VIZIO brings the LED party to 19- and 23-inch models

Unless you've been under a rock for a hot minute, then you know that LED backlit LCD HDTVs have been all the rage, though so far no one has brought those benefits to the smaller TVs. Well today VIZIO added a 19-inch and a 23-inch model to its LED lineup. Only the 23-inch is 1080p, but both have very thin profiles and the improved contrast and color you'd expect. The interesting twist is that both models will work as a picture frame, which someone (as in, literally one person in some random corner of the globe) might appreciate. The 19-inch model retails for $349, and the 23-inch will set you back another $50, but there's no word on when you can expect these to show up on a store shelf near you. More pictures and the full release after the jump.

Show full PR text

VM190XVT - $349.99
Product Overview:
With LESS than a 1" profile*, the VIZIO VM190XVT Razor LED™ LCD HDTV offers brilliant color, rich detail and deep contrast – all in a sleek razor thin design. The aesthetic is simply amazing with a full edge to edge cover glass, and invisible proximity touch controls that illuminate as your hand draws near and fade away once you're done. The LCD LED TV also includes an ambient light sensor ensures that you will always have the best picture and most efficient energy savings by adjusting the brightness based on the lighting conditions of your room. And when you're not watching TV, the VM190XVT can be used as a digital picture frame to enjoy a slideshow of your family and friends.

But it doesn't stop there! Experience advanced sound technologies from SRS Labs and take pleasure in knowing this mercury free, energy efficient LCD LED HDTV exceeds Energy Star® Guidelines by at least 55%**, conserving our planet's resources while saving you money.

Key Features:
Razor LED - VIZIO is the first to bring LED technology to smaller size LCD HDTVs! This Mercury Free, Energy Efficient, Razor Thin HDTV achieves a 20,000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio giving you deeper blacks and brighter whites with 300 nits brightness
Razor Thin Styling - with less than a 1" profile*, it's simply amazing!
Contemporary Styling - Chic and stylish aesthetic with full glass panel with the ability to tilt up to 25 degrees.
Illuminated Touch Controls with Proximity Sensor - Controls illuminate when your hand draws near and fade away once you're done.
Ambient Lighting - Energy efficient sensors auto-adjust brightness for the perfect picture regardless of room conditions.
Digital Photo Viewing - Enjoy a slideshow of your family and friends (via USB Drive)***
SRS TruVolume™ eliminates volume inconsistencies between programming
SRS TruSurroundHD™ delivers immersive virtual high definition surround sound.
Eco HD™- Exceeds the current Energy Star® Guidelines by 55%** below Energy Star 3.0, saving you money on your utility bills while limiting the impact on our planet
Mercury Free - The display's backlight is environmentally-friendly due to the fact that LED backlights do not utilize mercury, an environmentally harmful substance.


VM230XVT - $399.99
Product Overview:
With LESS than a 1" profile*, the 23" VM230XVT Razor LED™ LCD HDTV offers full 1080p High Definition resolution for crystal clear images, brilliant color, rich detail and deep contrast – all in a sleek razor thin design. The aesthetic is simply amazing with a full glass panel and invisible controls that illuminate as your hand draws near and fade away once you're done. The ambient light sensor ensures that you'll always have the best picture by adjusting the brightness based on the lighting conditions of your room. And when you're not watching TV, the VM230XVT can be used as a digital picture frame to enjoy a slideshow of your family and friends.

Key Features:
Razor LED - VIZIO is the first to bring LED technology to smaller size LCD HDTVs! This Mercury Free, Energy Efficient, Razor Thin HDTV achieves a 20,000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio giving you deeper blacks and brighter whites with 300 nits brightness
Razor Thin Styling - with less than a 1" profile*, it's simply amazing!
1080p - Full 1080P High Definition resolution gives you over 2 million pixels, making the clarity and detail of your picture razor sharp.
Contemporary Styling - Chic and stylish aesthetic with full glass panel with the ability to tilt up to 25 degrees.
Illuminated Touch Controls with Proximity Sensor -Controls illuminate when your hand draws near and fade away once you're done.
Ambient Lighting - Energy efficient sensors auto-adjust brightness for the perfect picture regardless of room conditions.
Digital Photo Viewing - Enjoy a slideshow of your family and friends (via USB Drive)***
SRS TruVolume™ eliminates volume inconsistencies between programming
SRS TruSurroundHD™ delivers immersive virtual high definition surround sound.
Eco HD™- Exceeds the current Energy Star® Guidelines by 65%** below Energy Star 3.0, saving you money on your utility bills while limiting the impact on our planet
Mercury Free - The display's backlight is environmentally-friendly due to the fact that LED backlights do not utilize mercury, an environmentally harmful substance.


