Insignia NS-LCD37 37-inch Flat-Panel LCD HDTV Review

Aug 10 2007, 12:00am CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Best Buy sells HDTV sets from nearly every manufacturer there is, but did you know that Best Buy had their own store brand called Insignia? Today we are going to look at one of the lowest priced HDTV sets you will find that measures in at 37”. How well does it perform? Read on to find out.

Gallery

8 images

Benchmarks

Features & Specifications
Without a doubt the most appealing feature of the Insignia 37” Flat-Panel LCD HDTV is the price. This HDTV carries an MSRP of only $799.99 every day. Other features of the set are a built-in HDTV tuner so all you need is an antenna to get over-the-air HD broadcasts.

The native resolution is 1366 x 768 with a 16:9 aspect ratio. The brightness of the display is 500 cd/m2 and the contrast ratio is 1000:1 A 3D Y/C comb filter is included for better picture quality. The Insignia 37” Flat-Panel LCD HDTV measures in at 25.5” tall with the stand and 36 7/10” wide. Product weight is 61.7 pounds with the stand.

Connectivity options on the rear of the Insignia 37” Flat-Panel LCD HDTV include dual HDMI inputs, oddly the Best Buy website only lists one HDMI port for this set. Other connectivity options include a VGA for PC, one S-Video, two component inputs, one composite input and a headphone jack. Controls for the TV power, input, volume and channel are on the left side.

The built-in speakers are decent, but a bit flat sounding with 10 watts of power per channel. The set does have an optical out as well. Other features include a V-chip and a sleep/alarm timer. The Insignia 37” Flat-Panel LCD HDTV is covered by a one year parts and labor warranty. Outputs on the set include one A/V, one audio, and the digital audio out.

Set-Up and Use
Setting the Insignia 37” Flat-Panel LCD HDTV up requires you to simply plug your components into the TV. I plugged my HD cable box and a Denon S-301 upscaling home theater system into the HDMI ports. HD content from my cable box looked good, though the colors seems a bit washed out compared to Dell 32” HDTV and the Viewsonic N4251w 42” HDTV.

I did notice that the Insignia 37” Flat-Panel LCD HDTV didn’t have blacks as dark as some of the other HDTVs I have tested and the transitions from black to grey in dark, shadowed scenes were a bit pixilated as well. The image still looked good though, and if you didn’t have other HDTVs sitting there to compare with, many wouldn’t notice the difference.

Upscaled DVD content looked good on the Insignia 37” Flat-Panel LCD HDTV, though I noticed the same issues with DVD playback as I did with HD content from my cable box. I run sound through my home theater system so the somewhat anemic sounding speakers didn’t bother me that much. However, if you intend on using the built-in speakers they are lacking in the bass area and sound a bit hollow to my ears.

Overall the image quality was decent, not the best I have seen, but for the price you are still getting a lot of TV. Selling at $799 it’s $500 less than my Viewsonic N4251w and I’ll be honest, many buyers looking at these sets side by side would be hard pressed to decide to spend $500 more than the Insignia 37” Flat-Panel LCD HDTV costs based on the difference I noticed in the image quality.

Verdict

Conclusion

Pros

Great price
Dual HDMI inputs

Cons

Few quality issues with the picture

Verdict
Even with the picture quality issues I noticed and not being able to choose your picture format the Insignia 37” Flat-Panel LCD HDTV is still a lot of TV for the money. If you are on a budget and looking to buy a good quality HDTV set the Insignia 37” Flat-Panel LCD HDTV will fit the bill.

8.0

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Shane McGlaun
Leading our review center, Shane knows technology inside out. His extensive experience in testing computer hardware and consumer electronics enable him to effectively qualify new products and trends. If you want us review your product, please contact Shane.
Shane can be contacted directly at shane@i4u.com.