HDTV/3D TV News
Westinghouse has been categorized along with Vizio as manufacturers of extremely affordable yet powerful LCD HDTV’s. Even with hybrid devices, Westinghouse creates an interesting product that combines affordability with quality. The Westinghouse L2410NM 24-inch LCD HDTV can indeed function both as a PC monitor and a high-definition television. It is a very interesting hybrid device that straddles the fence between a traditional computer-based display and a living-room–friendly flat-panel television.
Everyone of us wants a widescreen. Almost every personal criteria we have in choosing a television includes its screen’s width. The L2410NM is a handsome monitor, with a glossy black bezel and a nice transparent glass lip along the bottom. By default, a small white light makes this bottom edge (especially the Westinghouse logo) glow, but you can easily turn that off.
One thing that bothers a lot of people though is the odd button placement on the L2410NM.
A long, thin row of six buttons runs along the right edge of the display which makes it a bit harder to use. It doesn’t help the fact that they are poorly labeled and hard-to-see. The bottom button toggles power, the next one up cycles through the inputs. If you want to get to the on-screen display menu, you have to hold this button down for a few seconds, otherwise you end up changing the monitor to a different input. Moving up/down and left/right with the top four buttons is unintuitive, too. This is just terrible design. It helps give the monitor a nice look, but it makes it very hard to use.
The set features inputs that look like those on a small TV. The left-hand side houses composite and S-Video inputs, along with 1/8-inch and RCA stereo input jacks. There is a hidden pair of 3W speakers. The right-hand side is loaded with connections and holds component (with stereo RCA audio input), VGA, and HDMI inputs.
On performance, the L2410NM displays reasonable quality images. It does have some flaws in dark areas in both color and brightness tracking. It also has some small glitches in uniformity—the left edge’s darkest values are a bit brighter than the rest of the display. But you don’t really see those with your naked eye, in fact, only the most scrutinizing person can perceive those faults.
What stands out on this set however is the exceptionally bright display and its excellent contrast ratio. For some users, the high contrast and brightness may balance out the problems with dark detail and color, which are mostly correctable. Westinghouse claims the display has video-centric features such as motion-adaptive de-interlacing and noise reduction, which are quite rare among other monitors.
The Westinghouse L2410NM is attractively styled and would not look amiss sitting in your living room. It’s also a pretty good deal for a 24-inch HDTV. Still, its hybrid nature has forced some compromises. Folks looking for all the features they expect in either a dedicated HDTV or state-of-the-art computer monitor will be disappointed.
Sources:
http://reviews.cnet.com
http://tech.yahoo.com
http://www.hdtvlounge.net
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