vizio vo320e lcd panel quotation

The front of the Vizio VO320E has a glossy black edging around the display, and then turns into a dotted, matte black bezel. The Vizio logo underneath the display lights up, while the speakers are built into the bezel along the bottom.

On the back of the Vizio VO320E you find the power input on the left side and a collection of ports on the right side. You also find the mounting points for mounting the VO320E on a wall. For information about the ports on the back of the Vizio VO320E see our Connectivity section.

There are no features on the right side of the Vizio VO320E. On the left side you find the on-tv controls and a small selection of ports. For information about the ports on the side of the Vizio VO320E see our Connectivity section.

The on-tv controls for the Vizio VO320E are found on the right side of the television, recessed slightly behind the display and sitting just above the ports found on that side. The buttons themselves look somewhat like keys from a piano, and are glossy black. They are built to press "in" towards the front of the television, so you can easily reach around and press them. Unfortunately they are all exactly the same, so you can"t tell what button you are pressing by feel.

The Vizio VO320E"s remote controls is a small and simple glossy black affair. As far as looks, well let"s just say it"s not the most attractive remote we"ve ever seen.

The Vizio VO320E ships with the bare minimum, a manual, remote control and batteries. There"s no cleaning cloth or HDMI cable included. There is some assembly required for the Vizio VO320E, but the base slots very easily into the display, and is held in place by a single screw that can be tightened by hand.

The Vizio VO320E is not a particularly attractive television. They style is somewhat blocky and we don"t particularly like the bezel. That said it"s not going to stand out as an eyesore as the simple black design should blend into your decor easily.

We measured the Vizio VO320E"s black level at an unimpressive 0.38 candelas per meter squared (cd/m2). This is significantly worse than our average HDTV, and you can see below that all three of our comparison models have significantly lower black levels. What this means is that you will likely lose some detail in dark areas with the VO320E.

The Vizio VO320E proved plenty bright, measuring 342.51 cd/m2 in our testing. This is plenty bright for almost any situation, unless you"re shining a light directly on the display you won"t have any problems, and in most situations you"ll probably want to turn the backlight down a bit. You can see below that the VO320E compares favorably with other HDTVs.

Due to the poor black level on the Vizio VO320E it"s contrast ratio is a lackluster 901:1. This is significantly below average and compares very poorly to the LG 32LH20 and Samsung LN32B360, as you can see below. It"s about the same as the Panasonic TC-P42X1, although in that case it"s the poor peak brightness that led to a poor contrast ratio.

In this test we look at how well the black level holds up as there is progressively less black displayed on the screen. This is important because you don"t want the black level to vary as this will have a significant impact on your contrast ratio as the content on the television changes. Thankfully this is not a problem for the Vizio VO320E. You can see from the chart below that the black level stays rock solid as the amount of black on the display goes from 100% to 5%.

This test is the opposite of the previous one. Here we look at how well the peak brightness holds up as progressively less white is displayed on the screen. Once again the Vizio VO320E performs well, as the chart below makes clear.

Here we look at the uniformity of the Vizio VO320E"s display, using both a black and white screen. What we"re looking for are problems with dimming or brightness along the edges and corners, or blotches in the middle of the screen. We found that the Vizio VO320E did very well in this test. The center of the screen was smooth in both the black and white screens, while dimming and brightness in the corners was minimal.

Gamma is the curve along which a television makes adjustments from light to dark. A higher gamma means the television is more aggressive, while a lower one means it is more gradual. The Vizio VO320E"s gamma was measured at 2.88, which is significantly higher than our ideal of 2.1 to 2.2. What this means is that you are likely to lose detail at the extremes of light and dark, where subtle changes in brightness occur.

The Vizio VO320E is a 720p HDTV, which means it has a native resolution of 1366 x 768. Most content that you will watch on the television doesn"t come at this resolution, and in this section we look at how well the VO320E handles the scaling of content at other resolutions.

This is the resolution at which standard definition content comes into your television. This is used by both standard definition television broadcasts, as well as DVDs. The Vizio VO320E did a good job scaling this content up to it"s native resolution. We saw some overscan, with about 3% of the content being lost along every edge. There were no problems with legibility or resolution, but we did notice some issues with moire patterns. These occur when the television has problems processing and then scaling complex patterns.

