Dell: Consumers Prefer Our Plasmas to Sony's

Dell released the results of a research study it commissioned in four cities that shows consumers who viewed its plasmas vs. those of Sony in a head-to-head challenge preferred the Dell models by a large margin. According to the company, nearly 70% of those surveyed chose Dell's W4200HD plasma television over Sony's KDE-42XS955 HD model, based on picture quality and price.

Guideline Research, on behalf of Dell, conducted the Dell HDTV Challenge at shopping malls in Boston, Chicago, New York City and San Francisco. It pitted the competing plasmas against each other in viewings of indoor and outdoor scenes from a high-definition movie, after which the approximate prices were revealed. The full study can be viewed at www.dell.com/HDTVchallenge.

I find it interesting that Dell compared its plasmas to Sony's, which are generally not regarded as that company's core strength. It would be nice to see Dell perform another study that pits its plasmas against industry leader Panasonic as well as others like Pioneer, LG and Samsung. That kind of Pepsi challenge would probably produce more meaningful results.