Home > Consumer Reviews > General Electric VG4268 VCR

This unit replaces a GE 1CVD5027 that I've had for years and enjoyed until drum motor bearings began to fail. When compared to my old unit, setup was a breeze. Unit is quiet and picture quality on 25 inch TV is quite satisfactory. Hi-Fi for tape playback and stereo broadcasts thru home stereo and home brew surround is very good. I wish unit was heavier. When inserting tape, the unit is easily pushed away. I may attach rubber feet to alleviate this condition. Overall, very pleased.

Pluses: excellent picture with prerecorded movies; excellent 'gee whiz' features; good sound.

Minuses: 'jumpy' picture on oversaturated recordings; No LP (middle) recording speed; poor picture quality at slow recording speed.

Overall, I'm happy with this VCR. I can't complain too much about the minuses because the price was so low.

I'd like to explain the 'jumpy' remark: one of our prerecorded tapes had an irritating jumpy picture (rapid vertical shaking) during the brightest scenes. It was not a tracking issue, and it didn't happen on our old VCR. It ends up the tape batch didn't meet NTSE specs; when we exchanged the tape, the problem went away. That said, we recently had a friend record something for us on their VCR, and we ran into the same problem. I can only conclude that this VCR has a poor tolerance for oversaturated images.

Terrific value - lots of features at a very moderate price. Easy to program, whether you use the VCR plus or not. Picture quality fine in both SP and SLP modes. One inconvenience: no timer button on VCR or remote.

I purchased in 1985 a Japanese made GE VCR. It has performed very well over all these years. I was very disappointed in this Thompson made GE VCR. The picture quality in SLP was inferior. I have seen better picture quality I think in all 2 head VCRs, and this is a 4 head. The automatic clock set did not work. I don't know why. The remotes buttons sometimes clicked, sometimes did not, and sometimes clicked and you got double #'s. I do not know if all new VCR units are this way but this one does not have a "tape Counter". I could not figure out after you set the program how to tell the VCR to record that day of not. I did not see it in the instruction manual. I am a college graduate and health professional. I called GE for an asnwer. They lost my call three times trying to find an answer. When I played the VCR and saw the picture quality I would overheat. I asked others what they thought of the picture quality. They said it was blurry. I returned the VCR back to Amazon. They were very nice about it. I would buy from them again.

Don't be fooled by the 4-head hype of this unit. If you are concerned about decent RECORDING quality, you *won't* like this VCR. Take my word for it. I had to send it back because the recording quality was so cheap looking. Programs recorded in the "high quality" SP mode looked like they were recorded on a 2-head machine in SLP (EP) mode then copied from another tape. I was very disappointed. True, the unit has all the bells and whistles you could possibly want, (including a clock on the front panel -- the other reviewer here probably didn't know how to set it); and commercial advance/movie advance at this price are unheard of. It *is* a very quiet unit, and moves from play to rewind to forward very smoothly. Playback quality of pre-recorded tapes is acceptable. If that's all you use it for, then this is a good extra unit to keep the kids or the live-in mother-in-law occupied. However, if you record movies or soaps, or whatever, you will be disappointed in the results. The Sharp unit that's also sold here has almost none of the features of the GE (except the universal remote), and is not hi-fi/stereo, but the recording quality of the Sharp is superior (though still not as good as the Panasonics or Toshibas).