This is the highest resolution of content widely available at 1920 x 1080, but the "i" at the end means that the 1080 vertical lines are interlaced, with two alternating sets of 540 lines. The Vizio VO320E had some serious problems with 1080i content, with terrible moire patterns appearing, poor legibility and some problems with fine resolution. This is a serious concern as most HD content that you get from cable and broadcast providers comes in at 1080i, so if you"re going to watch HD content on the VO320E you need to be concerned about whether it will be properly processed.

Like 1080i, 1080p content comes in at a resolution of 1920 x 1080. Unlike 1080i, however, 1080p content displays all 1080 vertical lines at the same time, thus the "p" stands for progressive. This usually produces a better picture, which is why Blu-ray discs use this format. Unfortunately the Vizio VO320E had just as many problems with 1080p as it did with 1080i, with terrible moire patterns and poor resolution and legibility.

The Vizio VO320E had significant problems keeping the color temperature of the display stable. Like any other object that emits light an HDTVs display can have a yellowish or bluish cast depending on the color temperature. With the Vizio VO320E we found that the color temperature varied widely across the range from light to dark, mostly in the direction of causing a yellowish cast, as you can see from the chart below.

The Vizio VO320E did a reasonable job producing accurate reds, greens and blues. This is important because all of the colors your television produces are created by mixing these three primary colors. Below you can see a graph of the three colors plotted against intensity and normalized.

Every television is supposed to adhere to an international standard for color gamut, known as Rec.709. What this standard does is make sure that colors look the same on every television. Frankly we"ve found in our testing that most televisions struggle to match this standard exactly, and as you can see below the Vizio VO320E does have innacuracies in several areas.

Like most entry-level HDTVs the Vizio VO320E uses the standard 60Hz refresh rate rather than the 120Hz or 240Hz you find on more expensive televisions. This means you can expect motion blur to be worse on the VO320E, but we found that it"s not just worse, it"s much, much worse. Faces turn into a muddy mess on the display, and solid objects have large trailing shadows. This isn"t a television you want if you"re really into fast action movies.

Artifacts are things that appear on the display due to errors in processing and aren"t in the original picture. The Vizio VO320E had some serious problems with artifacts. First of all there"s a very noticeable rolling shutter effect in areas of black and white. What"s more there are visible distortions in even relatively static objects, and there are leading bright areas as the display struggles to create more controst on moving objects. All in all not a very impressive performance.

3:2 pulldown is the process by which a television takes a signal that comes in at 60 frames per second (fps) and converts it to 24 fps. This is done to give content a film-like look. The Vizio VO320E does a reasonable job here, with only minor glitches in our test patterns as it performed this process. The television is also able to take content that comes in natively at 24 fps, from a DVD or Blu-ray player.

The Vizio VO320E does not have a particularly impressive viewing angle, which we measured at 19.52 degrees from center. This is the point at which the contrast ratio on the display will fall below 50% of maximum. Below you can see the VO320E"s viewing angle compared to other HDTVs. It actually is the best of the LCD bunch, not surprising as these are all low-end models and rarely do low-end LCDs have a good viewing angle. With the Panasonic TC-P42X1, however, you can see the big benefit that plasma televisions get in viewing angle.

The Vizio VO320E"s display makes a valiant effort to diffuse light, but the unfortunate result is a large messy bright spot on the screen, something that is very annoying, especially when watching dark movies. We recommend you place your lights carefully in the room with this television.

As with most HDTVs the Vizio VO320E offes a variety of different video processing options that are meant to help improve picture quality in certain situations. In the table below we look at each of these options and describe what we saw.

As with most HDTVs the Vizio VO320E offers a variety of different video modes that are supposed to adjust settings for different viewing situations. Below you can see all the video modes offered on the Vizio VO320E. Unfortunately Vizio doesn"t provide in depth explanations for what the modes do, but most are self-explanatory.

The Vizio VO320E"s remote is a small, block black plastic affair that fits comfortably into your hands, but doesn"t do much on the design front. In fact it feels pretty cheap, and we wouldn"t vouch for it"s durability over the long term.

There aren"t a lot of buttons on the Vizio VO320E"s remote. This, combined with the small size of the remote, mean accessing the buttons you want is a simple affair, with the directional pad along with volume and channel controls in easy reach. The buttons themselves are hard plastic with decent key travel.

