The cheapest full flat screen HD TV at the time we wrote this was less than £80 ... although only just. The price indicates a couple of things, the main one being the size of the screen, as the example here is a 15 inch screen. 15 inches in a flat screen HDTV will look very small.

At the sub £100 price you are also restricted to LCD screens, as the Plasma screens tend to be substantially bigger than 15 inches. You can get a 42 inch Plasma screen HDTV for less than £400 which is similar to the price of an LCD TV of that size.

If you are very restricted by your budget you will want the best you can get for your money, or if your budget is really tight you may just want the cheapest you can get. On the upside if you can not afford much more than £100 you do not have to make the choice between LCD and Plasma, as plasma screen TVs are not really available in that price range.

The general reliability of televisions is excellent nowadays and you are unlikely to get any real problems with whatever HDTV you decide to buy. The thing to remember is the cheap TVs are cheaper for a reason. You can not expect to get a full featured all singing all dancing HDTV for less than a hundred pounds. If you bought the Bang & Olufsen 103 inch HDTV you could expect all the best features, but it does cost £100,000 and really can enter a list of "cheapest" full flat screen HD TVs even if they are the cheapest 103 inch screen ... which they aren't. If you are looking for the biggest you can buy for the money you have, rather than the cheapest possible then you just look at the sizes available and then stop when you hit the amount of money you have to spend.

As I said before you can not afford to be too fussy when you are looking for the cheapest, of anything. There are some choices in the cheap bracket but these are limited. You are probably going to end up with an own brand or a brand you have never heard of but that is not necessarily a bad thing, as they are all pretty reliable and some are just subsidiaries of larger, better known brands. There is an advantage to buying the cheap units, because they are LCD screens they tend to last longer than a Plasma screen TV.

Overall you will find the cheap units should be reliable and as long as you are happy with the picture and the size, you can buy your TV for less than £100. Remember this price is for a new TV, if you are happy with a refurbished or second-hand TV, you can get even better bargains.