advantages

• Two paper trays (standard, photo)
• Excellent print quality
• good value

key specifications

• Evaluation Price: £89.99
• 1200 dpi print resolution
• SD/MemoryStick/xD card slot
• 1200 ppi scanner
• 61mm touchscreen display
• PictBridge

(Center)

There are three Photosmart all-in-ones in the HP range: the Photosmart, the Photosmart Wireless, and the Photosmart Plus, which sits in the middle and is the subject of this review. It’s designed as a home machine, with a propensity for photo printing.

Like its stablemates, the Plus is finished in textured and high-gloss black, and features a raised panel that protrudes in front of the flatbed scanner lid, which houses a 61mm touchscreen with dedicated touch buttons on either side. Its position makes the screen very easy to use, as does the sensitivity of the panel itself.

Below the control panel are two memory card slots that accept SD, MemoryStick, and xD cards. There’s also a PictBridge socket that can also read USB drives.

Two paper trays are built into the front of the device, one 150-sheet tray for plain paper up to A4 size and another for up to 20 sheets of photo paper. The photo tray is automatically connected to the printer when you select this media for printing. Pages eject to the top of the paper trays, although you have to extend a support and paper stop, which greatly increases the overall footprint of the Photosmart Plus.

This is a four color printer that accepts either standard or XL cartridges in the CMYK inks. The cartridges, which look oddly similar to Canon supplies, are inserted into the printhead and the machine then produces an alignment page, which needs to be rescanned before the first prints can be made.

Drivers are provided for Windows and OS X, and Linux alternatives using the CUPS protocol can be downloaded from the HP website. There’s also the usual mix of HP utilities, including Solution Center, and a copy of Windows Live Photo Gallery.

The printer can be connected via USB or Ethernet, but it also offers wireless connectivity, although you’ll need to temporarily connect via USB (a cable is included) to make the connection. This can be inconvenient if you bought the machine because you have space constraints on your desk.

The biggest catch with how the Photosmart Plus B209a works is the same as the Photosmart Wireless. It can take a long time for a print job to start as the printer checks itself and primes its engine. During our testing, it took 79 seconds to start printing a five-page text document.

The ISO speed standard states that times can be measured from the start of paper movement from the input tray, which excludes preparation time. This is very handy as it gives a best-case result. We have no idea why the printer has to fiddle around for so long.

Aside from the infrequent print start delays that happen maybe once every five prints or so, print speeds are pretty good for this class of device. Our 5-page text print showed a speed of 7.69 pages per minute and the 20-page test increased this to 9.92 pages per minute. The 5-sided text and graphics print produced a speed of 5.08 ppm.

10 x 10cm photo print speeds are slower than some of the device’s competitors, particularly all-in-ones from Canon and Epson. The HP device takes about a minute regardless of the source, while recent tests of the PIXMA MP990 and Stylus Photo PX710W achieve print speeds of around 30 seconds. Nevertheless, a pressure is not correct.

The print quality is consistently quite good. Black text shows very little evidence of ink bleeding, and even at small point sizes, characters are well formed with only slight jaggies. Business graphics are bright and generally smooth with no evidence of dither patterns and only slight fuzzing of black text over colored backgrounds. A color copy was also reproduced well, although the colors are a bit light.

Photo prints are good too, although like many devices we’ve reviewed, some detail is lost in darker areas of the image. However, the colors are natural and the gradations are fluid. If required, the device can produce vivid tones on HP’s own Advanced Photo paper.

The four cartridges are the only consumables in this machine and using the higher yield XL versions results in a page cost of 3.07p for an ISO black page and 7.71p for ISO colour. While the black page cost is very similar to the other two machines we’ve mentioned, the colored page cost is between 1.5p and 2.0p cheaper – a worthwhile saving.

verdict

For just under £90, including the revised VAT rate of 17.5 per cent, this is a very capable all-in-one. We like the dual paper trays and the machine’s convenience in powering the photo tray. We also like the cost per side and positive touchscreen response. We’re not too keen on how long it sometimes takes for a document to start printing, but the print quality is excellent, so overall it’s a good choice for anyone on a budget.

points in detail

• print speed 7

• functions 9

• value 9

• print quality 9

characteristics

To press

to scan

With Christmas draining your bank account and the January sales rolling in, I thought it worthwhile today to take a look at what appears to be a bargain of gargantuan proportions, at least on paper. In fact, LG’s 47LH3000 is gigantic in every way. That’s because its LCD screen expands to a movie-loving 47 inches, and its bezel extends a few inches beyond that.

Of course, with some brands, a bezel as chunky as that on the 47LH3000 would look amateurish and unattractive. But typically, LG has actually used some subtle curves and an ultra-high-gloss finish to make its TV’s size seem like a stylish difference rather than a budgetary compromise.

