HP PL4272N Plasma HDTV Review

The PL4272N isn't the best product in the world when it comes to HDTVs, however it turned out to be a fairly good product for a low price if you aren't too picky. The resolution is not the best you can find; the 1024 by-768-pixel keeps it from being a better option on the market.

The visuals can be eye damaging, they tend to have a pink color, especially when showing people's skin. That looks unnatural and gives an artificial touch to the whole scene. If you are a master in visual settings maybe you can remove that by manually setting your TV's colors.

The menu is quite organized and may seem familiar to the people who bought the HPLX4276N. The advantage is the fact that they are easy to understand and handle, because the menu has two options, Simple Menu and Full Menu.

You might be surprised to find that there is an option called White Wash in the Setup menu and not in the Picture menu. You will not find this on previous LCDs. However, this option proves to be quite handy when you experience burn in problems and it helps you ameliorate those before they get permanent.

Another disadvantage is the fact that this utility lacks any of the options that display gray sidebars in 4-by-3 mode. This is a very useful option when people want to see programs with standard definition in the original aspect ratio, otherwise it can make damage by causing phosphor aging. The same problem appears to Vizio VP42 HDTVs. Also, keep in mind that you won't find any useful instruction about burn-in in the HP manual, although all other plasma manuals have it.

Unfortunately the PL4272N lacks a lot of entertainment features that other products usually have. You can't find any jack for headphones; it has no media slots, and no picture-in-picture. These options could have added great improvement to this product but, unfortunately, it doesn't have them.

The remote control also lacks most of the features found on these products. It's rather large and the bad thing about it is that you can't program it. The same thing happened with the LC4276N. You may expect many buttons on a remote control which has this size, but it's not the case here; very few buttons compared to its size.

If you're waiting for another disadvantage, here it comes: the buttons don't have any light; this tends to be very uncomfortable sometimes. If there is not sufficient lighting in the room, you will have to constantly find a light source until you have memorized the button positions.

These modern electronics can be difficult to setup, so the HP PL4272N comes with a helpful setup wizard that takes you from beginning to end in a snap. It will walk you through the options and help you as you try to fix the colors, saturation and hue.

The HP PL4272N plasma has Dynamic 3D color gamut mapping, and this feature makes it easy to adjust the colors on the screen. Using this mapping technique, you can modify the colors for electronic gadgets that have limited color choices. It is also a great option for home viewers who have visual problems viewing colors, such as an individual who may be color blind.

Overall the visual quality is average, the whole handling seems quite simple, and the menu is understandable and easy to use. It looks like a mediocre product; however it will have a lot of fans due to its small price.

Although this product may seem like the worse there is, it's cheap and may be a good option if you are planning to buy more than one without expecting major quality. It's not the best thing in the world, but maybe if you know what you are doing, you can improve video quality from the settings. If you can afford another model for a few hundred dollars more, don't hesitate, otherwise choose this product but don't expect it to be amazing.