LCD is a curious market. In one sense quality has been good across the market for a while now which would suggest a mature market. However, nowhere else has there been such plummeting price tags and rapidly expanding screen sizes. Last year a cheap 22in LCD model cost $600 while a 24in unit cost $1600. Currently on the A-List are great-quality Samsung 22in and 24in models which cost $480 and $760 respectively. Astounding.
It also comes as no surprise that Samsung wins this award again. 97% of its customers were satisfied with image quality and a high 71% said they were Very Satisfied. Even in a market where an overall average of 93% for all 11,000 buyers were generally satisfied, that’s impressive. Indeed, only two companies dipped below the 90% mark: HP with 89% and IBM with 83%.
The overall Reliability stakes were even higher with a 94% average of all buyers being satisfied to this end. Samsung and Sony topped out at 97% while Acer bottomed out with a still-high 89%.
The Value For Money rating saw a little more variance. An overall average of 87% were satisfied but budget brand Chimei scored top with 97% satisfaction and bargain-basement AOC followed with 94%. These last results in particular will please a great many people. Chimei especially has been seriously impressing us over the past year with the quality on offer and its prices have been amazing. It would appear that you really can get away with buying cheap LCDs these days. IBM came away looking overpriced with 62% of buyers being satisfied, followed by 72% of HPs and 74% of Sony’s.
Brand loyalty was unsurprisingly high with an overall average of 91% of all buyers saying they’d buy from the same manufacturer again. This rose to 97% for Samsung’s buyers and 96% for Sony’s. However, it dropped to 85% for Acer, HP and Philips while IBM came last again – pleasing only 75% of its buyers enough to get them returning.