Needless to say, not everyone is going to love the design, especially when they’re trying to fit the largest screen into a small space. But I definitely like it anyway. And it certainly fits with my dear old granny’s theory that getting what you pay for should have at least as much to do with quantity as with quality!

Speaking of which you get what you pay for it reminds me that I haven’t mentioned the price yet, having opened the review by saying what a bargain the 47LH3000 is. So there we go: we spotted it in the shop at Richer Sounds for pennies under £600. Insane.

In fact, it’s so insane that when I received the TV I couldn’t help but fear the worst in terms of the 47LH3000’s capabilities. Surely even the budget maestro LG couldn’t deliver real quality at this price point?

However, as I shifted my attention from the bold front of the set to the back, I was pleasantly surprised to find a really solid set of connections. The three HDMIs, for example, should be convenient enough to meet the digital HD needs of the typical budget-conscious TV buyer, while a PC connection is available for people wanting to double the 47LH3000 as a PC monitor.

I think it’s a shame that there aren’t any multimedia options beyond the PC socket. The USB port provided is only for support service upgrade instead of playing your photo and music files on TV. But instead of getting maudlin about it, I’ll just refer you back to the price of the 47LH3000 and move on quickly.

Examination of the spec sheet of the 47LH3000 shows that it is far from the overly basic model you would imagine for the money. First off, it’s Full HD resolution – something that, even now, can’t be considered a dead certificate given the 47LH3000’s kind of money.

It also features a dynamic backlight engine capable of producing a totally respectable 50,000:1 contrast ratio, LG’s solid and improved XD Engine with its multi-faceted video processing engine, and even a special Real Cinema processing mode for playback from 24p Blu-ray sources.

There’s no 100Hz processing, but even the most perennial optimist couldn’t really have expected to find this on a £600, 47-inch TV.

Other good news concerns the 47LH3000’s on-screen menus. Because these use the same bold, graphics-heavy approach as LG’s premium models, and the result is one of the easiest-to-use TVs we’ve come across.

This is despite the fact that the menus actually contain a fairly large list of functions. Particularly intriguing is the discovery of the ISF presets, proving that the TV was deemed flexible enough by the Imaging Science Foundation to be professionally calibrated by one of their engineers.

Some of the tweaks that anyone who calibrates the 47LH3000’s images will likely tinker with include dynamic color and contrast systems, gamma adjustment, noise reduction routines and various tricks aimed at boosting black levels.

If you’re keen on calibrating the device yourself but are a little scared, LG has got your back, courtesy of a built-in picture wizard – meaning a series of test signals, complete with brief explanations of how to use them to enhance your images to make it look better exactly. Provided, of course, accuracy is what you really like about your video images!

Running on a typical selection of HD games and Blu-rays, the 47LH3000 unsurprisingly falls short of the picture richness reported by one or two higher-end LG sets we’ve reviewed recently. But before you get too downhearted, I can also say that the 47LH3000 produces pictures far, far above anything else that offers the same sort of screen size for just £600.

LG has long had an uncanny knack for instantly winning your AV hearts with aggressive brightness and color presentations on its LCD TVs. And that strong approach extends to the 47LH3000, which instantly sidesteps the familiar dull, muted look of so many mega-budget rivals.

This should prove very helpful for the 47LH3000 in a store environment as it will help the screen hold its own in terms of raw AV ‘charisma’ against screens that sell for a lot more. But of course, what’s good for a shop in terms of image characteristics is rarely, if ever, good for a darker home environment. So it’s good that the 47LH3000 offers just enough flexibility in its options to allow images to look punchy without having to tolerate too much overly aggressive tones or too little black level response.

The 47LH3000 also outperforms its price class when it comes to the sharpness of its HD images. There’s plenty of evidence of the kind of picture minutiae that even now sometimes inspires a sigh of satisfaction from AV lovers, and crucially, despite the lack of motion blur, the picture doesn’t succumb to nearly as much as I would have expected from the 100Hz processing.

I’m not saying there is “no” motion blur. But what there is is fairly easy to live with and is certainly a million miles away from the sleazy mess often seen on other budget TVs.

Another common budget TV that’s largely adeptly sidestepped by the 47LH3000 is weak black level response. Because while its dark scenes certainly look a touch grayer and less detailed than on high-end TVs from LG and others, they’re deep enough to make everyday images look dynamic, while predominantly dark scenes look miles more natural than they’re typical of entry prices.

As you’ve probably – hopefully – realized by now, the 47LH3000’s accomplishments are comparative rather than earth-shattering. Also, it has other issues that I haven’t mentioned yet, such as: B. a fairly limited viewing angle, slight stuttering when watching Blu-rays despite the 24p mode, and a slightly noisy appearance on all but the highest quality standard definition sources.

