A great all-rounder. And alarm clock, oddly. (Sony KDL-26S3000)

Member Name: Jondot

Product:	Sony KDL-26S3000
Date:	11/07/09 (25 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Picture quality, Freeview EPG, handy features

Disadvantages: No manual 'off' button, but meh

I absolutely adore my Sony KDL-26S3000U - I bought it to replace an ageing Samsung 17 inch LCD, and it's been fantastic. It's actually completely outshone the £700 Toshiba we have in our living room.

First, let me start with the ease of use. The remote is excellent - a great button arrangement, nice to hold and with a reasonable range. It's the menus on the TV its self that are brilliant though. The EPG is fantastically easy to use, even offering a 'VCR' mode that, when set, automatically switches the channel over to the desired program so your VCR can record it. It'll also remind you of when a desired program is about to start - something that, bizzarely, my £180 Humax freeview box doesn't do.

Also included is a 'timer', which automatically switches the TV on at a desired time. I've found this particularly handy and use it as a sort of clock-radio. You can set this to come on just once, every day, or for Monday-Friday. A superb idea.

The KDL-26S3000U has a wide range of inputs - there's a couple of scarts, 2 HDMIs, Component, Composite, VGA, S-Video, you name it. It's also got a handy phono output that allows me to directly connect it to your hifi or surround sound system (which I have done). Speaking of which, there's also a handy 'sound offset' feature in the menus to ensure that sound matches to the picture even if your hifi system delays the sound slightly (which mine does). Very thoughtful.

Surprisingly I haven't actually connected this to anything hi-def yet- I'm yet to make the upgrade to Sky HD or Blu-Ray. However, I have connected my laptop through the VGA port and the quality has been excellent. It makes for excellent gaming, I'll give it that.

The only niggle I have is that there's no manual 'off' switch. The digital button on the top actually takes it out of standby and makes it unresponsive to the remote (and stops the alarm clock function from working), but I'm not entirely sure if it actually kills the power completely. This is a little annoying, but it's still more than most LCDs offer you.

Sound quality is actually surprisingly good. I usually send the audio through my hifi, but for the alarm clock function I set it to go through the speakers (purely because my hifi doesn't have an alarm clock function to get it to turn on at the same time). And it's quite impressive. Obviously it's not all that bassy, but still perfectly adequate for watching normal TV.

An excellent all-rounder, basically :) I've been converted to Sony!

Summary: A fantastic set, basically. I'd definitely have another Bravia after this.

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