Logik TVs

pineapple

Does anyone have any experience of Curry's Logik TVs? They seem relatively cheap and I'm tempted. I would imagine that even a budget make has to be better than the ancient Sharp CRT I am replacing.
Cheers

macman

They are cheap for a reason-just badged up job lots, if they go wrong out of warranty then the parts will not be available. Go for a proper budget brand such as LG or Sharp, it wil be vastly better at little more cost.

McKneff

I'm with macman on this. Buy cheap buy twice.

Mind, having said that I have had 2 Teknika TVs, (cheapies from Tesco) for about 7/8 years and not had any sort of problem.

Kurtis_Blue

Seen some good ones seen some bad ones, as above, as they are just badge engineered they can be a gamble.

brewerdave

Had a Logik TV which lasted more than 10 years with no problems...but a Technika one which failed after 18 months!! As KB says - its a gamble.
Look at Richer Sounds - they have "managers specials" and will sell a 5 year warranty for 10% of the purchase price

parallax_20

I was recently looking for a cheap tv to put in my son's room. I wasn't planning on spending too much and was looking at 16"-19" with DVD for around £100 mark. I wasn't too fussed about brand as long as the picture was reasonably good.

After much browsing and I came across a Logik 24" 1080p (L24DIGB10) TV refurb on Dixons for £48. I couldn't resist at that price, so I took a punt not known what the quality was like. In addition I took out a 3 year replacement plan for £12 in case something went wrong.

I took delivery of it yesterday. I sort of knew what to expect with refurbish from previous purchases from Dixons. e.g. generic brown box, some used parts, etc. There wasn't much in the box, just the TV, remote and manual. The stand was pre-assembled. Condition wise it was pretty good. It was marked Grade A on the box. A few scuff marks on the edge of bezel, nothing major. What concerns me more are dead pixels on LCD's in general. Luckily mine came with no dead pixels. Screen was big and bright. There was some light leakage on the left and right edges where the screen would appear slightly brighter than the rest of the screen, but not overly distracting except in dark scenes where they are more noticable. Possible why the previous customer returned it? Viewing angles wasn't great though and colour rendition begins to fade if you move too far from center. This was testing with me about a foot from the screen From a distance it may be OK.

Freeview was easily tuned in and picked up most main channels easily even with the crappy poundshop aerial I had lying around at the time for testing. I need to get a better one! There is no fancy processing engine to smooth the picture out, so it does look a bit blocky close up. But I think this is generally accept considering that standard def. is being projected on a 1080p screen.

I was also keen to make use of the built-in USB port for movies. I ran a few AVI's, they all played some without sound and I suspect this could be related to the audio encoding used. It also played VOB files again with no sound , but picture was fine. This was off a 40GB USB HD powered via the built-in USB port. It mentions in the manual you can hook up a powered USB hub to connect more devices, which may be useful if we use the PVR function.

EPG was pretty good too with little lag when navigating. We have another dedicated set top box, again some unknown brand, hooked up to an old 14" and although the freeview is fine on it, the EPG is horrendously slow to use, so we don't bother with it. No problems with the Logik.

So overall, I'm happy with the purchase for its intended purpose. If it breaks I know I'm covered and if the worst comes to the worst I've only lost £60. When I purchased it, I figured if the TV quality was crap, at least I would have a half decent 1080p monitor to use instead.

Having said that, you can get branded (LG,Samsung,Toshiba) refurbs from Argos outlet for just over £100. So would recommend you look at those if you want brand confidence. But do check the prices on these as sometimes you can get them brand new for not much more.

But if I saw another similar deal, I wouldn't hesitate to snap it up again.

Good luck.

Apologies if I've rambled on a bit.