Digital Trends

Vizio VO32L

June 10th, 2008 | by David Elrich

Features and Design

The VO32L is hardly a beauty and in fact looks kind of clunky. With its black body this set would look best plugged into the space of your A/V cabinet where the old 36-inch CRT gathered dust rather than as the centerpiece of your living room. The set measures 31.6 x 21.2 x 4.2 (WHD, in inches) and weighs 26 pounds without the supplied stand, 27.6 with. With the stand attached, the HDTV has a fairly utilitarian look—without the sweeping lines you’ll find on other models. Of course you can get rid of the stand and mount it to a wall, if you’d like with optional mounting hardware.

This is a very basic-looking HDTV with more of a PC monitor vibe than television. In fact, the rear connections are just like those on your monitor as you plug them up into frame rather than at a typical 90-degree angle. You can even use this as a monitor since it has an RGB PC input with a max resolution of 1368x768 via VGA and HDMI. The connection issue is just a minor hassle since typically you’ll only be doing this once at the outset.

The front bezel has black basket-weave pattern with insets of gloss black finish. At the far corners at the bottom of the frame are the two stereo speakers with 12 watts of power. That will hardly rock the house but it’s good enough for general TV viewing. A Vizio logo turns on when you power up and turns from white to a dim orange when you turn it off. Too bad you can’t turn it off completely…

On the right side are seven buttons that mirror the main controls on the remote (you won’t use them). More important are connections to quickly connect a camcorder, camera, game system and headphones. There are HDMI, component and A/V inputs here along with a headphone jack. Although not quite as convenient as those found directly on the front of other sets, they’ll do the job.

Speaking on connections, this HDTV has three HDMI ver. 1.3a inputs, two component, RGB, RF, two composite and one S-video. With a trio of HDMI inputs, you should be fine for your HDTV set-top box, Blu-ray player and PS3/Xbox 360.

The Vizio VO32L comes with everything you need for HDTV other than a source. In the carton you’ll find the set attached to the stand (no assembly required), power cords, cleaning cloth, warranty and registration cards as well as a very nicely styled remote with two batteries. As an added bonus, the HDTV comes with an HDMI cable so you don’t have to rush back to the store to pick one up to get the best picture and sound quality.

After easily taking the unit out of the carton and setting it up with minor help from the supplied QuickStart guide, it was time to watch some video.

Image Courtesy of Vizio