Goodmans GDVD305DVBT review

The most immediately striking thing about this offering from Goodmans is, of course, its alluringly low price. It’s not the most specced-up machine, but it does boast decent facilities for such a low price.

Analogue alone

These include recording and playing all DVD+R/+RW and DVD-R/-RW discs, an analogue tuner and five recording modes, allowing you to balance recording quality against the available space on your discs.

But we can’t help pursing our lips at the lack of a digital tuner, especially as we face the looming switch-off of our analogue signal. There is at least a second Scart connection to hook up your Freeview box or the like.

Scart is all you’ll get though, as there’s no HDMI input or component video connection. Audio connections come in analogue and digital form.

Budget and you know you are

The good news is the Goodmans performs quite well, considering its budget status. It offers a fair-to-middling performance as a playback machine, with vivid colour that doesn’t stray into ‘low-budget lurid’. But off-air pictures can be a tad unstable.

Build quality is passable, with sturdy and responsive buttons. But it’s never going to hide its budget background through good looks.

Raid your piggy bank

In the end, we’d advise you to spend more to get more. The Goodmans GDVDR319 is a decent enough machine for the money, but there are too many flaws to earn it a better than average rating.

Check out the Samsung DVD-R150 – just £30 more and substantially more bang for your bucks.