Yet since the 47LH3000 also uses its considerable bulk to produce a well-rounded audio performance (complete with – shock, horror! – a decent amount of bass), the bottom line is that no matter how critical you try to look at it, the 47LH3000 is almost a budget triumph.

“‘Verdict”‘

The 47LH3000 can currently be found as the definition of ‘bargain’ in the Oxford English Dictionary. Take a look for yourself if you don’t believe me.

How we test televisions

We test every TV we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry standard tests to properly compare features. We will always tell you what we find. We never accept money to rate a product.

Learn more about how we test in our Ethics Policy.

Used as the main TV during the period

Tested over a week

Tested with industry calibrated tools, discs and real world use

Tested with broadcast content (HD/SD), video streams and demo discs

points in detail

• functions 8

• value 9

• picture quality 8

• design 8

• sound quality 8

characteristics

Call it drab, call it boring, call it frugal and conservative, but releasing the PS3 Slim is easily the most sensible move Sony has made in its donkey years. Where it limits the functionality of the original PS3, it does so in ways that don’t really matter, and where it improves on the original console, it does so in ways that offer real, tangible benefits. It’s not a major upgrade for existing PS3 owners, but neither should it ever be. Instead, this is a machine aimed squarely at those trying to decide between the Microsoft and Sony consoles. Sony knows this is the only big chance to get back into the current-gen console wars. Under these conditions, I would call the PS3 Slim a success.

Let’s start with the biggest change: the physical design. The PS3 Slim, which sits alongside the old PlayStation 3, is actually around 15mm lower than the original, but a good 40mm narrower and – most importantly – just over 20mm thinner, giving it a nice low profile under your TV gives. It’s not a bold statement like the original PS3, but rather a more understated box that goes well with the rest of your AV kit. Gone is the beautiful glossy finish. Gone is the Spider-Man font, replaced with a plain PS3 logo.

Those smooth, touch-sensitive power and eject buttons have also been replaced with a pair of flat, circular buttons with little travel, although these still glow nicely when pressed. I know some (Hugo) have called the Slim “simple” while others (Gordon) have even called it “naff,” but in the flesh it’s just a little quiet and understated. Importantly, while the new PS3 may look cheaper than the old one, it doesn’t necessarily feel cheap. In fact, I’d say it feels more solid and sturdy than my Xbox 360 Elite, although it’s actually a bit lighter. The only downside to the new look? Without the overpriced tripod accessories, it’s not quite as stable when it’s on its side.

HDMI 1.3a, S/PDIF and standard PlayStation A/V ports on the back still handle the output to your TV and sound system, while we’ve got Gigabit Ethernet and 802.11g Wi-Fi to connect to your router and the get internet. On the front we’re limited to two USB ports – although that was also the case on the 40GB and later 80GB PS3 – and the multi-card reader seems to be going into the dustbin of history, but I can’t do that either say is a real disaster for gamers. You can still connect a camera or MP3 player via USB, and how many of us have really taken the memory card off our camera and plugged it straight into the PS3? As with removing the old option to install a Linux distro, the point is to remove features that the majority of users won’t miss and focus on those that they will. I know some of us are still mourning the end of backwards compatibility, but I guess we’ll just have to get used to it as it hasn’t returned with the PS3 Slim.

Two other factors make a big difference in the average living room. First, the combination of the new 45nm Cell processor, a smaller nVidia RSX GPU, and a host of efficiency improvements mean the PS3 Slim uses around 50 percent of the power of the old model in every situation (under 100W when gaming and less than 1W in standby, as opposed to over 200W and almost 2W on the old PS3). This actually makes it a less juice-hungry console than the Xbox 360 Elite (around 120W in gameplay, under 2W in standby). Over the console’s lifecycle, this will significantly reduce your electricity bills, and that’s presumably one reason why the new console uses a smaller, tape-deck-style power cord instead of the larger kettles used by its predecessor and (in modified form) the Xbox 360

The other benefit of the new Cell and RSX processors is that the PS3 Slim runs cooler than the old PS3. That inevitably makes it quieter. If you thought the existing PS3 was quiet, prepare for a shock: the new model is eerily lacking in noise. It’s not quiet, but I’d put it on par with, say, a basic idle laptop or a quiet PVR. Even when accessing a game or a Blu-ray disc, the volume remains low, meaning the PS3 Slim doesn’t have the irritating disc hiss of the Wii. Whether I was playing Flower, Killzone 2, Resident Evil 5, or the Uncharted 2 multiplayer beta, I couldn’t get the volume up to the level of my old PS3, let alone the windy young hooligan Falcon-powered Xbox 360 Elite. Well, I might only have one super-quiet model, but if you’re looking to buy a console that doubles as a media player then that’s a real benefit of the PS3.

