installed a flat screen I of course had concerns, the first concern was brackets. Have you seen the prices? But then you are hanging quite an expensive bit of kit on the wall! I decided to go for the budget option; this was a bracket available at ASDA It cost me around £30 (bargin compared to the brackets available from Currys at over £100).

Next was cabling, I purchased this online from Cables2U. My cabling requirements were, 2 x Scart Leads; 1 x 3 phono to 3 phono lead; 1 x Jack Lead; 1 x VGA Lead. A very good service provided by Cables2U quick delivery, and an online service with a smile!

Installation was rather straight forward, took a few hours all in all after attempting to decipher the graphical instructions that came with the TV bracket (no text instructions) – I guess it’s what I paid for (or didn’t)!

Eventually the bracket was on the wall and the required fittings on the TV – here is the worst bit… Hang TV on the wall bracket – check it’s on, double check it’s on. Now time to let go… but, OK, after three let go… One…. Two…. Dare I? One last final triple check… PHEW, it was fine! Just me and my nerves!

General Viewing
After a few months of viewing the TV, all seems well! Good picture quality, comparing it to the Goodmans and other brands which I saw in Currys and Asda when purchasing the ViewSonic – it live up to expectations. Good sound quality, I listen to quite a lot of music (vary in style in genre) however the ViewSonic plays all sound to a good quality. I do have the audio out wired via my hi-fi which of course gives me a higher quality of sound by the very nature of the beast. The TV sound can be turned up high, and doesn’t distort until you get to the extremes.

A few down sides to the TV in my opinion, a few features I would prefer to work differently – however the TV is designed for the general public (rather than a geek). The PIP (Picture In Picture) feature is very good, however as a geek I would have preferred to be able to hide the smaller picture, but still hear the sound from this source. This would be useful while using the TV as an extended monitor but also have sound from another source (DVD, XBOX, Sky News etc.) – But I feel thats just me being a geek and should mark the TV down at all.

The built in Freeview works well for a small number of the available channels, ideal for just viewing! I also use a PVR with freeview tuner, so tend to use that for anything other than standard viewing.

Additional Devices
The additional devices I have connected to the ViewSonic N3246W are as follows:

DigiFusion FVR 100 – Freview box with internal hard drive, allowing full PVR capabilities.
XBOX – Standard XB OX with larger hard drive installed, modified to run XBMC (XBOX Media Center)
DVD Player – Standard DVD player, nothing special.
Toshiba Laptop – 2.8Ghz laptop, 1Gb RAM – worst thing I ever bought, does the job – JUST!

All the additional devices I have listed work well with the TV, I happily use my media center day in / day out for all kinds of things! I generally don’t use the freeview box any more as I can happily achieve most tasks without turning this device on. The built in freeview tuner in the ViewSonic helps with this! I generally just “series link”, record and use the play back functions on the DigiFusion.

Summary
Overall the ViewSonic N3246W works very well, the quality of the device meets what you’d expect (and exceeds expectations). Very good quality display with seamless refresh rates while watching TV, DVDs, Freeview or generally any video. Audio is superb quality and the features which come with the unit are smashing. From PIP, built in DVB, HD Ready and the other endless features listed on the ViewSonic N3246W Specification Page.

ViewSonic N3246w