Great for the Price
Written: Jul 28 '04
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Pros: Price, ability to play many different formats (VCDs, sVCDs, JPEGs)
Cons: Lousy remote control, extremely slow loading of DVDs.
The Bottom Line: For the price of a 20-inch television, you also get the ability to watch DVDs.
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| yardobeef's Full Review: Apex Digital GT2015 20 inch TV |
The television set in our bedroom has been at death’s door for quite some time now. It’s an old 20-inch Samsung that we have held on to for a decade and only my stubbornness (and cheapness) has kept it from the trash heap for this long. The Power button broke…but you could still turn it on with the remote. The speakers stopped working…but I hooked up some old computer speakers to the VCR. So now I had a TV that you could only turn on with the TV remote but had to change channels with the VCR remote, and of course, no remote volume control. It is a wonder my wife allowed the situation to exist as long as she did.
I was looking into getting an inexpensive 20-inch TV much like the one I was replacing when I saw the 27-inch Apex TV/DVD combo at a friend’s house. Prior to seeing it, all I knew about Apex is their stuff was cheap and that their DVD players were very good at handling a wide variety of formats (VCDs, SVCDs, etc…). I asked my friend about it and he said it was decent and, of course, really inexpensive. He told me that he had bought it roughly six months ago and had not had any troubles to date. The picture was nothing spectacular, but since I was just looking for something to watch from my bed, it was more than acceptable. Plus, as an added bonus, we would now be able to watch DVDs in the bedroom. When I saw the 20-inch version on sale at a local Sears store for under 200 bucks, I decided to snap it up.
It was a bit bigger than my old TV, which was expected since it adds the DVD component, but it still fit in the television bracket on the wall, which is cool, because I can pretend I’m in a hospital bed. (I’m not sure why I do this, but…) Setup was fairly straightforward. If you’ve ever plugged in a new television, it will all seem familiar to you.
The picture clarity when watching normal television is a tad grainy, but still decent. The DVD picture is better, the flat screen helps out in this regard a bit. The sound is okay, but nothing great. However, as with most DVD audio, you only really get the benefit by sending the signal to a Surround Sound processor/speaker setup.
I ran it through its DVD paces and was very happy with the results. It played my VCDs as well as an sVCD without problems. I also tried a DVD-R that worked fine as well. I have read that it might have problems with DVD+Rs, but haven’t tried one yet. So far, it has handled everything I’ve thrown at it. I burned a CD-R filled with JPEGs from my digital camera and watched the slide show. This also worked very well, although there aren’t too many options for customizing the presentation.
Complaints
All in all, I will say that for the money, as long as it doesn’t break down any time soon (I’ve had it now for roughly 3 months), it will have been worth the money. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t problems, though. First, the remote control is lousy. It feels cheap because it is cheap. I wouldn’t count on it surviving too many falls. Also, the button layout is atrocious and has very little intuitiveness. I still find myself staring at it hunting for the right button to press. It also has 3 buttons very oddly hidden inside the battery compartment. I can understand hiding certain buttons that are only used for setup, but these are fairly standard buttons like “Slow Motion” and “Camera Angle.” Go figure.
The other problem I have is the way the DVD player deals with loading/unloading. You open the DVD drawer and the screen switches to a large blue image reminding you that you will soon be loading a DVD. After what seems like an eternity, but is probably only 5 seconds or so, the tray actually emerges. So you insert your DVD and press the OPEN/CLOSE button and wait again, the whole while staring at the screen waiting….waiting….waiting. It’s just a bad design. Why can’t they leave the cable/broadcast channel on the screen through all of this? There doesn’t seem to be any logic to it, but then, remember the lack of logic behind the hidden buttons?
Complaints aside, it’s very easy to recommend the Apex to anyone who is looking for a TV/DVD combo at a low price. It isn’t going to blow you away with its picture and you will definitely be unimpressed with the remote, but the ability to play so many different DVD/CD-R formats is fantastic.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 179
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Epinions.com ID:
yardobeef
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Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 1 member
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