Logik L22LID648 review

The L22LID648 is only slightly more expensive than some of its 19in rivals, but has a 22in screen and a native resolution of 1,680×1,050 pixels, which is larger than some of the 32in screens here.

For its size, it’s quite a light TV, and as it tucks all its ports into a downward-facing panel it’s ideal for wall-mounting or placing on a narrow shelf. It has a simple design with rounded edges and a shiny black finish that will fit into most environments.

Tuning took four-and-a-half minutes for both analogue and digital channels. There isn’t an option to skip the analogue channels, however. We were disappointed to find that the L22LID648 was the only TV here to miss the BBC channels in its search, and the picture also suffered from blocky break-up. This is a shame, as the L22LID648 generally has better image quality and more accurate colours than the other low-cost TVs here.

The EPG displays six channels at a time, with an option to show up to a week of programming in advance. The menus are large and clear, but the text is in a thin font and often in badly chosen colours, so is hard to read from more than around eight feet away. The remote is also confusing, with a grid of tiny buttons with text labels that require you to look at the manual before you can fully comprehend them.

With a strong TV signal, the L22LID648’s image quality should be fine. If you’re using an alternative source you’ll also get good results, as we found in our Blu-ray tests. The TV had no problem displaying the full 1080p 24p signal (downscaled to fit), and we found colour accuracy and contrast to be good. It’s a good thing that the image quality is naturally balanced, as there are few controls available for tweaking. Contrast, brightness, colour, sharpness and colour temperature are the only adjustments that can be made.

The quality of the TV tuner can be overcome by having a strong signal or buying a booster. However, the L22LID648’s internal DVD player is a huge disappointment. Image quality was poor, with heavy aliasing effects that discloured the edges of high-contrast areas. While the L22LID648 does a decent job of downscaling a 1080p or 1080i signal from Blu-ray, it does an awful job of upscaling from DVD’s native 576p signal. Colours were still natural, but the fuzzy edges and fizzing in light areas were reminiscent of VHS-quality analogue recordings.

We connected the L22LID648 to a PC via VGA. At its native resolution, the TV lost the sides of the desktop slightly but not so much as to make it unusable. There’s no option to set the screen for one-to-one pixel mapping, and the auto-adjust option on the TV doesn’t seem to match up perfectly, resulting in some ghosting and discolouring of text. Colours were slightly cool but on the whole accurate, and contrast was good. Connection via HDMI suffered heavily from overscan and the image was fuzzy.

The L22LID648 has good image quality but is let down by the quality of its componenents. Unless you need a TV that will fit on a narrow shelf and have a strong TV signal, the L22LID648 doesn’t offer any advantages over its smaller rivals here, apart from a slightly larger screen.