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John Lewis JL22LCD HD

High street favourite's own brand telly

Review John Lewis may have some odd traditions, such as the one about the chairman being the only person in the partnership allowed to write in green ink, but the posh store has also long been popular with canny TV buyers. Besides a decent selection of tellies, the other reasons are because of the company’s price match promise and free five year extended warranties. Now, taking things a step further, John Lewis has launched its own range of branded TVs, with the 22in model looking like a possible option as a second set.

John Lewis JL22LCD HD

The duvet diving companion: John Lewis' JL22LCD HD

From the front, the John Lewis JL22LCDHD TV doesn’t look half bad, as the glossy black finish and silver highlights are pretty inoffensive to the eye. The speaker grille at the bottom of the set does look a tad old fashion in today’s world of ‘invisible’ TV speakers, but it’s the thickness of the chassis that’s the most off putting aspect of the design. I’ve seen a fair few portable TVs with built-in DVD players that are slimmer than this model.

The TV may only have a rather small 22in screen, but this still hasn’t stopped John Lewis from packing in the pixels because this set boasts a Full HD 1080p panel. Around the back it also has a decent line up of ports for a portable set.

There are two HDMI sockets for hooking up high definition equipment like set top boxes and Blu-ray players, plus a set of component inputs, a Scart socket and a VGA port for use with a PC to function as a monitor.

Once you’ve tuned the Freeview channels – it’s an SD tuner only, rather than a new DVB-T2 HD version – you’ll find that both the main menu and the EPG are beautifully presented in a light green and blue colour scheme.

John Lewis JL22LCD HD

Handy selection here with headphone, card slot and composite access on the side too

However, the EPG only fills the central two thirds of the screen, so if you’re viewing it from a fair distance it can be a little difficult to read. Also, the smaller size of the layout means that only two hours of programming are shown at any one time.

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