VIZIO VBR122 Review: A Basic, Inexpensive Blu-ray Player


PC World
November 22, 2011
By Lincoln Spector

If you're looking for a bargain-priced Blu-ray player, the Vizio VBR122 makes an excellent choice. For $110 (as of November 3, 2011), you get very good image quality and a large selection of streaming Internet services. You also get a nifty remote control that becomes a QWERTY keyboard when you flip it over.

As television accessories become more Internet-oriented, users are finding themselves having to enter text--usually passwords and search terms--into them. A conventional remote control gives you only number and arrow buttons for handling this job, making it an annoying chore. Remote-control phone apps offer an option, but they're not a cure-all.

I vastly prefer the VBR122's solution: a two-sided remote. On one side, it's a conventional remote control. Turn it over, though, and you have a QWERTY keyboard. This simple, clean approach works in situations where remote-control apps on a smartphone can't do the job (such as for Wi-Fi passwords and Netflix searches). Vizio doesn't provide iOS or Android remote-control apps--but with this keyboard, you don't need them.

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