I have had this 14” portable TV for approximately 5 years if not more.
The reason for purchasing this TV was that I needed something compact to go in my bedroom and didn’t want to have to pay £150+ for the privilege.
~~~Model~~~
My particular TV is model number CTV3459.
It is black, which makes a change to the silver that seems to have become the standard. However, if you are a bit lacking in the dusting department then it does show up easily and can make the TV look dirty.
The easiest way to imagine how this TV looks is to think of a cube with all of its edges smoothed off. A disadvantage of this is that because the top of the TV slopes forwards it does mean that you couldn’t put anything on top of it, such as a Freeview box.
~~~Price~~~
I purchased this TV from Argos for £99.99 (or very similar). Since then this model has been reduced in price and I believe you can no longer buy new ones however, to get a compatible model you are looking at around the £60 to £70 mark.
At the time this was a very reasonable price and not including the Internet it was I believe the cheapest 14” TV of this type of specification available.
~~~Dimensions~~~
Just in case you were concerned whether this would fit in a particular gap, especially as this size of TV is aimed at the kitchen/bedroom market
it measures 34x38x37.5cm (HxLxD). Therefore it is reasonably compact and is ideally suited for its purpose.
According to the instruction leaflet it weighs 9kg and although I have never measured it myself (even I am not that sad!) it does feel very lightweight and if I had being guessing as to its weight I would have said nearer 5kg.
~~~Features~~~
I don’t want to bore you with too much detail so I will just list some of the main features, which may be of interest to you.
-Teletext- For approximately £10 more you could upgrade to the model with teletext (when compared to the base model.) Personally I find this service very valuable even with the new interactive services that are now available. One thing that could be misleading to potential customers is that the TV doesn’t have fastext, which you would think it has when looking at the remote control as it has a red, green, yellow and blue button. Consequently it means that you have to remember the page numbers that you use rather than going by the on-screen display to take you to the main menu etc… An advantage with this particular TV is that if you are looking at a specific teletext page (e.g. number 100) which may be formed of multiple pages (e.g. 5 pages all under number 100), then you can press the hold button on the remote twice and it will automatically re-load the page you are viewing. This means you can move through pages quicker then if you just have to wait for the page to move by itself. Also whilst using teletext you can continue to watch the TV program on the channel you are on. It is basically when all the black bits on the teletext (e.g. background etc…) change to the colours of the program itself so if you want to catch up on the latest news then you don’t have to interrupt what you are watching. -Clock- If you choose to have it on (by the press of one button on the remote) the TV will display a small blue rectangular icon with white digits (in the top right corner) to display the current time (including seconds). This appears to use the teletext facility, so if you are on a channel with no teletext facility then you will not be able to have this function on. Instead you will just get a blue box in the corner with nothing in. -Sleep timer- If you are a fan of late night movies, then this is an excellent function to have. On numerous occasions I have been watching a program only to fall asleep and discover the next morning that I have left the TV on all night. Using the remote you can select a time period of between 0 and 90 minutes (in 10 minute intervals) for when the TV will turn itself off. -Child lock- If you have this TV in a child’s bedroom then you may prefer them to not be able to access certain channels. With this TV you can setup channels that they are not allowed to watch and then if they do select the channel all they will see is a black screen and the sound will also be off. -Internal aerial- The TV comes complete with a ‘ring aerial’. This means that if you don’t have an external aerial or the particular room the TV is in doesn’t have a connector then you can plug in the aerial and pick-up a fairly good signal. This clearly depends on the strength of the reception in you area. However, where I live I find that I wouldn’t really be able to put up with using the internal aerial as I expect a near perfect picture. -Buttons on the TV itself- The TV has three buttons on the front (in addition to the main power button), meaning that for very basic operations you don’t need to use the remote. The three buttons are volume decrease, increase the channel (e.g. if you are on BBC1 then by pressing it you would move to BBC2) and volume increase. To me it seems stupid not to be able to change the channel downwards. The only way to do this is to turn off the TV and then turn back on and the set automatically goes to channel 1.
~~~Picture quality~~~
Using a roof mounted aerial I find this set to produce very good picture quality, comparable to the major brands (for a lot less cash.)
~~~Sound quality~~~
This set only comes with mono sound, yet for most purposes this is perfectly adequate. Whilst it is nowhere near comparable with a modern surround sound TV its fine. The only thing I have noticed is that if you do like to watch films with the volume up then you do get quite a bit of crackling.
~~~Connections~~~
Personally I feel this is where you can tell this TV is an Alba rather than a Sony or Panasonic. Instead of a bit more effort they have gone for the easy option that may put a lot of people off buying this model.
The two connections (that’s right 2!) are the RF input (i.e. where you plug in the aerial) and a Scart input (i.e. for connecting a DVD player/VCR/games console/Freeview box etc…)
Firstly how they expect anyone to put up with just one Scart socket, even though a lot of TV’s of this size do is beyond me. I personally had to buy a Scart hub (i.e. plug 5 Scart devices into 1) separately.
Also they haven’t even been bothered to put in a headphone socket. Even the very basic TV’s should have this. This basically means that you can’t really watch the TV at night without disturbing the rest of the house.
~~~Eas of installation~~~
The TV is very easy to tune in. Basically you select the channel number you want to tune and it scans the available signals and you just choose the one you want.
Overall I would recommend this TV to anyone who is on a budget and needs a good, reliable TV for the bedroom or kitchen.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
exceptional by (3%):
very helpful by (97%):