The other, of course, is Blu-ray playback. There are many cheaper Blu-ray players on the market today and a range of connected media players you can have for well under £100. Nevertheless, the PS3 performs well in both respects. While I can’t say I’ve seen a huge range of Blu-ray players to compare the PS3 to, it’s fairly quick when loading discs and the playback quality is at least as good as other budget decks, that I’ve looked at. Additionally, the Slim now streams Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio bitstreams to a receiver via HDMI, which is good news if you have the appropriate home theater kit – although the old PS3 still supports both standards, but instead the decoding takes place in the console and outputs multi-channel PCM.

Meanwhile, the PS3 itself has become an increasingly capable media player with every firmware upgrade, and of course that follows with the PS3 Slim. As much as I love the Xbox 360’s NXE interface, I have to say that Sony’s XMB remains a better interface for browsing and viewing different types of media, and I was surprised at how quickly, seamlessly and non-intrusively the PS3 Slim picked up this media waiting on my Windows 7 PC (and the same should be true for any DNLA compliant server). Format support is a bit conservative, but H.264, MPEG-2, AVCHD, DivX, and WMV video are all handled with ease, along with MP3 and WMA audio. The PS3 also has no trouble streaming unprotected iTunes Plus files directly from my PC.

Video and audio playback quality is excellent, with the Cell processor upscaling and enhancing low-resolution files. Best of all, the latest version 3.0 of the PS3’s firmware has added native support for BBC iPlayer; You can stream shows straight from the BBC in near SD broadcast quality – and even the Nintendo Wii can’t claim that!

Of course, there’s one area where Sony lags behind Microsoft: movie downloads. While Microsoft has been offering HD and SD rentals on the Xbox Live Marketplace for a number of years, PS3 owners in the UK are still waiting for Sony’s European movie download service to launch. Luckily the wait should be over in November. Whether we then get the 12,000 TV episodes and 2,200 movies to delight our American cousins ​​is undoubtedly a licensing issue, but if we do, it may not be an advantage Microsoft enjoys for long.

In terms of usability and built-in functionality, the PS3 Slim scores highly. There are still some quibbles – I’d still say the Dual Shock 3 lags behind the 360 ​​controller in terms of comfort and accuracy, while its motion-sensitive properties are severely underutilized – but it really is a great piece of hardware. Unfortunately, the hardware was never the PS3’s problem – it was always the cost and the games. On the latter side, the PS3 has yet to deliver on what it promises. When I think of exclusive titles on both machines, only a handful on PS3 – Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, LittleBigPlanet, Infamous, Killzone 2 – come to mind that rival the best on Microsoft’s platform. I still can’t see any real long-term appeal in the much-hyped PS3 virtual home world, and we still have a situation where most cross-platform games look and run better on the theoretically inferior machine (although most of us now accept that the strengths of the 360’s GPU versus the PS3’s RSX outweigh any difference in CPU performance).

”'(Middle)Uncharted 2 could be reason enough to get a PS3 Slim(/Middle)“’

But this picture could change. This is the first year the two consoles have evened in the run-up to Christmas, with Uncharted 2 and Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time on the PS3 beating out Forza 3 and Left 4 Dead 2 on the 360. Sony has MAG, Gran Turismo 5 and God of War III early next year to take on Mass Effect 2, Crackdown 2 and Alan Wake. After that, things get more interesting with Sony’s motion controller and Microsoft’s more ambitious Project Natal, but there’s a real sense that Sony has finally rediscovered the storyline it lost around E3 2006. I think it’s high time we ditched the idea that the PS3 is going to give us better, more technically advanced games in the long run while Microsoft is abandoning the 360 ​​- both companies are keen to maintain a long lifecycle of this generation – but I definitely think it will give us our share of great ones. That’s enough.

Cost is still an issue. We all cheered when Sony announced a reasonable price of £249 for the PS3 Slim, but Microsoft’s drop of the Elite to £199 was a very effective spoiler. However, as Hugo mentioned, it’s worth remembering the long-term cost of ownership. You get 802.11g Wi-Fi in the box (although media streamers would have preferred Sony to match Microsoft’s forthcoming 802.11n adapter), and you don’t pay for Xbox Live Gold membership either. I don’t think anyone outside of Sony is under the illusion that PSN is an equally good service, but it works well enough and the revamped PSN Store is constantly being improved. It’s also worth noting that many retailers are already bundling the €249 PS3 Slim with a free game, and you can expect more deals in the run up to Christmas.

Overall, the PS3 Slim feels like the console Sony needed to release at the time. I suspect most gamers who just want to play games will still opt for the cheaper, hardcore-focused 360, but with its quiet Blu-ray playback and media-savvy UI, the Slim is a solid choice for the mainstream user. When making car analogies I was talking about the PS3 as a BMW to the Ford Focus of the Xbox 360. The PS3 Slim is more of a VW Golf and at this stage of the game that’s exactly what Sony needs and a more realistic choice for them Majority.

