Tyagi LED24 LED TV

The Tyagi LED24 is a thin, 24in LED television with a 1080p panel and a 5000:1 dynamic contrast ratio. Its support for 12V input might make it a good addition to a caravan. Picture quality is acceptable for broadcast television and DVD watching, but Blu-ray movies are missing some of the 'pop' you'll see with a more expensive screen.

Tyagi LED24: design and ergonomics

The Tyagi LED24 share some design cues with Samsung's original LED televisions, with a thin glass base (which, annoyingly, doesn't swivel) and a deep glossy black finish. It's more attractive than previous Tyagi televisions we've looked at, such as the Tyagi Max19 and the Tyagi 4728. The inclusion of LED backlighting has allowed Tyagi to save some space and reduce the thickness of the television — it was around half the thickness of the Kogan 1080P24 we compared it to. However, the Kogan is almost $200 cheaper.

The buttons of the Tyagi LED24 are arranged on the rear of the panel, accessible around the right side of the television. Button descriptions are stencilled onto the side fascia of the Tyagi LED24, so a quick glance will tell you which button you'll be hitting. The bundled remote control of the Tyagi LED24 is well laid out with buttons that are clearly labelled and easily distinguishable from one another.

The rear of the Tyagi LED24 hides a small range of video inputs. Arranged from left to right on the downward-facing segment of the rear panel are the 12V power jack, USB port, HDMI, VGA, 3.5mm audio input, composite A/V, headphone output and coaxial digital audio output jacks. The left side of the Tyagi LED24's rear panel houses the antenna input, component A/V and second composite A/V inputs. We would have switched the locations of some of these connectors — the more permanent antenna input would be fine on the lower panel, freeing up space for the USB port to accept flash drives and external hard drives.

The Tyagi LED24 uses a 220V-12V external power brick. The brick is quite bulky, so you will need to find somewhere to tuck it away. The up-side of this is that you'll be able to use the Tyagi LED24 directly off a car's cigarette lighter power point or a caravan's 12V power supply, although an appropriate cable will need to be purchased separately.

Tyagi LED24: picture quality

The Tyagi LED24's 24in LCD screen has a 16:9 aspect ratio and a 1080p native resolution. A brightness rating of 250cd/m2 is slightly lower than its competitors, which might make it difficult to watch in harsh lighting conditions. We found the screen bright enough in dim and dark lighting conditions, but setting brightness levels to maximum did start to wash out detail in darker areas of the screen.

The screen's 5000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, achieved by dimming the Tyagi LED24's backlight in dark video scenes to deliver deeper black levels, is reasonable but unspectacular. The process of dimming the entire screen does extend detail in dark areas of the screen, but this means that bright areas are compromised. We found the backlight dimming speed to be reasonably fast; in most instances we couldn't notice a transition taking place. However, even when watching relatively subdued DVD content, we did notice evidence of minor black crush and loss of white detail. This won't be of concern to casual viewers but the fact remains that a more expensive screen will be able to deliver video with more detail in both dark and bright areas.

The 1080p resolution of the screen means that source material, like Blu-ray video, which has a 1080p native resolution, looks sharp. Plenty of detail is visible in video and we found that sharpness levels were reasonably good when using the default settings. Playing standard-definition digital television and 480p DVDs isn't as exciting, but the Tyagi LED24 upscales them without any noticeable artefacting or significant blurriness.

Conclusion

The Tyagi LED24 LCD television is an interesting product. Its LED backlighting technology means it is comparatively expensive for a small screen from a budget brand, and its image quality is only a small amount better than an LCD model. The main selling point of the Tyagi LED24 is its thin and attractive design.

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