Philips 32PF7521D Lcd Tv

When the Philips 32PF7521D first hit the shelves it was far from modestly priced, so when we saw the price drop down to around £800 we wanted to find out what had gone so horribly wrong.

Design

The simplistically smart design can’t be the reason for the price drop.  With a silver frame surrounding the thinner internal black frame this LCD would look great anywhere, wall or floor.  We’d have preferred not to see the speakers, but Philips have stuck them to each end; however in fairness they are quite neatly placed.  The dainty pedestal stand which come with the TV is nice, not too bulky, but just big enough to stop the TV looking like it is teetering on top.  

Up until now we haven’t found any reason for the sudden drop in price, so we’re guessing the performance must be the culprit.  We got together a test DVD player, X box and some Sky HD channels to push it to its limits and see if it could come up with the goods.  As soon as the TV was tuned in and ready to go it became all of a sudden very clear that the not so special picture performance was letting this LCD down.  The best feature to mention has to be the motion handling which was particularly good playing on the Xbox.   Watching HD BBC Sport was also fantastic, with only a tiny amount of smearing.  The DVD test wasn’t impressive, we chose to watch Love Actually as it’s a great test for colour and contrast, two areas that the Philips 32PF7521D failed to handle well.  Being a film about Love the main colour on the menu screen is obviously red – but on this LCD it was more of an off-key orange than red.  Skin tones were orangey too, to the extent that we thought we’d put in Willy Wonka by mistake.  Black levels were abysmal, and dark scenes on Freeview channels were particularly murky and pond-like.  On the bright side, the pictures were nice and sharp with lots of clarity but were just a tad too grainy compared to other LCDs for the same price.   Apart from lacking bass in areas, the sound performance was surprisingly consistent.  We all commented on how crystal clear dialogue came across, which is always an important factor for us.   The Unbeatable offices are set just off a main city centre street so we have lots of background noise to contend with, so we cranked the volume right up for the audio test, and were very impressed by the power it had to offer. 

We’re just glad that we managed to get to the bottom of the sudden price drop that the Philips 32PF7521D has seen over the past 12 months. This Philips LCD HDTV-Ready looks good, it has got great connectivity, but picture performance is what sells a TV and the Philips 32PF7521D really failed to impress us.