.

[loocas Posted Oct 28th 2009 8:55AM]

$400, that's actually pretty good.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 28th 2009 10:33AM]

could have been even cheaper if they made a monitor, no ATSC tuner or analog inputs

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 28th 2009 5:41PM]

400$ for a 23' HDTV?? I spent 200$ on a 23 inch 1080p monitor minus the tv..50,000:1 contrast ratio, 2 ms

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 28th 2009 8:14PM]

yeah, but your 50,000:1 contrast ratio is dynamic, not static. Pretty much any LED backlit HDTV or monitor will completely crush your monitor's contrast and draw less power in doing so. Monitors and TVs do drastically change in pricing when the specs are twice as good. It's up to the consumer if those spec bumps are worth it though. Like, my TV was $1200 when I got it, and there was no way I was going to pay $400 more for 120Hz.

And like the OP said, include the tuner and it's naturally going to be more expensive, despite the fact that I bet the tech isn't expensive to implement into a monitor.

Either way, for the size, you probably made the right choice. ^_^

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 28th 2009 8:55AM]

These any good? How do they compare to sony/samsung LED TVs? My buddy's VIZIO has horrible blacks (purple in color).

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 28th 2009 8:57AM]

good bet these are edge lit.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 28th 2009 10:46AM]

According to their site, it is edge lit. Shouldn't really be a factor considering its size.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 28th 2009 10:47AM]

Forgot link
http://www.vizio.com/vm230xvt.html

[TikiTeko Posted Oct 28th 2009 9:08AM]

The prize is no bad. 23" LCD for $400ish is decent - specially since Vizio is an USA company. People usually expect to pay more by home-made products. Way to go Vizio. I think LCDs are soon going to become mainstream like cellphones and start decrease their price rapidly.

[Parias Posted Oct 28th 2009 9:11AM]

Wow, that's quite a prediction!

[TikiTeko Posted Oct 28th 2009 9:12AM]

No need to thank me. :)

[Old fogie late bloomer Posted Oct 28th 2009 9:22AM]

I sure hope you meant "I think LEDs are soon going to become mainstream..." because I just bought a 24", 1920x1200 monitor with TV tuner, component input, VGA, DVI, and two HDMI ports for $270. Considering that eight years ago, a 19", 1280x1024 monitor with two VGA inputs was $1000(!!!), I have to say that LCDs hit the mainstream around, oh, half a decade ago. :)

I mean, good luck buying a CRT these days.

[Duke Posted Oct 28th 2009 10:04AM]

Have you not gone to an electronics store lately? Best Buy is more or less all plasma, LCD and now LED tv's. You're prediction is very very tardy.

Anyway, good for Vizio for continuing their mission of delivering the newer tech tvs at a more palpable price for the masses.

[FitFan Posted Oct 28th 2009 10:27AM]

Vizio's corporate offices are in Irvine, CA, but I don't think their 160 U.S. employees are making 3.5M televisions per year :-)

http://www.vizio.com/about/

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 28th 2009 11:13AM]

@old fogie

what brand/model did you get?

[Old fogie late bloomer Posted Oct 28th 2009 3:16PM]

@ Jae:

It was the Samsung Touch of Color T240HD and it seems to be available again at that price at Tiger Direct:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3977547&CatId=4420

So far I'm pretty pleased, especially for the price. The black level variations are pretty noticeable, since (I think) the screen is edge-lit rather than back-lit (so, lighter at the edges, darker in the middle), and it is a TN panel, but after working with laptop screens almost exclusively for over a year now, I was blown away by how much better TN desktop monitors are than their portable counterpart. The primaries are so deep that they almost hurt to look at, and the viewing angle is far better.

There seems to be some input lag, on the component input at least, since I had to adjust the timings in DDR to stop sucking (went from "good"s and "almost"s to "great"s and "perfect"s almost instantly, so I think it was definitely a factor). That being said, I seem to be getting my headshots in UT just fine (connecting my laptop with VGA, since there was no HDMI cable in the box), so maybe it's a function of the scaling, deinterlacing, and color space conversion involved with the component input that slows it down.

I can't comment on the TV tuner because I'm not using that at all at the moment. As far as the component and HDMI inputs go, though, there are a number of scaling options which do include the only ones I really care about: 4:3 and 16:9 without overscanning, for 480i/p signals. At 4:3 the picture takes up the full vertical height (so, 1600x1200) and at 16:9 they take up the full width (so, 1920x1080). You can also zoom in on the signal.

