Televisions

Kogan is a brand you’ve probably never heard of. Until this 55in LED screen arrived at HCC, we certainly hadn’t. Hailing from Australia, Kogan promises bigscreen pics at bargain prices. This set can be yours for just £750, saving a few hundred quid on the mainstream competitors. However, I’m worried that it proves to be a false economy.

This TV presents itself well. The bezel isn’t as thin as rival products by the likes of Samsung, but overall the LED55 is slim, and the gloss-black design is unobtrusive.

The Kogan’s USB port can be used to timeshift programmes from the in-built Freeview HD tuner. It will also playback files including JPEG, DivX and MP3.

Picture performance, while far from perfect, benefits from brightness and colour punch.

While the LED55 packs an Ethernet port, this is only there because it’s demanded by the Freeview HD spec. There are no online or media streaming functions available.

The 100Hz processing system introduces some quite noticeable artefacts. My advice is to switch it off. The Edge LED backlighting system also brings with it some distracting light-pooling in the screen’s corners. This can be countered by lowering the TV’s brightness setting, but you lose out on shadow detailing as a result.

I ran into issues with the supplied handset. The layout is counter-intuitive and you need to be pointing it quite specifically at the LED55 to get the screen to respond.

If you’re expecting a big audio performance to go with your bigscreen you may be disappointed by its thin presentation. You’ll definitely want to partner this set with dedicated speakers.

Kogan LED55
Price: £750 Approx

Overall: 3/5