Is Apex a good brand?

Your kidding, right?

Apex is a marketing name used by a Chinese importer of some of the lowest quality and lowest priced stuff around.

That being said, I have a 24" Apex tv set that is less than two years old that has needed repair twice so far out of warranty. Luckily it is my own tv and easy to repair for a trained technician, plus the service manual was available online for free.

As for the consumer, sure go ahead and buy one if you get the five year service contract because you will probably need it. At least when a major part fails and the part is not available, they will replace the tv set.

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote in news:1135038125.662325.221080 @g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

I know of somebody that purchased an Apex television set. It was a 27 inch flat tube model. He bought the TV even though I told him to purchase the Panasonic regular tube tv for about the same price. While the Panasonic TV had component video inputs and the Apex didn't, he went for the Apex because of the flat screen. It hasn't been two years and it seems like it needs a repair. The picture expands with the brightness, so bad that you can't see the news ticker on like CNN and Fox News.

We have an APEX DVD recorder unit. (We got it for free so the price was right...)

It has the loudest cooling fan I've ever heard....it can be heard across a room at 20'! It also regularly gets into a somewhat funky mode where none of the front panel controls work. This requires a hard power down by turning off the wall circuit at the breaker box. It usually will work another few weeks and then has the same problem. Lastly, the remote stinks. Sometimes even when only 2-3 feet away and pressing the buttons as hard as one can it will not work properly.

Bottom line is in my experience with this one unit, APEX in my book is a synonym for low quality. I'd never consider them for anything.

Bob

Apex is junk. There's a few exceptions though, their AD-1500 DVD players among others are pretty decent, and fairly sought after due to the ease of which they can be hacked to make them region free and remove Macrovision. I wouldn't go near one of their TVs or other equipment though.

Apex and quality don't belong in the same sentance unless it is "poor quality" or maybe "Apex is quality junk."

- Mike

Apex is actually an American company. They do import nothing but low quality Chinese electronics. Andy Cuffe

snipped-for-privacy@psu.edu

For some odd reason, they don't mention that on their web site! Andy Cuffe

snipped-for-privacy@psu.edu

Hi!

Oh, I don't think that's so. Both Sony and JVC have been around lots longer, and have pioneered many things over the years. (Ready examples include the audio CD and VHS video tape...)

I don't know much about the Apex TV sets, but I'd be leery of buying one. However, for the DVD player lineup, you could do much worse, especially with all the no-name DVD players that even grocery stores are selling these days. I've been pretty happy with the two Apex AD-1200 DVD players that I have. Apart from minor video noise in the composite output (that only shows up on some TV sets) they work well.

My one concern with the Apex design, however, was the lack of any cooling on the main DVD decoder IC/video processor. Those chips get very hot in operation and it seemed inappropriate not to place heatsinks on them. I cut up an old 486 CPU heatsink into four pieces. Each Apex DVD player got one with heatsink compound in the middle and small dots of super glue at the four corners of the sink. My own crude tests show that this does help keep the chip much cooler. Perhaps that is why mine have lasted so long--neither one is less than 3 years old, and one gets moderate to heavy use.

William

Not exactly according to this story. He was arrested by the Chinese authorities over a billing dispute with a supplier in China and has been held for over one year without trial.

Still doesn't change the less than stellar quality of the stuff that has been sold with the APEX name brand.

Odd thing about my 24" Apex AT2402 is the picture quality of any of the low end tv sets are not even close to how good it looked out of the box with only minor user picture control adjustments. The convergence, color tracking, geometry accuracy, image blooming with scene changes were all very good, much better than any comparable RCA, Magnavox, Zenith similar tv set.

Except for a problem with loud squeeling which required some careful silicone due to poor quality of the laminations on some coils and transformers and the recent HV arcing at the crt anode due to a total lack of corona dope on the glass of the tube it has not had a major failure.

For the person who would have had to pay to have the set repaired, it would have probably been pitched in the trash bin.

Some of the big name brands have their players made by the same companies as the no-name brands. I recently saw pictures of the inside of a Denon DVD player and a Sylvania (Funai) DVD player. Both were virtually identical inside. The Sylvania lacked many features of the Denon, but the bard and mechanism were the same. Good brands are quickly becoming meaningless. Andy Cuffe

snipped-for-privacy@psu.edu

Another trend I've noticed lately is the resurrection of well known Hi-Fi brands of the 1970's being slapped on Chinese junk. I saw a cheap car CD player branded Dual, obviously no relation to the former company.

James Sweet ha escrito:

I've seen that phenomenon too. Old english electyonics names like wharfedale and bush for example stuck on tacky imported electonics. One which made me laugh way back about 10 years ago was 'dansette': slapped on a cheap music centre and also on cheapo video cassettes. (for those in the states who dont know what I'm on about, think 'Victrola').

Although in this case, those old dansette record players weren't ever respectable quality, but the name is so archaic that to see it resurrected was amusing.

-B

In the last couple years mostly ...... Name brand stuff has been sticking alot of cheap units in their stuff . Orion is one name i see alot molded into the plastic framework of dvd player units

You should trip over to the apex user group and check out the various methods they've developed for keeping those IC's cool.

Most use a larger heatsink with a cpu cooling fan and drilll afew vent holes in the back of the case for air pasage. They also have lots of hacks and mods for the apex's.

My .02 cents. I've got an Apex 1500 DVD player and it will play anything I put in it except .avi files. I've got a Philips 642 POS for that. But the Apex was dirt cheap and it works great. I had all my friends buy them so I could give them my movie files to play. This was before VCD/SVCD players became mainstream.

Paul

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KLH Advent Sansui Philco Andy Cuffe

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Never heard of an ANDY CUFFE brand !! He he he, had to do that !!! Take Care, Kevin