Polaroid TLU01541WU - 15" Widescreen HD Ready LCD TV - With Freeview - White

I bought this tv because it is white and would go well with the kitchen, also the reviews were mostly excellent. Unfortunately unless you are sitting down on the same level as the screen the picture is pale and almost unwatchable - a constant frustration when standing and working in the kitchen. The screen angle is not adjustable. I paid about £130 for it but wish I had paid a little more for a set that doesn't have this problem. I am seriously thinking of writing it off and replacing it.

Bought this on the strength of other reviews and despite its low price I was a little disappointed with this product. A number of factors contribute towards this disappointment and they are in no particular order.

Picture quality is poor on all the various standard settings and needs some careful personal tweaking to get a reasonable picture. Even when tuned to the best settings the picture quality varies from good to poor - particularly dark scenes which are lacking in definition.

The tv is very slow to respond to remote commands and patience is needed. Freeview receiver is not the best either. Despite having a good signal strength it will not pick up ANY ITV channels (I have tested this by using a seperate freeview receiver). Even on terrestial TV the picture quality ranges from clear to grainy on different channels (nowheres near as sharp as the old CRT tv it replaced).

As previous reviewers have said you need to be sitting more or less directly in front of the set to get a decent picture. The quoted viewing angles are a joke. You also cannot see a decent picture if you view the screen from either slightly above or below.

On the positive side the sound is better than I expected and it looks good. Overall a disappointment but then from what I have seen all budget LCD tv's suffer similar problems. It does the job as a TV but with some serious weaknesses. If you can afford to spend on a well known brand name. If you buy cheap you get what you pay for.

High on spec - low on delivery. Can only think that all the good reviews were written by people viewing the screen straight on. Anything else and you might as well be listening to a radio - the picture is not discernable!

The programme guide only shows 2 programmes for today although it shows all for subsequent days. Customer support at Polaroid said the TV was faulty, so we returned it and got another one exactly the same! This time customer support said it was the BBC's fault for broadcasting insufficient info - then changed their story to saying the TV was designed to be like that. So clearly Polaroid don't know or don't care that the guide system is faulty. So 3 out of 5 for the TV and 0 out of 5 for customer care.

Super little TV. I am very pleased with this product. Very neat and gives a very nice picture. Great value for the money