More TV for your money.

Resolution

The Sharp LC-32D62U LCD TV is (as of the writing of this review) the least expensive 32" 1080p TV available on the market. Most TV's in this size are only 720p. Some will make the argument that 1080p is useless in a TV this small, but I disagree. It doesn't make that much of a difference for a lot content, but if you are planning on using this as a computer monitor (using a DVI to HDMI adapter) or you are going to be using this with a game console such as a PS3, you will appreciate the extra resolution because it makes a noticeable difference with things like text. Frankly it's just nice to know that you can watch the highest resolution content available in its native format, without trusting the TV or some other device to rescale it to fit on a 720p screen. Eventually everything will be 1080p or 1080i, so that's the best native resolution to have, even if it's not a huge visual jump from 720p in a TV this small.

Display Quality

Straight out of the box, this TV is disappointing. Its colors are excessively saturated, its whites are bright enough to burn your retinas out, and it has so many automatic enhancements turned on that you can actually see the image changing as things on the screen move around. You will definitely want to get your hands on a calibration product (like the THX Optimizer) and set this TV up properly, and you should disable all of the automatic image enhancers like noise reduction, color correction, and so forth. The only setting I left on is black level expansion, which actually seems to be very effective at increasing contrast without losing detail. After you have taken the time to calibrate this TV properly, you will be able to enjoy an exceptional image with a wide pallet of natural colors and a stunning contrast with highly detailed blacks and whites.

Like most LCD's this one has a cold cathode backlight, which turns out to be its greatest downfall. The screen is never truly black, and the backlight takes several minutes to warm up to its normal brightness. The light is noticeable on very dark images, especially when you are in a dark room -- however, as I said before, the TV produces very deep blacks for an LCD, and with most content you will never notice it. The TV can be set to automatically adjust the backlight's brightness to compliment the ambient room lighting, and you can set its minimum and maximum values to restrict its overall range. It can be an effective feature once it has been calibrated to your personal range of viewing conditions. One minor downfall that sets this screen apart even from other LCD's is that the backlight is not perfectly even across the width of the screen (some areas are darker than others). I know this sounds bad, but believe me when I say that you will not notice it at all in 99% of your viewing. The only time it is noticeable is when you are looking at a completely white screen or something similar, and even then you have to concentrate a little to see it.

This TV's viewing angles are good for an LCD. The horizontal viewing range is practically limitless, but the vertical range is a little more limited; blacks tend to wash out when you view the TV at a high or low angle. This effect is not visible at all while the TV is at eye level, but if you are planning on putting this somewhere where it will be higher or lower than the viewing position, keep this in mind. I imagine that you would be able to adjust the image settings from your permanent viewing position and get your blacks back, but be aware of this (and any other LCD) if you have that type of situation. This is not an issue for me at all since it is at eye level in my living room.

I'm being very picky by pointing out these flaws. This TV actually looks every bit as good as any other model I have seen in this price range. As I said, it is absolutely beautiful once it has been properly calibrated. I have no regrets at all about purchasing it.

Sound Quality

For what they are, the TV's speakers are decent, but there is no way I would consider them adequate for any serious content. There is little bass response, and for obvious reasons they only produce stereo sound. Some TV's that are larger and more expensive have excellent internal speakers, but this is definitely not one of them -- they get the job done, and that's about all. Most people who own a TV like this would probably have a receiver and a decent audio setup to go along with it anyway, so I guess it's kind of an irrelevant point. There's nothing wrong with them, but there's nothing worth noting either.

User Experience

This TV has a wide range of inputs, which is pretty normal for flat panels in this price range. It has two HDMI 1.3 inputs, component inputs, composite inputs, and a built-in tuner. I have digital cable, so I've never used this TV's tuner and I can't really comment on it. You can rename these inputs with one of several labels (you can't enter your own but there are plenty to choose from), and each input can have its own color and backlight settings, which means you can optimize the TV for different devices. The TV has a set of global color presets that can all be changed and are accessible from all the inputs, and each input also has its own customizable "user" preset. All together, you can have nine completely different sets of color settings, four of which are available in any input.

Different types of inputs have different aspect ratio modes, but you can general choose between viewing the source in its native size with black bars on the sides if it's smaller than 16:9 (good for typical 4:3 sources like normal TV channels), zooming in on the image to fill the screen's width (good for DVD's or any other letterbox source that is only 4:3), or stretching the image to fill the screen (not good for anything at all unless you just don't care about what you're watching, in which case I don't know why you're thinking about getting a TV like this).

Overall, as you can probably tell, the TV is flexible and decently user-friendly. Menus are easy to navigate, but not of all their options make sense, and the manual is bad. It's hard to read and it doesn't really do a good job of explaining anything. It's not completely useless as a reference, but if you're not experienced with these sorts of things, it won't help you much. Even if you are experienced, there are several behaviors and options that it doesn't explain at all, and you will have to figure them out on your own. The remote doesn't fare much better than the manual -- it's bulky and weird looking, with an unintuitive design that leaves you wondering why an entire set of buttons is hidden (???) under a plastic door. If you have more than one device, you will definitely want to get a good universal remote like a Logitech Harmony, because this one is completely useless for the most part (although it does have universal capabilities).

Overall

This TV is excellent overall, and I highly recommend it. You will not find a better model at this price. It has some minor downfalls, but it delivers where it counts, and because this is a common model, it's easy to find great deals online. I can't imagine anyone regretting their decision to buy this TV.

Update (2009)

I'm not going to update my review because I haven't changed my mind about anything I said, but for what it's worth: only 16 months after I bought this TV, its mainboard died (a $500 repair, something I would have had to pay for myself since it was out of warranty). Some Google searches revealed that this is apparently a very common problem with Sharp TV's, this model in particular. This was not a cheap TV when I bought it; in fact, it was one of the best models available in this size class. There's no reason that such an expensive TV from one of the world's largest manufacturers should be wrought with that kind of defect. Luckily, prices have come down: after junking this TV, I bought a 52" Samsung and couldn't be happier.