“‘Verdict”‘

A more focused, affordable and surprisingly quiet PS3. This is the hardware Sony needs to win over the hearts and minds of the mainstream. Now only the software is missing.

Talk about extremes. Back in July we tested an LED projector – the H109080FD – from new (for the UK) projection brand Vivitek, which cost a cool 11 grand. But here we are today looking at a Vivitek projector that can be yours for the princely sum of £849. Including VAT.

Most brands don’t have anywhere near this level of price differentials in their range and frankly the mind is amazed at the difference in performance levels I could expect to find between the two models. Which is a fancy way of saying that I can’t help but worry that the entry-level H1080FD will turn out to be as bad as the H9080FD was excellent…

Unsurprisingly, the H1080FD doesn’t deliver nearly as much pure product volume for your buck as its famous flagship sibling. Its dimensions of 335 x 102 x 256mm are fully in line with the sort of coffee-table-friendly fare seen in competing ultra-budget models like the InFocus, Optoma and, more recently, Panasonic.

The H1080FD is also reasonably elegantly dressed for such a cheap device, with a clean white finish and tastefully rounded edges. The only thing that looks a little off aesthetically is the lens. It’s a very small affair – just over an inch in diameter – but it’s been unceremoniously shoved into a barrel that looks like it was designed for a much larger lens array, with a rather cheap-looking black one being one Plastic “shield” is used to hold the lens in place.

The connectivity of the H1080FD is excellent for its money. Two HDMIs get the ball rolling, although I’d really expect only one for a device this affordable. But notably, the projector also has a USB port, an RS-232C control port, a D-Sub PC port and even a 12V trigger output that lets you automatically start a motorized screen.

It’s a bit disappointing to realize that the USB port is for service only and I can’t play my digital photos through it. But such a disappointment is hardly unfair when you’re talking about a projector as cheap as the H1080FD.

As for the projector’s innards, firstly the H1080FD, unsurprisingly for its money, ditched the H9080FD’s LED lighting in favor of a simple 0.65-inch single-chip DLP/230W lamp assembly Has.

Impressive for the price though, this chipset’s resolution is a native Full HD 1,920 x 1,080. In addition, the lamp is said to put out a high maximum of 1,800 lumens, while the projector’s full on/off contrast ratio is said to be a respectable (for this market level) 4,000:1.

The only concern I have with these numbers is whether the brightness is actually too high, which suggests PC-biased picture performance rather than something appropriate for movies, which tend to have a strong black level response versus brightness to prefer.

Setting up the H1080FD is a fairly simple process. There are screw-on legs at the rear of the projector and a fold-down leg at the front to help you position the image correctly on your screen, while the zoom/focus rings are easily accessible via a hole in the top of the projector.

However, there are inevitably limitations. For starters, the optical zoom on offer isn’t exactly spectacular, with a throw ratio of 1.6-1.92. The lens is also designed for short throw distances – to some extent a sensible move given the occasional ‘living room’ use for which it is probably most likely to be bought. But it made the H1080FD the first projector I’ve tested in quite a while that had me lifting my butt – outrageous! – and move my projector stand forward from its usual position at the very back of my 5m test room.

The other annoying setup flaw is the lack of any vertical or horizontal optical image shift. This means many people have to use the projector’s built-in digital keystone correction feature to get the sides of their image looking straight, with all the potential for corrupting the image that any sort of digital stupidity always brings.

Stepping into the H1080FD’s surprisingly well-presented on-screen menus (via a decently organized and impressively backlit remote control), I found a respectable number of functions that helped me calibrate images to my liking. Highlights include a color management system that lets you adjust hue, saturation, and gain for the red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, and yellow color components, surprisingly flexible gamma adjustment, and a fleshtone tweaker.

The projector offers three memory banks in which you can save your own preferred settings, as well as three pre-programmed presets: Movie, Normal and Bright.

It’s perhaps a shame that Vivitek couldn’t add presets for sports, and games in particular, to this list, but it doesn’t take long to set up proper presets for these types of sources yourself.

However, if you’re into fine-tuning the images, I highly recommend you always use Film mode as a starting point, as to be honest, the Normal and Bright presets are both pretty dodgy. Indeed, when you first see the H1080FD with one of these latter modes selected, the gray wash hanging over it all, along with some seriously unconvincing colours, are both quite alarming.

Movie mode miraculously and instantly makes colors appear much more believable, while elevating black levels from a disappointment to actually quite respectable levels, at least for movies.

In fact, the infamous torture sequence with knotted ropes and dangling chunks from “Casino Royale” looks far more graphic and compelling in movie mode, with its pitch-black background, tricky skin tones and stylized lighting, than it typically does at a projector priced under a grand.