The Vizio VO320E has ports on both the back and the left side. On the back all of the ports are arranged in a single group on the right side when facing the back. Here you will find two HDMI ports with an associated analog audio input, one component video input and one composite video input as well as an S-Video and VGA input. You"ll also find the RF input for cable/antenna, analog audio inputs for the composite and component video inputs and a 3.5mm audio in for the VGA port.

As with most HDTVs the only output ports on the Vizio VO320E are for audio. The first is an optical audio out located on the back and just below it is an analog audio out. We"re happy to see the latter as some other HDTVs we"ve reviewed recently have omitted it.

The Vizio VO320E"s ports are reasonabley well placed. The ones located on the left side are easy to access in any situations. The ports on the back should be easy to access if the television is on a stand, given how small it is you won"t have trouble moving it despite the non-rotating stand. If you have it mounted on a wall, however, the ports on the back will be harder to access, especially as they are recessed rather deeply.

Audio from the Vizio VO320E"s built-in speakers is clear, but rather flat. This can be somewhat improved by turning on the simulated surround sound feature, which adds some depth, but even with this feature on the audio quality is nowhere near as good as even a cheap set of surround sound speakers. Still, if you"re not an audiophile the audio quality should be fine.

The Vizio VO320E"s menu interface is the same that we"ve seen on other modern Vizio televisions. Pressing the menu button will give you a simple top level interface where you can adjust the picture and audio modes. Entering deeper into the menus will give you finer controls.

The Vizio VO320E is a 720p television, which means it has a native resolution of 1366 x 768. This is lower than the highest HD resolution of 1080p, so the television is forced to scale content down. It doesn"t do a great job of this, unfortunately, as you can see in our Blacks & Whites section. The television does do a good job converting content via the 3:2 pulldown process to give you a film-like look and it also handles native 24fps content.

The Vizio VO320E"s does a good job keeping power consumption down. In our tests we found that when calibrated to 200 candelas per meter squared, which is our standard for this test, it uses an average of 69.6 watts, which works out to an annual cost of $13.59 for the average family. Below you can see the power usage with the backlight turned all the way up and all the way down as well.

The Vizio VO320E and LG 32LH20 are comparable in many ways. Both are priced around $450, both have a 720p resolution and both are 32-inch displays. From a performance standpoint, however, the 32LH20 beats out the VO320E almost across the board, making it the better value of the two.

The LG 32LH20 is the clear winner here as it sports a significantly lower black level with a peak brightness very similar to the Vizio VO320E. This means it has a much better contrast ratio, as you can see below.

The LG 32LH20 has a rock solid color temperature, something that"s a problem on the VO320E. It also performs slightly better in terms of color accuracy and color gamut.

Neither television has the high refresh rates you see on more expensive models, but the LG 32LH20 nonetheless comes off with significantly less blurring than the VO320E. It also produces fewer artifacts, although it doesn"t do a great job in that area either.

The Vizio VO320E offers slightly better connectivity options, with an additional component and composite input over the LG 32LH20 as well as an S-Video port and analog audio out that the LG model lacks.

We liked the look and feel of the LG 32LH20"s remote a lot better than the Vizio VO320E. Both television offer reasonable audio quality, with the VO320E just slightly better.

The Samsung LN32B360 is our top-rated 32-inch LCD television, and for only $30 more than the Vizio VO320E is offers both better performance in many areas. That doesn"t mean it"s perfect, the VO320E has better connectivity options and better audio quality from the built-in speakers. But if push came to shove we"d go with the Samsung here due to it"s far superior contrast ratio.

This is the area where the Samsung LN32B360 blows away the Vizio VO320E, with much deeper blacks and a contrast ratio almost five times as wide as the Vizio model.

The Vizio VO320E did a better job matching the industry standard for color gamut, while RGB performance was very similar between it and the Samsung LN32B360. The Samsung model, however, did a far better job keeping the color temperature steady, which means you won"t get strange color casts to your content.

Both television have the standard 60Hz refresh rate, but the Samsung model did much better with both motion blur and motion artifacts than the Vizio VO320E.

The Vizio VO320E offers slightly better connectivity options, with an S-Video port that the Samsung LN32B360 lacks and additional composite and component video inputs.