My two gripes are with the PC input. The computer image is always stretched to either "Wide", which is 16:10, or "4:3" (self-explanatory). There's no "Keep Aspect Ratio" mode, which would keep the aspect of the input signal and expand the image to fit one or the other dimension of the screen. That would be mostly a theoretical complaint, except that for some reason the screen can't handle 1280x800, which really strikes me as a WTF omission. Half the laptops in the world are that resolution, and it's an easy conversion up to 1920x1200 (3:2 in both dimensions). The closest resolution is 1280x768.

Anyway, if you are OK with the caveats I brought up, I do wholeheartedly recommend it.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 28th 2009 9:11AM]

my 2009 Vizio 37" inch has a better image and blacks than my 2007 Sony 32" - Sony has better speakers though. Build quality much improved over Vizio of 4-5 years ago. Costco will take it back within 90 days if you hate it, worth checking out IMHO,

[Old fogie late bloomer Posted Oct 28th 2009 9:16AM]

Are these white LEDs or RGB triplets? If the former, then eh... you can get better color gamuts from newer CCFL backlights. If it's the latter (which I doubt), then that is a pretty good deal.

Nothing against white led backlights (my laptop uses them), they have a longer life than conventional CCFL backlights and use less energy, but they aren't the be-all and end-all of backlight technology....

[Vidikron Posted Oct 28th 2009 10:45AM]

That's what I would like to know. The price seems to suggest white LEDs, but the logo sure seems to indicate RGB.

[Old fogie late bloomer Posted Oct 28th 2009 3:24PM]

It's gotta be white LEDs. If you read the specs carefully, it's obvious that they're trying to make an average (if decent) HDTV sound like something really special. Any decent standalone monitor has "brilliant color" and "deep contrast", compared to a laptop screen or a crummy 15-year-old CRT. :-P If it were wide-gamut I think that they would have really emphasized improved color reproduction, but they didn't.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 28th 2009 9:29AM]

I would be leery of anything Vizio manufactures. I have a 14 month old Vizio 42" LCD that just died, repair estimate is over $600 and out of warranty. Visit this site to see the extensive complaints.


http://www.consumeraffairs.com/home_electronics/vizio.html

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 28th 2009 9:34AM]

call up your CC company and they will replace it.

if you didnt order it with a CC; well lesson learned.

[ch3burashka Posted Oct 28th 2009 1:32PM]

This is relevant to my interests...

It's 2009. Let's get rid of the bezel once and for ALL!

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 28th 2009 9:36AM]

My question is would the 23" make a good computer display as well as a good screen for playing the Xbox 360, Wii, Gamecube and N64 on (and probably eventually a PS3)?

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 28th 2009 10:36AM]

Im certain it would. I currently use a 32" Panasonic as a monitor and still use it for the 360 and some light TV viewing. I wouldn't mind swapping out the Panny for 2 of these LED Vizios.

[Galley Posted Oct 28th 2009 9:47AM]

D'oh! I just bought a 24-inch 1080p Vizio a few days ago, but then again I only paid $259.99.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 28th 2009 2:46PM]

We just got the 55inch vizio led. So far is most awesome tv I have ever owned.

[fastm3driver Posted Oct 28th 2009 11:12AM]

32" please

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 28th 2009 1:00PM]

Sharp LC32LE700UN would be a better choice in this size rather than the edge lit Vizio.

[enbadesign Posted Oct 28th 2009 11:13AM]

You can buy a very good 23" 1080p monitor for less than $200 with 1 HDMI, DVI, and 1 component.

There really is no purpose for the tuner unless you plan to get local HD over the air. Outside of small parts of Time Warner you can't view digital cable through the tuner.

These sets are really computer monitors anyway. Considering many laptops under $500 now have LED backlights $400 for a $23 TV is kind of steep.

[Old fogie late bloomer Posted Oct 28th 2009 3:29PM]

Which screen is that? I couldn't find anything that had a component input without a tuner for anything like that price. I would be curious to know, for future reference.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 28th 2009 2:21PM]

I'm looking forward to buying a new 30" screen however neither dell has a U3010 nor apple has a 30 inch LED cinema on the market yet.

[j3ff Posted Oct 28th 2009 6:40PM]

Looks like the Samsung XL2370 ($299), with VESA, a TV tuner, and a few more input types.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 28th 2009 11:09PM]

the 23 incher would be perfect for my bedroom