Do not get me wrong. I’m not talking about colors enjoying the kind of subtlety of mix and tone that characterizes decent projectors further up the price structure – especially when it comes to deep greens. And black levels still look dull enough to hide shadow detail, making dark scenes look a little flat. But at the risk of working on a screamingly obvious point, the H1080FD really doesn’t do a bad job with color or contrast for its money.

Especially since it has another very unexpected chord to its arc: astonishingly good fine detail. HD movies look as textured and sharp on the H1080FD as they do on many projectors four times the price, while displaying all the image detail that distinguishes HD from its standard definition counterpart with amazing confidence. You even get a good sense of the cinematic grain so loved by most Blu-ray authoring houses these days.

It’s also worth noting how dynamic the H1080FD’s images tend to look, as the high brightness output ensures images have plenty of punch without looking anywhere near as washed out as I would have expected. This is especially true if you’re using the Boost lamp output mode (something at least worth trying as it doesn’t distort black levels as much as similar systems on some competing models).

However, there are inevitable signs of the H1080FD’s budget nature beyond the occasional rogue hue and crushed black level.

First of all, images – especially very dark ones or shots with clear blue skies – sometimes look a bit noisy. Next, “medium light” images with a mix of light and dark content sometimes look a bit muted compared to more universal dark or light images.

In very dark scenes, it also seemed to me that there was a slight variation in hue in different parts of the image – although this is only noticeable with content that is almost entirely black.

Elsewhere, I found “Halo 3 ODST” feeds from my Xbox 360 not looking as rich in black levels as regular video feeds – a situation seen recently with Samsung’s LED LCD TVs. However, the H1080FD doesn’t have the HDMI black level adjustment solution that the Samsung TVs offered.

Another odd discovery is that the H1080FD doesn’t seem happy playing 1080p/24 Blu-ray outputs. The weirdness started when my Pioneer LX91 Blu-ray deck’s HDMI “handshake” with the projector resulted in a standard 720p output – despite the projector being a native Full HD resolution. Then, when I forced the Blu-ray output to 1080p/24, the saturation levels and overall hue of the projector changed in a really quite distracting way. Still, 1080p/60 worked absolutely fine, so I don’t see the 1080p/24 issue as a major disruption to the H1080FD’s casual audience.

One thing I predicted when I found out the H1080FD used DLP technology that could certainly be a big problem: the rainbow effect.

This phenomenon, caused by the single-chip DLP color wheel, shows streaks of pure red, green, and blue that momentarily dart into your peripheral vision as you move your eyes across the image. In fact, the H1080FD’s problem is severe enough to be easily visible over very bright parts of the image without having to move your eyes – especially when panning. It should be emphasized here that not everyone sees the rainbow effect. But while I’m generally not as affected by it as some of my friends, I’ve noticed it regularly with the H1080FD.

A couple of other issues I have with the H1080FD are a) it runs a bit louder than I’d like, especially in Boost Lamp mode, and b) the vents are on the sides of the projector and the rather clumsy lens design both let a lot of light into your room.

Normally, when the H1080FD’s picture judging is complete, I would pass judgment at this point. But to make it even more user-friendly for plug-and-play audiences, it has a built-in 5W mono speaker so you can accompany your images with sound without having to upgrade a separate audio system.

Of course, this solution is hardly ideal for movie watching, partly because of the inevitable lack of raw audio performance, but also because the sound is produced at such a distance from the image it’s supposed to accompany. In fact, in my room setup, the projector is behind my viewing position, so the audio/video offset couldn’t be more extreme!

To be fair, the audio quality produced by the speaker really isn’t bad; Decent volumes can be achieved and the mix is ​​clearer than I would expect from a mono speaker. So I would definitely say the sound is good enough to work for a casual gaming session or sporting event.

“‘Verdict”‘

While there are clear indications of the H1080FD’s budget nature in its build quality and some aspects of its performance, it’s still good enough to warrant at least an audition if you’re looking for an amazingly affordable “part-time” projector in the market.

points in detail

• value 9

• functions 7

• picture quality 7

• draft 6

There are a number of printers at the entry-level end of the inkjet market, but few at the price point of HP’s new Deskjet D1660. You can pick one up for well under £30 from internet providers like Amazon, so what do you get for that kind of money?

Few printer manufacturers give a thought to how difficult it is to photograph a printer clad entirely in glossy black plastic that reflects everything in its immediate vicinity, showing every fingerprint and particle of dust. The Deskjet D1660 does both, but we accept that neither will cause problems for the average customer.

As you would expect, the printer’s design is fairly simple. It has an average width for an A4 printer, but is considerably less deep than most. It uses HP’s proprietary print path, which in this case takes paper from a fold-down tray at the front and feeds it back out at the top of the input stack. There’s no output tray as such, but the tech is cheap and cheery and works surprisingly well. Since the sheets of paper don’t have a cover, you’ll probably want to remove them and store them when you’re not printing, which is a bit fiddly.

