Vizio chose to adorn its VO320E 32-inch LCD with claims of environmental consciousness, saying the little set exceeds Energy Star guidelines by 15 percent. But that's not a very high standard, and according to our tests the Vizio, while definitely no power hog, sips just a couple bucks less juice per year than other LCDs in its class. Its true appeal is low price combined with perfectly acceptable picture quality. A couple of flaws might give black level sticklers or dual-use PC/TV aficionados pause, but other bargain hunters should consider this entry-level Vizio among the better LCDs in its class.
The Vizio VO320E is among the most conservative looking TVs out there, toning down the glossy black around the screen with a wider border of matte black perforated by thousands of tiny holes. The long line of logos can be removed.
Vizio's chunky little glossy black remote quickly became grimy with our fingerprints. The clicker has a minimum of keys and, in an unusual but not inconvenient move, combines the "enter" and "menu" keys into one button in the middle of the directional keypad. We did like the direct access buttons, such as "HDMI" and "AV," for quick jumps to specific inputs but were annoyed at the lack of a dedicated button for aspect ratio.
We don't really like the silver-and-orange menu system, mainly because it hides too many functions away from view, requiring too much scrolling. Everything's accounted for, however, and we did appreciate the helpful text explanations that accompanied menu selections.
The Vizio showed relatively accurate color and fairly good black level performance, highlighted by realistic shadow detail. Its PC picture quality fell a bit short, however, and there are similarly priced LCDs that produce deeper black levels.
