Choosing an Eco Flat TV

We're not very avid TV watchers on board, but we do like to watch a movie now and then. And, of course, our children like watching various cartoons and movies a lot.

So we needed a TV. About a year ago I started paying attention to see which ones would be applicable to our low power envelope. At that time it was hard to obtain facts about flat TV power consumption except in general terms. Luckily the increased awareness amongst the public and the reaction towards that from suppliers has benefited us here. Technologically the trend towards using LED backlights has helped.

As developments go quickly I delayed buying a TV for as long as I could. Now that the deadline for me delivering equipment is almost upon us I had to choose. To be honest, I still don't like LCD TVs as much as I do plasma in terms of visual smoothness. They are often 'harder' in showing up digital artifacts, both moiré and compression.

In the end the choice was narrowed down to the one with both the highest potential for power saving and the lowest advertised power usage in the size (32") that we were looking for. The Sharp LC-32LE600E has an official power use of 60W. In practice, running it at the visual settings that we liked best it turned out to use even less at 30 to 37 W. Pretty cool for such a big display - in more ways than one.