Despite being significantly larger, the 42-inch Panasonic TC-P42X1 is not that much more expensive than the Vizio VO320E at about $550. It"s also a Plasma display, which means it has much deeper blacks than the VO320E and handles motion much better. Although the Vizio does perform better in several areas, including more accurate RGB, a much brighter display and better audio quality. It"s a close call here, frankly neither television is what we would call impressive, but we"ll take the much larger display of the Panasonic for only about $100 more.

This is an interesting comparison as the Panasonic model offers much deeper blacks, but the Vizio offers much more brightness. The two pretty much cancel out and both televisions have remarkably similar contrast ratios. Neither television, therefore, is particulary good here. Normally we"d take deep blacks over brightness, but the Panasonic is so dim that we can"t recommend it strongly.

This is a mixed bag, with the Panasonic offering a much more stable color temperature than the Vizio VO320E, while the latter offers better color accuracy.

Plasma televisions traditionally do a much better job with motion performance than LCD displays, and this is certainly the case here as the Panasonic TC-P42X1 does a much better job with motion blur and artifacting than the Vizio VO320E.

This is another area where Plasma televisions perform better than LCD"s on average, and in this case the difference is dramatic as the Panasonic model offers a viewing angle over three times better than the Vizio VO320E.

The Panasonic model offers significantly better connectivity options than the Vizio VO320E, with one extra HDMI port and a slot for SD cards so you can view photos stored on the card on your display.

There are only two models in Vizio"s VOxx0E series of televisions, the 32-inch model we reviewed here and a 42-inch model. The key differences aside from size is that the 42-inch models sports a full 1080p resolution, while the 32-inch model has only a 720p resolution and the 42-inch model has an additional HDMI port.

This so far has been a great purchase and I would highly recommend the VO320E to anyone considering purchasing a 32" flat panel. I am currently using this unit for both a secondary HDTV in my bedroom and an RGB PC monitor for my computer needs.

As a flat panel PC monitor it is also wonderful. Very sharp and response is also great. I not only use it for normal day to day routine PC functions like internet, email, etc. but, also use to to view TV and movie feeds off the internet. At the 1366 x 768 native resolutionyou are able to view full screen at HD quality.

All in all it has been a great purchase though I have only had it for just over 30 days. At the price point it is an exceptional value and again I would recommend the VO320E highly to anyone considering a 32" HDTV/PC monitor.Read full review

Vizio chose to adorn its VO320E 32-inch LCD with claims of environmental consciousness, saying the little set exceeds Energy Star guidelines by 15 percent. But that"s not a very high standard, and according to our tests the Vizio, while definitely no power hog, sips just a couple bucks less juice per year than other LCDs in its class. Its true appeal is low price combined with perfectly acceptable picture quality. A couple of flaws might give black level sticklers or dual-use PC/TV aficionados pause, but other bargain hunters should consider this entry-level Vizio among the better LCDs in its class.

The Vizio VO320E is one of the more conservative-looking TVs out there, toning down the glossy black around the screen with a wider border of matte black perforated by thousands of tiny holes. Some accent is provided by a strip of reflective silver along the bottom of the squared-off frame, as well as by the glowing (and unfortunately not user-dimmable) Vizio logo. The matte plastic stand feels a bit cheap, and doesn"t swivel.

Vizio"s chunky little glossy black remote quickly became grimy with our fingerprints. The clicker has a minimum of keys and, in an unusual but not inconvenient move, combines the "enter" and "menu" keys into one button in the middle of the directional keypad. We did like the direct access buttons, such as "HDMI" and "AV," for quick jumps to specific inputs but were annoyed at the lack of a dedicated button for aspect ratio.

Like most less expensive 32-inch TVs, the Vizio has a native resolution of 1,366x768, or 720p, as opposed to the 1080p resolution found on step-up models. Of course, at this screen size the benefits of 1080p are negligible, except with computer sources, so we don"t consider this feature omission a big deal.

The VO320E sports an above-average selection of features otherwise. Its best move in our book is the ability to adjust color temperature beyond the standard four presets. There"s also a healthy selection of nine picture modes, including four sports-themed options (football, baseball, golf and basketball). In case you"re wondering, setting the TV to "basketball" didn"t immediately improve the look of the Lakers game, for example, but we do appreciate having all of those extra picture modes to play around with. You can adjust all of them, and one, entitled Custom, is independent per input.

