misteRate.info

Decent but Flawed Cheap TV

Pro: No dead or stuck pixels. The tuner has good reception. Good selection of inputs and the on-screen menus are well thought out. The resolution is as advertised. The speakers are better than most TVs of this size, but still sound tinny.
Con: The LCD panel has poor vertical viewing angle, you need to be looking at it at almost 0 degrees. Viewed from 20 degrees below and it is almost black. Viewed from 20 degrees above and it is completely washed out. Absolutely terrible color banding. Instead of a smooth color gradient you see obvious bands of solid color. I tested this side by side with a Sony viewing the same off-air video source (1080i native source material). The Sony looked great, the Coby had obvious banding. I assume this is a 6-bit per pixel panel used for cheap computer monitors and not the 8 or 10 bits per pixel panels used with most TVs.
Conclusion: For the price this is an adequate TV for an exercise room or fishing cabin where quality does not matter. Not acceptable for a TV that will be viewed frequently.

Update (2/9/2012): This item is currently on sale here for the lowest price I’ve seen. I also found some auctions for this item here.

The featured review for this product, Coby TFTV2224 22-Inch Widescreen LCD HDTV/Monitor with HDMI Input, Black Electronics, was written by P. Fulghum.

The average rating for this item is 4 out of 5 stars, according to 3 reviews.