There is no control panel on the machine and a single power button with an inset green LED indicates when the machine is active. A single USB port on the back is the only way to get data into the printer, and a small, black block power supply provides low-voltage power.

Pull down a small cover at the front and the two ink and head cartridges move to the center of the carriage for replacement. There’s a black and a tri-color cartridge that snap into place in a jiffy. The software is basic but sufficient, and includes the HP Solution Center and drivers for Windows and OS X. Given its simplicity, installation takes a while.

HP claims speeds of 20 pages per minute for black and white printing and 16 pages per minute for color, both in draft mode. We always test in Normal mode, as we believe few people use draft on a regular basis, and we measured a speed of 4.41 pages per minute on our five-page black text print.

It can take up to 18 seconds for the printer to start printing the first page of a multi-page job, so it’s not surprising that with a 20-page document, where initial processing accounts for a smaller percentage of the whole, print speed increases, in this case to 5.36 ppm.

Our black-color graphics test, another five-page document, returned a speed of 2.56 pages per minute. Neither of these speeds are spectacular, but subjectively the machine is reasonably snappy and for the occasional print they’re aimed at – the quoted monthly duty cycle is just 750 pages – long wait times are unlikely.

The print quality of the machine is very good. Black text is remarkably clean for an entry-level inkjet printer, with little ink bleeding into the paper, resulting in crisp and legible text down to small point sizes.

Color graphics are good too, with solid fill colors, light tones, and good registration of black text over colored backgrounds. Finally, photo prints on HP Advanced Photo Paper vary depending on the print mode selected. Some noticeable banding and jitter patterns are visible in large solid areas in Normal mode.

In the best mode, which takes a little longer – 1:19 for a 15 x 10cm print – these disappear and the reproduction is closer to what you would expect from an HP inkjet printer. It must be said that this device is not primarily intended for photo printing, but in the “Best” mode the colors are natural and there is a lot of detail in both brightly lit and shadowed areas of the image.

The Deskjet D1660 uses the HP 300 and 300XL cartridges, which are freely available at great discount prices. The standard cartridges are fairly small in capacity, but this reflects the type of intermittent use that many customers will have from the machine. The XL cartridges have a higher capacity and are intended for those who print more regularly.

Using the XL versions gives a page cost of 4.30p for ISO black pages and 10.25p for ISO color pages, both including 0.7p for paper. While this cost may seem high, it actually holds up pretty well with inkjet printers that cost 2 to 4 times as much. We’d expect printing costs to be higher from cheap machines than more expensive ones, but there really isn’t much of a downside here.

verdict

This is a pretty good printer for the money. It is very easy to use and in most cases just gets on with the job. The setup is basic, but it’s quite fast for its class and delivers quality results. Printing costs are high but will likely go down and will always be slightly higher when the asking price is low. If money is tight, the Deskjet D1660 is a great way to spend it.

points in detail

• print speed 8

• functions 5

• value 10

• print quality 9

To press

While LG’s 32LH7000 is remarkably cheap for an unusually well-equipped 32-inch TV, it doesn’t really make the best first impression.

First off, when you first take it out of the box, a large sticky tag on one side of the TV proudly proclaims in big letters that the TV is ‘Perfect Slim 39.7mm’. Oh that’s pretty cool I thought.

It was only then that I noticed, in small letters underneath, an apologetic explanation that the Perfect Slim design is only for the 42-inch LH7000 set. The 32LH7000 is actually almost twice as deep as 39.7mm. uh oh

After moving on from this disappointment, I quickly picked up another one. Because while the 32LH7000’s design is typically (for LG) a high-concept and stylish affair, it’s also quite large by today’s 32-inch standards. The bezel extends further on all sides than most TVs, a design decision taken to the extreme with the bottom edge lifting the screen a good five to six inches off the glossy desktop stand.

It’s important to stress that this clunky approach is no clumsy accident by LG. The 32LH7000’s clean, minimalist finish on the bezel, the dramatically large and illuminated power indicator “circle” below the screen, and a bottom edge that’s curved, transparent, and infused with a sort of orange hue show that the TV’s aesthetics are fully conscious .

But while similar chassis-heavy designs have worked reasonably well on larger-screen LG TVs, it all looks too cumbersome for my liking when wrapped around a mere 32-inch screen.

The last bad first impression comes shockingly from the pictures of the 32LH7000. For using the out-of-the-box Vivid picture preset, which LG has chosen as its preferred shipping option, the pictures look depressingly bad. I hope I can salvage them later when I get around to properly calibrating the TV.

Thankfully, things start looking up from here. First of all, the connectivity of the 32LH7000 is really excellent for such an affordable model. Four HDMIs catch the eye first, as does a USB port hidden directly above. This USB is also unusually talented in that it can play DivX videos alongside MP3 and JPEG files – including DivX HD. In other words, it’s every internet geek’s dream come true.