Despite Vizio calling the VO320E an "Eco" model it doesn"t have any special power-saving features. There"s no specific power saver setting or picture mode, for example, as seen on many other TVs, and it was also missing the Home/Store dialog that makes sure the default picture setting is not set to "torch mode" during initial setup. The VO320E has four aspect-ratio choices with standard-def sources and three with high-def.

Connectivity on the VO320E is average for the entry-level breed. It has two total HDMI inputs, both located on the back panel, two component-video inputs (one located on the side, which can also serve as a composite video input), one VGA-style PC input, one AV input with S-Video (a second AV input with just composite video is located on the side), an RF input for antenna or cable, and an optical digital audio output.

The Vizio showed relatively accurate color and realistic shadow detail. Its PC picture quality fell a bit short, however, and there are similarly priced LCDs that produce deeper black levels.

The initial Movie setting of the Vizio delivered the most accurate picture, and in particular we were impressed by its relatively linear grayscale in that mode"s default "Normal" color temperature preset. It delivered solid "before" numbers (see the Geek Box below), albeit with a pronounced greenish tinge. A few tweaks to the custom color temp settings, in addition to reducing light output to our nominal 40ftl level, were the major changes we made to the basic picture settings in our calibration. In the end we saw a slight improvement in grayscale accuracy (although we couldn"t improve the top and bottom ends of the scale much, so "after" got a "poor" rating), removal of the green tinge, and very good gamma (2.18 versus the ideal of 2.2).

As part of our normal calibration, we typically disable settings that modify the picture on the fly, and the Vizio"s DCR backlight is one such option. DCR did improve black levels slightly, but the fluctuations it produced were not worth the tradeoff, so we left it disabled.

We compared the Vizio to a few other entry-level LCDs we had on hand, including the LG 32LH20, Panasonic TC-32LX1, the Samsung LN32B360, the Sharp LC-32D47U, the Sony KDL-32L5000, the Toshiba 32AV502U, and the Westinghouse SK-32H640G. We also employed our trusty Pioneer PRO-111FD as a reference--obviously, it shouldn"t be compared to any of these LCDs. Our Blu-ray of choice for most of the image quality tests in this comparison was the superb-looking "Baraka" played at 1080i (to ensure full compatibility) from our Sony PlayStation3.

Black level: The Vizio fell toward the bottom of the black-level pack. It showed a lighter shade of black than any of the other sets in our comparison except for the LG, Panasonic and Westinghouse. The differences were most visible in dark scenes, such as the sky around the eclipse at the beginning of Chapter 20 or the dark silhouettes of the temples in Chapter 22. In brighter scenes, the differences in dark areas evened out significantly, but we could still make them out, especially in areas like the letterbox bars.

On the other hand, the VO320E looked among the most natural in shadowy areas, revealing all of the detail in the darkened temple areas but not appearing too bright, as we saw on the Toshiba for example.

Color accuracy: The VO320E delivered one of the better performances in this department, anchored by its relatively accurate grayscale. The faces of the subway riders at the beginning of Chapter 11 provided a good example, with pale skin that was not too sick-looking, although it was slightly ruddy. We would have liked to see better saturation, especially in areas like the woman"s orange blouse and jade necklace, or in the elaborate costumes of the tribespeople in Chapter 7. The Vizio"s color decoding pushed red so we had to reduce the color control to compensate.

Primary and secondary colors came quite close to the standard, which helped lend realism to the lush green jungle plants and the pale blue sky in Chapter 4 .As usual for LCDs, the eclipse, the letterbox bars and other dark areas on the Vizio showed a bluish cast, which was less obvious in the Samsung, Sony. and Toshiba but worse on the others in our comparison.

Video processing: The Vizio doesn"t perform much overt processing, such as the dejudder seen on higher-end LCDs, and since it has 720p resolution our motion resolution test isn"t valid. We expect the Vizio would perform about the same as other 60Hz displays, and as usual we didn"t notice any motion blur in our viewing.

Uniformity: We don"t have any major complaints in this area. The Vizio"s screen remained relatively even across its surface, with no obvious brighter areas, and off-angle performance surpassed that of the Panasonic, Sharp, and Westinghouse, remaining about the same as the Sony and Toshiba.

