Verdict

What is the Linsar X24-DVD?

The X24-DVD is probably the most unique small-screen TV we’ve ever tested. First, it’s actually made by a British brand. Second, it’s only 24 inches in size from one corner to the other in an era where we now spend most of our time in the company of TVs of 50 inches or more.

Third, despite its small screen and striking slender rear it manages to carry a built-in DVD player. Fourth, at the time of writing (and up to the end of March) the X24-DVD comes with a free Roku Streaming Stick, opening up a huge world of online content.

Last but not least, as you might be able to tell from the photos on this page, the X24-DVD does something practically no other small-screen TV does: take sound seriously. For that slim-bezelled screen sits tidily atop what can only sensibly be called a sound bar.

Linsar X24-DVD: Design and Features

Thanks to its built-in sound bar, the X24-DVD looks like no other small TV we’ve seen before. The screen part is fairly straightforward with its centimetre or so wide black bezel, but the chunky silver, speaker-bearing arc the screen sits on is anything but normal.

The silvery base is deep enough to support the X24-DVD at a gentle backwards lean with no extra struts or legs, with the depth also giving those speakers more room for audio manoeuvre. The depth isn’t so extreme that it looks cumbersome, though, and we were also pleasantly surprised by how slim the screen section’s rear is considering it has to house a DVD player. It’s worth adding that the TV can be wall mounted if you wish.

Connections are pretty impressive for such a small TV. For starters there’s a pair of HDMIs, a USB port, an RF tuner input (which feeds an HD Freeview tuner), and a VGA port so you can easily double the TV up as a PC monitor.

What’s more, the USB port can do multiple duties. First, you can attach a USB HDD to it for recording from the TV’s tuners – a great feature to find on a small-screen TV. Second, you can use it to play multimedia files off USB storage drives. Finally you could potentially use it to power the Roku Streaming Stick (which is £40 if bought separately) we mentioned back of the start of this review.

The Roku Stick slots into one of the HDMIs, as well as using up the USB port, unless you go for the external plug it ships with. That effectively leaves you with just one HDMI for your other sources.

It’s also really hard to fit both the Roku Stick and the USB power cable that plugs into it into the space below the TV’s two down-facing HDMIs. In fact, we couldn’t fit the stick and USB cable into the space around one of the HDMIs at all, and even with the other the stick ended up wedged in at a slightly uncomfortable angle. What’s more, it was hard to then fit another HDMI cable into the neighbouring slot. Oh well; at least there isn’t much danger of the Roku Stick accidentally falling out.

Another nifty connection option the X24-DVD offers that precious few other small TVs do is Bluetooth. Pair up a Bluetooth music player and you can stream music for playing on the TV’s speaker bar. Which, as we’ll see in the Sound Quality section, is a much more agreeable experience than you’d imagine.

While the X24-DVD is exceptionally feature-rich for a small-screen TV, its onscreen menus don’t advance its feature cause much beyond the ‘front-of-house features we’ve already covered. There’s a fairly rudimentary noise reduction system, a small selection of audio and video picture presets, and really that’s it other than the absolute basics you’d expect from any television.

Linsar X24-DVD: Set Up

The lack of set up options means there’s not a great deal to say here. Especially as what few picture adjustments you do get don’t really make any positive difference to picture quality. The brightness setting, for instance, just crushes content out of the image rather than improving black level response (you generally need a backlight adjustment for that), while changing the colour temperature just gives you a slightly different set of colour tone issues.

The one bit of advice we would give, though, is that you turn off the noise reduction system when watching HD content – it just makes the image look unnecessarily soft.