More geek love is likely inspired by another connection you can’t actually see: Bluetooth. This allows you to a) wirelessly transfer pictures and music files from a Bluetooth phone to the TV or b) listen to the TV sound via Bluetooth headphones.

A final jack of note is an RS-232C port, allowing the TV to be controlled over a remote AV network.

When you call up the 32LH7000’s on-screen menus to improve picture quality, the now-familiar LG on-screen menu system becomes visible, with its attractive combination of large icons and clear text.

The menus are also impressively crammed with tweaks and options – so much so that the Imaging Science Foundation endorsed the TV, resulting in two ISF setting modes under the TV’s presets. If you feel like it – which you probably won’t do with a 32-inch TV, to be honest – you can pay an ISF technician to come out and professionally calibrate the TV to match your specific living room environment.

Among the most interesting of the tweaks found in the menus are separate backlight and brightness settings, a multi-level dynamic contrast system, a dynamic color enhancer, a multi-level noise reduction system, a multi-level gamma setting, a wide color space setting, and perhaps most important of all, a 100Hz system .

Given that 100Hz systems can sometimes produce processing side effects, it’s nice to see that LG has provided low or high settings for its 100Hz feature – as well as the option to turn it off entirely if you are really dissatisfied with the way it works with any particular source.

Of course I chose to calibrate the 32LH7000 with my own set of test signals and discs. But it’s worth adding here that LG has carefully outfitted the TV with a Picture Wizard tool that allows even the most tech-savvy user to improve the picture quality of the device by following a few simple built-in test signals and accompanying explanations.

And that brings me to the big question: did I manage to turn the sow’s ear, which is the factory Vivid image of the 32LH7000 by default, into the imaging equivalent of a silk handbag?

Sort of. But man, was that hard work. And boy, was I frustrated when my probably slightly buggy review unit inexplicably automatically switched back to the awful Vivid preset every few minutes…

Anyhow, the main things I had to do to get images on track were to choose a different, more comfortable starting point for the image preset – I ended up choosing Natural mode – and then backlighting , sharply reducing the device’s contrast and brightness and sharpness settings, while also gently toning down the color saturation levels.

I would also strongly recommend the following: the noise reduction circuitry is never set higher than ‘Low’ and is completely disabled for HD and even DVD playback. the gamma setting is never set higher than medium; and the TruMotion 100Hz system is never set higher than Low.

Once you’ve completed your calibration work, you’re suddenly free to appreciate the very personable hues of the set. These remain extremely vibrant through even the worst excesses of Vivid mode, but also look extremely natural 90 to 95 per cent of the time.

The recalibrated 32LH7000 also gets a chance to show how well the 100Hz system reduces stuttering, even when it’s only set to ‘Low’. A combination of high brightness performance and respectable, if not exactly stunning, black levels allows images to look winningly dynamic even in mostly dark scenes that give LCD screens such a headache.

Initially, I didn’t feel that the 32LH7000 delivered HD sources with as much “snap” as I would ideally have liked. But when you think about it, there’s something endearingly natural about the set’s medium-sharp approach to HD’s added detail and clarity – especially as the 100Hz system ensures HD scenes are rarely subject to LCD’s motion blur and judder problems.

However, despite its low price, exceptional number of features and occasionally superb images, I can’t count on giving the 32LH7000 a TrustedReviews award.

Part of the reason is that the 100Hz system isn’t quite as “transparent” as I’d like. In other words, even when using the Low setting, the extra fluidity and clarity that comes with motion is accompanied by some noticeable processing artifacts, such as: B. twitchy edges on fast camera pans and a slightly stuttering approach on some action-packed shots.

The 32LH7000’s rescaling of standard definition footage isn’t quite as clever as we’ve seen from some competing brands either, with tones losing a bit of accuracy from really inferior sources and a hint of motion blur creeping into the process.

The 32LH7000’s audio, meanwhile, is a bit hit and miss. On the downside, the speakers can get loud and are great for bringing out subtle details in a good movie or drama mix. However, the set also pushes the high end of the audio spectrum too aggressively, causing loud scenes to sometimes sound harsh and many voices – male and female – sound slightly hissing.

“‘Verdict”‘

While not quite worthy of an unqualified TrustedReviews recommendation, the 32LH7000’s healthy spec sheet and aggressive price point certainly make it impossible to ignore.

How we test televisions

We test every TV we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry standard tests to properly compare features. We will always tell you what we find. We never accept money to rate a product.

Learn more about how we test in our Ethics Policy.

Used as the main TV during the period

Tested over a week

Tested with industry calibrated tools, discs and real world use

Tested with broadcast content (HD/SD), video streams and demo discs

points in detail

• functions 9

• value 9

• picture quality 8

• design 8

• sound quality 7

characteristics