I'd like this VCR if I could rely on it to keep working
Written: Mar 15 '02
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Pros: Packed with nice features for a great price.
Cons: Lack of quality control: 2 defective units in 6 months.
The Bottom Line: It's a great VCR in concept, but poor quality control means you're likely to get a lemon.
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| andrewtroth's Full Review: Sony SLV-N51 VHS VCR |
Our well-loved, much-used 7-year-old Panasonic VCR suffered catastrophic failure last fall, so I devoted a Saturday to finding a suitable replacement. I managed to find what I thought was a great solution -- a VCR with better features than the old one for a quarter of its price -- but I now know I was putting too much faith in Sony's brand name as a stamp of quality.
I had a few requirements heading into my search: The VCR had to be approximately 14" wide (as opposed to the more prevalent 17", stereo-component-sized models) and have 4 heads and stereo. My list of requirements also should have included an LCD counter that displays elapsed time during playback, fast forward and rewind, but I'll get to that later.
I went to Audio King and found that, among the brand names I recognized and trusted, I had just two choices in the 14" width: The Sony SLV-N51 and a Panasonic model. I took the Sony, even though it was $10 more expensive than the Panasonic and I'd had great experiences with Panasonic VCRs, because of the features the label touted: A 60-second "Flash Rewind", a Commercial Skip button, a Replay button, automatic tracking adjustment and Energy Star compliance.
For an extra $15, I got Audio King's "Ultimate Replacment Plan": If there was anything wrong with the unit for (I think) up to a year, I could take it back and walk away immediately with a replacement of the same make and model.
At home, I was surprised at how light and flimsy-feeling the unit was as I was setting it up, but since it fit nicely in the old one's spot and seemed to work nicely, I thought nothing of it.
One thing we did find disappointing right away was that the LCD display on the front of the VCR only shows how much time has elapsed while in Stop mode. During Play, Fast Forward and Rewind, all the display tells you is that it is Playing, Fast Forwarding or Rewinding, as the case may be. If you want to see how far forward or back you've gone, you need to have the TV on and press the Display button. Then, when you want to Play again, you have to hit Display again to get rid of the numbers cluttering up the screen. This may not sound like much of a problem, but it is quite annoying if you're used to just watching the numbers go by on the LCD.
Otherwise, most of the features all worked pretty well at first: The Flash Rewind is as fast as it's claimed to be, the Commercial Skip button is slightly mis-named -- it can't tell when commercials begin or end, it just fast-forwards the tape 30 seconds -- but useful, the Replay button can replay the last ten seconds of tape with one press (or more with additional presses), and the unit is easy to program and use.
I find the remote generally acceptable but I wish (more and more as time goes by) that there were manual tracking control buttons on it. I wish this because the one feature that really didn't work right from the beginning was the automatic tracking control. We watch a lot of pre-recorded TV programs, many of which we record on another VCR but watch on this one. This VCR has a hard time handling these tapes and making them watchable. The automatic tracking will finish adjusting, but a couple of seconds later the picture will jump or a band of distortion will spread across the bottom of the screen. And the only way to do anything about it is to get up, walk over to the VCR and use the manual tracking adjustment buttons on the front. And you may have to do it again five minutes later.
Another problem that cropped up within a couple of weeks was a disturbing rattling noise during rewind. The machine never actually damaged a tape, but it sure sounded like it was going to.
After a few weeks of increasing problems with the tracking and the rattling noise, we decided the unit must be defective and I took it back to Audio King. I walked out five minutes after I arrived with a brand-new identical unit. We've now had this one for a few months, but guess what: The tracking situation is getting worse by the day, and the rattling noise is back. I expect I'll be taking this unit back to Audio King next weekend. I guess we'll see if the third time's the charm in this case (unless I can get them to let me exchange it for the Panasonic...)
Based on the features, I'd love to recommend this VCR (with a couple of minor reservations). But having gotten two defective units in a row, I sadly have to caution people against it.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 99.95
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Epinions.com ID:
andrewtroth
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Member: Andrew Troth
Location: Apple Valley, MN
Reviews written: 4
Trusted by: 3 members
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