VIZIO VP42 review (42" plasma TV)

In case you haven't noticed, the price of plasma TV has officially fallen into the three-figure range. The 42-inch Vizio VP42HDTV, available for $999--and in some cases even less--is the perfect example. This HDTV misses no features, hits the style note nicely, and most importantly, comes through with a picture that's good enough to satisfy most viewers, especially for the price. Yes, discerning home theater-philes will find fault with its low-light picture, but at the end of the day, even they would probably pronounce the Vizio VP42HDTV a great value.

Design

Vizio maintains a fairly consistent two-tone look across its product line, and the VP42HDTV is one of the more handsome examples. The black around the screen is glossy, and the silver of the speaker section below lacks the strange-looking crease found on some of the company's LCDs. Instead, there's a hunk of clear plastic informing you that the VP42HDTV is, in fact, a "plasma HDTV." We liked the non-illuminated Vizio logo and the simple rectangular design of the panel.

A matching silver stand complements the panel itself, and of course, it can be removed if you'd prefer a wall mount (of which Vizio has a fine selection). The speaker can't be detached, however. Including the stand, the VP42HDTV measures 41.3x29.8x12.1 inches and weighs 89 pounds. Severing the stand shrinks those numbers to 41.3x28.8x4.3 inches and 73.5 pounds.

The same silver, 51-key remote we've seen with all Vizio TVs is included with the VP42HDTV, and this version lacks backlighting. That makes finding a certain key in the dark less tiresome than it would be otherwise, but what we'd really like to see is better differentiation among the many buttons. We did appreciate the direct-access keys for different inputs, however, and the fact that the clicker can command three other pieces of gear.

Features

Like almost all other 42-inch plasmas these days, the Vizio VP42HDTV's native resolution is 1,024x768. That's not quite enough to resolve every detail of 720p HDTV, but the image is still plenty sharp. All incoming sources, including HDTV, computers, DVD, and standard TV, are scaled to fit the available pixels.

Vizio has a tradition of putting out fully featured televisions, and the VP42HDTV is no exception. Its solid range of picture controls starts with three preset picture modes and a fourth mode, labeled Custom, that remembers your changes to contrast, brightness, and the rest. Happily, the Custom mode is independent for each input, unlike that of the 60-inch VM60PHDTV.

More-advanced picture controls include three color temperature presets and a custom mode that allows you to set red, green, and blue grayscale numbers yourself, a real boon for people who like to tweak the picture. There's also an additional Advanced menu containing a range of controls that were mostly detrimental to picture accuracy, so we left them turned off. The noise reduction control is the exception; it definitely came in handy for cleaning up lower-quality sources. See Performance below for more details on picture settings.

Conveniences include picture-in-picture, which offers a side-by-side option too. There's also a freeze mode that's handy for catching quick information, such as the 3/4-screen of fine print under automobile financing offers. Vizio's selection of aspect-ratio controls is average: three for high-def sources and four for standard-def. And as its name indicates, the VP42HDTV is, in fact, a full HDTV, meaning that it includes an ATSC tuner for grabbing over-the-air high-def and digital stations.

We found plenty of inputs on this Vizio, including the standard pair of HDMI jacks. Other inputs include two component-video, one A/V input with composite and S-Video, one A/V input with composite video only, and one VGA-style RGB computer input. Today, manufacturers such as Panasonic still treat the PC input as a step-up feature, whereas every Vizio we've reviewed has one. There's also a single RF input for connecting an antenna or cable, an analog audio output, and an optical digital audio output for passing surround soundtracks from over-the-air HD sources. As with most other Vizios, the VP42HDTV lacks front or side-panel inputs.

Performance

All things considered, the Vizio VP42HDTV offers perfectly good picture quality for most viewers. Compared to competing plasmas, its black-level performance isn't top of the class, especially in terms of shadow detail, but its solid color, clean image, and commendable standard-def and PC performance definitely do the job, especially at this price.