Bright lighting: Like most matte-screened LCDs, the Vizio performed relatively well under bright lights, attenuating ambient light admirably. It was no better or worse than any of the other sets in our lineup, which all have similar screens.

Standard-definition: With standard-def sources, the Vizio was an above-average performer. It delivered every line of the DVD format and details in the grass and stone bridge looked as sharp as we"d expect. It eliminated jaggies from moving diagonal lines and a waving American flag better than most of its competitors including the Sharp, Westinghouse and Toshiba. Its noise reduction didn"t perform quite as well, however, leaving some video noise in the worst areas and softening the image a bit more than most of the other sets. The VO320E also engaged 2:3 pulldown detection quickly and effectively.

PC: The Vizio didn"t perform as well as we expected with PC sources. Via VGA it failed to fully resolve a 1,360x768 source, showing less than the full horizontal resolution per DisplayMate and evincing softer text. Via HDMI we couldn"t get the image to fill the screen at the native resolution using our test Toshiba T-135 laptop running Windows 7, and the small window that was shown looked cramped. Perhaps a different PC would yield different results, but the laptop worked fine on other displays in our comparison.

Power consumption: As we mentioned at the top our tests showed the Vizio didn"t beat other LCDs" efficiency by leaps and bounds, outpacing the Toshiba 32AV502U by about $1 per year, for example. Still, paying to keep this TV in juice won"t put you in the poorhouse.

I’m a value shopper. Last month, I finally decided that prices had fallen far enough that I could justify upgrading to a widescreen 32-inch LCD TV. (I knew that plasma televisions have a reputation as energy hogs, so I didn’t even consider a plasma set. Plenty of other consumers are apparently making the same decision and most manufacturers have already exited the plasma TV market or announced plans to do so.)

After loads of research (much of it conducted with the help of the shopping website dealnews.com), I settled on the Vizio VO320E 32-inch LCD TDTV with Eco HD Performance. What drove my decision:

1) Performance– I had seen Vizio TVs in plenty of hotel rooms and figured that the sets must be at least somewhat durable for hotels to install them in rooms where they would get heavy usage. The technical specs (primarily contrast ratio, brightness, pixel response time and viewing angles) all looked pretty good.

2) Reputation – Other Vizio TVs had generally good reviews – or at least no worse reviews than many of the other brands in the market. Vizio also rose from obscurity to become the #1 selling brand of flat-panel HDTVs in North America in just a couple of years. I figured the company must be doing something right to see that kind of growth.

3) Price – Purchasing the TV through Dell’s website and using some coupon codes highlighted by dealnews.com, I was able to buy the TV for under $400 (including tax and free shipping). That seemed like an excellent price for a 32-inch LCD TV with the specs and reputation of this Vizio.

4) Eco Factors – The Vizio VO320E is branded as an “Eco HD” television. Vizio’s website says taht the VO320E consumes less energy than traditional HDTVs and exceeds current Energy Star Guidelines by at least 15%. The tech specs declare that the VO320E should use an average of 84.5 watts when operational and just 0.33 watts in stand-by mode. For the sake of comparison, I checked the posted specs for a variety of other 32-inch TVs:

Now I did not have a chance to verify power consumption on all these other TVs with my handy Kill-a-Watt meter, but I did test the Vizio VO320E and found that it came pretty close to its claimed power consumption, generally drawing around 86 or 87 watts of electricity when in use. Watching analog or digital channels did not seem to make any difference in terms of power consumption.

I also liked the fact that the Vizio VO320E was lighter than many of the other 32-inch TVs I considered. The 32-inch Sony Bravia, for example, weighs approximately 28 lbs when mounted on its base pedestal. For comparison, the VO320E on its stand weighs just 22.5 lbs – nearly 20% less. Less weight equals less raw materials, which should generally mean a smaller environmental footprint. (Note that this calculation is really just educated guesswork since Company A could theoretically extract more raw materials and produce more plastic in a more eco-friendly manner than Company B, but in the absence of details on extraction and production methods, weight seems like a reasonable factor to consider when calculating the environmental impact of household machines.

Unfortunately, I no longer have the receipt for my old 20-inch CRT TV, but I’m fairly confident that the TV cost somewhere north of $500 when I purchased it back in late 2001 or early 2002. That makes the Vizio at least 20% less expensive for a television that weighs almost 70% less, is almost 80% thinner and provides a screen more than twice as large (as calculated by square centimeters) compared to the old TV. That certainly sounds like remarkable progress.

