Televisions

This is yet another 32in LED TV from Toshiba that does the business. Whether specced as the centre-piece of a smallscale surround sound setup or plonked in a second room, it offers a heady mix of thoughtful design, watchable pictures and bonus features. £400 may be more than other 32inchers on the market, but I reckon it’s worthy of the price.

Toshiba’s TV marries a considerable brightness output with a fine black level response, while colours are well saturated. All this equates to good picture performance, particularly with HD, and there are calibration tools aplenty.

The slim, silver bezel that enshrouds the Full HD panel is better-looking that many of its immediate rivals.

Via the 32RL858B’s Ethernet port (Wi-Fi is achievable but only by an optional adaptor) you can submerge yourself in Toshiba’s good-looking Places Smart TV portal, which offers Acetrax, BBC iPlayer and YouTube video streaming.

A USB input caters for playback of music, photo and video files. Other connections include a trio of HDMIs.

Very dark scenes do highlight a few backlight inconsistencies – I noticed areas of the picture appearing brighter than others. 

The set can’t match its HD performance with SD material – while TV fare looks quite sharp, it’s susceptible to blocking noise.

High volume and/or deep bass upset the built-in speakers.

Toshiba 32RL858B
Price: £400 Approx

Overall: 4/5