Vu 32K21 Review

Vu is a brand that came out pretty strong a few years back and their focus has been the Indian audience, who seek latest television technologies at an affordable price. The brand has had its fair share of success with LCD and LED LCD televisions and as the market for these type of TVs expand, Vu continues to launch models at an affordable price point.

Brushed aluminium strip below the branding adds to the style

When one thinks of LED LCD televisions, they usually think of them being rather expensive. However, Vu aims to change that by launching a 32-inch LED LCD TV - 32K21 that is economical and yet hosts a number of interesting features. Here is a closer look at the product on offer.

Design and Build Quality
Vu has stuck to the traditional all black gloss finish that is found on most LED LCD TVs; thereby keeping the design aspect in-line with countless other TVs available in the market. The only real distinguishing factor, apart from the Vu branding in the front is that above the stand there is the brushed metal aluminium strip. Like most LED LCD TVs available, it has a minimalistic design, which makes it look attractive. Other than this, the front of the TV has an LED indicator and sensor for the remote.

Controls lie to the right-side of the rear of the TV. These feature basic controls for navigating through the television options. The on/ off button, menu, volume, channel and source buttons are located at the back in this area. Vu have chosen to add a separate power switch at the bottom of the TV for manually turning the TV on or off. A few brands tend to add this option for powering the TV, but bigger brands do not use it as it usually becomes a step more for powering on the TV.

The downward and side facing connectors

Connectivity options found are located at the rear and are downward and side facing. This positioning of the connections is becoming fairly common because as opposed to mounting it on the stand, many people tend to wall mount a TV. By using this design feature, the TV can be flushed against a wall. Vu have added 4 HDMI ports on the side along with a port for connecting the antenna, coaxial, a USB port, a 3.5mm jack for headphones and an AV2 port, which are all side facing. The downward facing connectors, include another USB port, a SCART connector, DVI/ PC audio, a VGA connector as well as other AV inputs.

The bezel and the stand are quite sturdy and we had no problems with the overall build quality of the product. Design-wise, Vu have stuck to the tried and tested route of using a glossy black bezel which is good.

Features
The main feature of the Vu 32K21 is that it has full HD 1080p video capabilities, as opposed to the previous generation Vu 32K16, which featured HD video at 720p. The television takes some time to be powered on and once it does, you are greeted with the Vu branding set against a blue background. This is not the most pleasant sight as the blue seems a bit garish. When using this television for the first time, one is immediately met with the initial set up process. The layout of this is pretty basic with the ability to tweak settings, such as picture quality, sound quality, etc. If one chooses not to accept these settings at the start, they can easily access them at any time by just tapping on the menu button.

The Interface is similar to those of HD media players

The interface used on the television is pretty impressive and Vu has done well to add a slight animation, while scrolling through the different settings. While navigating through the interface for external drives, we were pleasantly surprised with the layout. The options such as photos, music, etc. are located to the left of the screen and in the centre one can view icons of what they wish to choose. While this may not be as impressive as the XMB interface found on Sony or the interfaces found on LG or Panasonic TVs, this is a fairly attractive interface and it reminds us of some of the ones found on media players.

The television can play both NTFS and FAT32 drives. This is a good thing as some of the bigger names in televisions only support FAT32 drives. The television can playback a host of common formats and this was a pretty good feature as well. Apart from this Vu claims that the television boasts of a number of features, such as a 178 degree viewing angle, a 6ms response time and two 6 Watt speakers. Overall, when it comes to the features, the Vu 32K21 has so far surpassed our expectations.