LCD manufacturers are making remarkable strides in terms of power consumption. As measured in my original Kill-a-Watt review last year, the 20-inch Sony CRT required approximately 70-watts of power consumption. The new Vizio delivers a much brighter, clearer and more than twice as large image with only 25% more power. And the amount of electricity needed to power a flat-panel TV will surely fall further if history is any guide. Consider Vizio’s VX32L LCD HDTV launched in 2007. That earlier generation Vizio LCD TV weighed 32 lbs (42% more than the VO320E) and had an average 180-watt power consumption! Take a minute to consider that fact – in just two years, Vizio lowered the power consumption on its 32-inch LCD TV sets more than 50%. If the trend continues, the latest generation 32-inch sets sold in 2011 will need only around 40 watts of power. A 2013 LCD TV will need only 20 watts of power and so forth. If we can achieve similar reductions in the energy needs of other household appliances, imagine the cumulative effect on the energy needs of the our nation and other nations around the world.

Final thoughts –I haven’t spent much time talking specifically about the Vizio VO320E’s performance in this rather long review, but overall I’m extremely pleased. The picture is bright and beautiful – especially on digital HD channels. The menus are easy to use and the TV’s scan feature found us several channels we could not access before. I only have three quibbles:

2. The VO320E lacks a headphone jack. As mentioned, I share a one-bedroom apartment and office with my spouse. Sometimes one of us wants to watch TV while the other works. Our old TV made this easy with a headphone jack right on the front panel. The Vizio VO320E has no headphone jack. Apparently, Vizio’s consumer research indicates that most people don’t want this feature and don’t care about it, so Vizio eliminated it to save money. I do appreciate the good value of the Vizio set, but found the headset jack’s absence extremely annoying. Ultimately, I was able to find a cable (RCA input to female headphone jack) at J&R that allowed me to connect the headphones, but encountered another problem when the volume controls on the TV had no impact on the uncomfortably loud sound coming through the headset. Fortunately, I had a backup pair of headphones with an in-line volume control on the headset wire. With this ad-hoc setup, we are able to watch TV and use the headphones, but it isn’t very customer friendly.

3) The third quibble is the most annoying for me. Most television manufacturers insist upon putting obnoxiously large and prominent versions of their logo and name on the front of their television sets. Personally, I can’t imagine why they think that viewers want to be distracted from their shows by obtrusive set logos. I’d prefer a tiny logo/name in the same color as the rest of the set. In any case, Vizio has outdone their competitors in the Logo Distraction wars by making their logo glow –orange when the set is off and white when the TV is on. I have to admit that the soft orange glow doesn’t really bother me when the set is off. It wastes a little bit of power (which is annoying from an eco perspective), but I guess it also helps keep me from bumping into the set if I get out of bed in the middle of the night. On the other hand, having a glowing white logo below an active screen seems just totally idiotic.

I’m not the only one bothered by the glowing logo. Plenty of other online reviewers have complained and message boards are filled with Vizio owners asking if there’s any way to turn off the glowing logo. (Apparently there isn’t.)

In any case, there is an easy way to solve the problem – just go out to Staples or whichever office supply shop you like and buy some black card stock paper. Cut a little rectangle just large enough to completely cover the Vizio logo and tape it to the frame of the TV. If you pick your card stock carefully, the paper will be unobtrusive by day and invisible when watching the TV in a dark room. Again, this problem was not insurmountable, but forcing the customer to come up with an inventive solution to a unnecessary problem is just stupid from a design standpoint. At the very least, Vizio should give consumers a menu option to turn off the glowing logo. (I’d make the ‘off’ setting into the default option, but that’s just me…)

Yes. I still think this is a great TV for the price with nice eco-friendly qualities and efficiencies. I’d like to see Vizio address some of the flaws listed above, but in the meantime I’ve got plenty of leftover black card stock if you need it.

alaTest has collected and analyzed 134 user reviews of VIZIO VO320E from Amazon.com. The average user rating for this product is 4.3/5, compared to an average user rating of 4.1/5 for other products in the same category on Amazon.com. Reviews about the size and design are on the whole positive. The usability and price are also mentioned favorably. There are some critical reviews about the glare and reliability.

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