At the time of writing, Samsung's LE15E31S is the cheapest LCD TV sold by a ny mainstream manufacturer. It even undercuts screens from the über-budget likes of Bush and Goodmans. Amazing. But what has Samsung had to sacrifice to make such a price possible?
The company's traditional penchant for designer looks has taken a battering, that's for sure.The 4:3, 15in screen is much bulkier than most, its finish is plasticky and bland, and its half-moon stand looks and feels flimsy in the extreme.
Connectivity is rather more satisfying. All our key favourites are covered, which is to say there's a Scart, an aerial jack and a PC input allowing you to double up the LE15E31 as a computer monitor. This ramps the LE15E31S's value for money rating even higher.
A surprisingly smart remote control gives access to a readable, but very sparsely populated, set of onscreen menus.These really don't contain any unusual features, leaving us free to press straight on with how the LE15E31S handles.
The screen's distinctly budget aspirations are clearly visible in aspects of its picture quality. First, there's the rather dismal amount of light that's allowed to spill from the screen's backlight into the top and bottom of the picture.This light seepage doesn't spread very far, but it's intense enough to be distracting during dark TV scenes.
Then there's is the screen's lack of black-level response. Dark areas of the picture are consumed by flattening greyness before they really achieve any kind of depth.
Finally, colours during darker scenes look a bit muted. Not enough to lose what is generally a pleasingly natural tone, perhaps, but enough to cause your attention to wander from the screen unless you're really into what you're watching.
On the bright side
These sort of problems are really no more than we would expect at the real budget end of the LCD market, though, and in some other ways the LE15E31S actually exceeds expectations. During bright scenes, for instance, colours are starkly transformed into really vibrant, richly saturated delights. Also, there's remarkably little trouble from LCD's common problem with smearing over motion. As a result, fine detail levels are a cut above the average - a fact probably assisted by the screen's unusually high (for a 15in model) native resolution.
Finally, the picture seems just as at home with PC sources as it is with video ones, reinforcing its dual-purpose potential.
The LE15E31's sound doesn't let it down too badly, either. There's practically no bass worthy of the name - a common problem with small LCD TVs. But there is just enough speaker quality to flesh out the treble range so that the sound doesn't distort or sound too one-dimensional.
Overall, it's hard not to like the LE15E31S. It's certainly not the last word in build or performance quality, but at the same time it doesn't do anything actually badly - which is enough in conjunction with its PC/TV flexibility to make it something of a bargain.
