How reliable are plasmas

[admin_exported]

I am about to ditch my crt and am planning to buy a Pioneer plasma. I note that there is a massive difference in price with and without a 5 year guarantee and cannot find any articles regarding reliability. Help please!

 

[Anonymous]

In terms of picture quality the Pioneer is about the best on the market. But as you say, it costs quite a bit more than it's rivals. I think you are buying picture quality rather than more reliability. I'm not sure there is much difference between Pioneer and Panasonic in reliability. I think they claim that the average plasma should be able to deal with 100000 hours before it starts to fade away. Which works out at about 11 years of 24 hour a day TV.

 

[Andy Clough]

We're certainly not aware of any major reliability issues on the Pioneer plasmas.

 

[Anonymous]

AS with anything you pay your money and you take your chances! I ttend to think that if someething is going to go wrong with an electrical device it will happen very early on or not at all.

That said yiou can take precautions such as plugging it into a surge protector and stuff like that.

 

[Anonymous]

The Which magazine recommends several Panasonic plasmas. It doesnt recommend any brand it considers "unreliable"

 

[Andrew Everard]

So do we infer from that that in the opinion of Which? only Panasonic plasmas are reliable?

 

[Anonymous]

I'd infer from that that "Which?" Could (but probably aren't) taking backhanders from Panasonic (!)

And how do I do Smileys on this thing?

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="Andrew Everard"]

So do we infer from that that in the opinion of Which? only Panasonic plasmas are reliable?

[/quote]

No your inverse logic is flawed!!

No, what I said was they recommed some Panasonic plasmas so they wont be unreliable.

They may well recommend other plasmas.

And even it is reliable they may not recommend it because of other problems, like poor SD performance.

 

[Andrew Everard]

[quote user="rewerb"]No your inverse logic is flawed!! [/quote]

Oh right, just inverse logic based on the evidence you provided. I don't read Which? - they get it so spectacularly wrong far too often...

 

[Anonymous]

Dont wish to be pedantic, but I provided some evidence and you lept to an incorrect logical conclusion.

But you could be right about Which? getting it wrong, noone is infallible.

In terms of reliability, though, which is what the original question was about. Which? do lots of surveys of their members (Joe Public) to gather actual breakdown statistics. So in this case they are probably right.

I have to declare a vested interest here, I am a paid up member of the Consumers Association.

 

[Anonymous]

But surely 🙂 surveys of their members, being a very limited sample, cannot be said to be representative of anything very much! I read all the blurb in Which! before commencing my 'research' and they seemed to still habour all the old plams issues of 'high energy burn, limited life and screen burn! All a little off the pace I thought! 🙂 JJ

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="JoJoW"]But surely 🙂 surveys of their members, being a very limited sample, cannot be said to be representative of anything very much! I read all the blurb in Which! before commencing my 'research' and they seemed to still habour all the old plams issues of 'high energy burn, limited life and screen burn! All a little off the pace I thought! 🙂 JJ[/quote]

They certainly moan about high energy use (it's those green issues again!), but not screen burn nor limited life. If they did they would not recommend any plasmas. As it is, for screen size 42" and above,they have 7 screens on their web site's recommended list and they are all plasma. (Pioneer or Panasonic).

 

[Anonymous]

I've had my pioneer PDP506XDE Plasma for around 3 years, still going a treat. Screenburn hasn't even been an issue. I understand Pioneer were doing a free 5 year warranty during march so that inspires a lot of confidence in buyers as well. It is unfortunate that you missed it.