A friend of mine bought an Apex brand television yesterday. His old one finally gave up the ghost after ten years and a life without television was just not worth leading. He wants to buy himself a large screen projection but since he is moving back to his parents for a month while he buys a new place, he can’t buy one yet. He compomised and bought himself a 20 inch Apex television.
This thing seems to be the shittiest television money can buy. THe image is horribly pixelated. When he plays the DVD player, the image is in black and white. I think he is going to return the thing soon, but that leaves us with one burning question. Are Apex electronics synonomous with poor quality, or did my friend just get a lemon?
Apex is a cheapo electronics maker wiht plants in the PRC. But some people liked their older DVD players since modifying them (to make them region free, etc.) was so easy. They’ve been leaned on and supposedly cleaned up their act, but there will probably be “hidden features” to leak out again.
But that’s DVD players. Overall, one of the better makers in their category, but just not a very good category to be in at all.
Don’t be stupid and try to save $20 on home electronics. Get a known quality brand.
I’ve had one experience with Apex. A DVD player. Worked great for two weeks, and then it would turn everything green, pixelate everything, lock up, and all but catch fire. Took it back to Circuit City and they told us that “Normally, they wouldn’t take it back, but they had several dozen in the back that had been returned”. May be cheap, but it certainly isn’t good. After talking to friends who had Apex stuff, it doesn’t seem to be a fluke.
My Apex DVD player cost about ~$60 a year and plus ago. It’s always worked fine and still does, but I recognized it from the get go as a potentially disposable appliance.
They have some notoriety for selling projection big screen TVs for stoopid prices like $399 USD. I’ve heard good things about their portable DVD player though. Quality is suspect, but most consumer-grade electronic devices are disposable these days, no matter what brand you buy.
There’s a reason they call us “consumers”, ya know…
I’ve been very happy with my Philips-branded Apex DVD player. $100 from Wal-Mart. It plays MP3 and MP2 audio, MPEG1 and VCD video, and displays JPEGS – all from burned CDs / CD-Rs. DVD-wise, it converts (very well, BTW) PAL and SECAM to NTSC, is easily (via the remote) made region-free, and supports progressive scanning on HDTVs. Very impressive for such a wee little price.
I just bought a 20" flat screen Apex for my workout room. The sound sucks, but I normally workout with the sound off (closed caption) anyway and listen to music with headphones. The picture is pretty nice considering the amount I paid for it ($150). If it works for a couple years I’ll be satisfied.
Apex is cheap & doesn’t have many features. As a matter of fact, not one of their dvd players displays closed captions. I’d take that tv back & get another model.
Only one experience with the brand. A bad one.
A DVD player that lasted 6 months. Circuit City wouldn’t take it back, I didn’t want to pay labor just to look at it, I have it somewhere in a corner of a closet!..
Somebody wants a broken DVD player?!
I didn’t quite have an Apex DVD player catch fire, but I had one come close. It self-destructed and melted several of the chips inside. I took it apart to see about salvaging the DVD-ROM for computer use, since it’s just a standard IDE DVD-ROM drive, but some chips on it were visibly fried. I had heard that Apex DVD players are hit or miss, quality-wise, so I bought another identical one and it’s lasted over 3 years without any problems. DVD playback quality is a little iffy - there’s always a weird honeycomb pattern over the video - but that thing will still play some oddball discs that my souped-up Xbox (mod chip, replacement DVD drive) won’t for some reason.
