Best TV for £500

Hedge · 3 Oct 2011 at 00:27

Looking for a TV for general TV viewing and PC Gaming.

Size 32-37"

Whats currently the best buys? thanks

Grimley · 3 Oct 2011 at 19:26

As a former TV Salesman & favour Panasonic in this price range, I would have to say it would be the TX-L37E3B is what I'd buy with my own money for 500 notes.

Psycho Sonny · 4 Oct 2011 at 00:31

buy second hand tbh, i managed to pick up a tv worth £1200 at launch 2 years later for less than £400.

take a look at ebay / members market / gumtree.

tv's last forever, i aint ever had one break on me, i usually need to throw it out before it breaks. so there is a reasonable amount of security with buying second hand. just take a look around the person's house, if it looks tidy, it should be fine.

Hedge · 4 Oct 2011 at 08:32

Grimley how does the E30B variant differ to the E3B. Is it worth paying the extra if need be?

Psycho ya probably right but its more convenient to buy new, and well.. Technology seems to have moved on so that £500 tvs are better than £1200 tvs from a few year back.

Although maybe Im wrong.

At The Gates · 4 Oct 2011 at 09:28

Grimley said:
As a former TV Salesman & favour Panasonic in this price range, I would have to say it would be the TX-L37E3B is what I'd buy with my own money for 500 notes.

My mother in law just bought this set (32" version) and i think it's awful. I don't know whether it's down to Freeview, but the SD and HD Freeview picture quality is absolutely atrocious. Everything is a giant mess of over sharpened noise, to the point where even the HD picture quality looks like someone's stuck the picture through the Photoshop smoothing filter on maximum and removed all detail. No amount of messing with the TV settings seemed to make any difference.

It's so bad even she noticed how much worse it looked than my TV (old Sony (KDL-32D3000) with FreesatHD attached, and she can't normally tell the difference between a VHS and a DVD...

Maybe it's down to the TVs internal FreeviewHD decoder and the Freeview signal not being as good as my Humax FreesatHD box and signal...The TV was the only source i could check as the only other thing she bought at the time was some SD HD recorder which they convinced her in the shop would be able to record channels in HD but that's another story..

agnes · 4 Oct 2011 at 11:05

I picked up a LG 50PK590 from Richer Sound at £499.95...

50" plasma, bloody bargain if you ask me!

Will be an ex display model and you will have to collect, however, if you ring before hand and get them to test, you will be in for a winner

Psycho Sonny · 4 Oct 2011 at 15:02

Hedge said:
Grimley how does the E30B variant differ to the E3B. Is it worth paying the extra if need be?

Psycho ya probably right but its more convenient to buy new, and well.. Technology seems to have moved on so that £500 tvs are better than £1200 tvs from a few year back.

Although maybe Im wrong.

take a look at http://www.hotukdeals.com/audiovisual/deals/hot then if you definitely want brand new, new deals pop up every week, there is a 42" panasonic which is 3D on there for £500, but you dont get the glasses with it, which should be fine anyway as 3D isn't mainstream.

i dont think you could get better tech than a current £1.2K+ tv in a couple of years time for less than £400 in a brand new tv, maybe close to the £800 mark tbh and the tech doesnt move that far either.

let's take the PANASONIC TX-P50GT30B for example, if you can get better tech than what that has in 2 years time for £500 let me know where as i will buy 2 of them.

a brand new £500 tv will most likely be comparable to a brand new tv which cost £650 last year