Kogan PRO-22 LCD television

The Kogan PRO-22 is a high-definition, 22in LCD television with a built-in DVD player, USB and SD/MMC/MS card support and an acceptable HDTV tuner.

The unit is all black, with the main control buttons (power, source, menu, channel/volume) situated along the top — leaving the front bezel looking clean and neat. The sales package includes a remote control.

The Kogan PRO-22 has two HDMI ports, S-Video, component and composite connections as well as VGA and audio input.

The TV's menu includes standard picture adjustment options, such as brightness, contrast, colour and sharpness. The sound options include area presets such as concert, living room, bathroom and arena, which all sound pretty good at low to moderate volumes, although at high volume levels things start to sound a little hollow. There is also a password setting for parents and a sleep option.

We plugged the Kogan PRO-22 into both a PlayStation 3 and an Xbox-360 HD-DVD player and found the picture quality to be quite impressive. The PRO-22's native resolution is 1920x1080, so the screen is well suited to high-definition content like Blu-ray video. With a static contrast ratio of 800:1, colour isn't as vivid as it is on more expensive TVs — but this can be forgiven given the extremely low price tag.

Image sharpness when viewing 1080p content was acceptable — with such a small screen size, it's hard to see fine details. The screen struggles when scaling video that's not at its native resolution; we fed it some downloaded video footage and noticed a significant lack of detail compared to what we've seen on more expensive 22in units like the Teac LCD228HDM and the Sony Bravia KDL22S5700. DVD quality footage fares better but again it isn't perfect — the screen's scaling engine is simply inferior to other offerings.

If you're looking for a small, versatile and, most importantly, cheap second screen for casual movie watching or game playing, Kogan's PRO-22 22in LCD television is a good choice.

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