Toshiba Regza 32C3030D review

Toshiba's Regza 32C3030D is part of the company's new budget range of HD TVs. While it's not quite as cheap as Teco's TL312RM, it's a much better set and even gives LG's 32LC2D a run for its money.

The Regza has a good range of inputs, including two HDMI ports, D-sub, two SCART (one RGB) and component. There are both digital and analogue tuners, so you can get a TV signal no matter where you live, and a common interface (CI) slot so you can subscribe to paid-for digital channels, too.

This is an easy TV to set up. All the inputs and control buttons are easily accessed as the stand smoothly swivels the TV from side to side. Adjusting the picture settings is a breeze, thanks to the clear menus. Setting up the TV channels is straightforward using the Auto Tuning feature in the TV's menu. The analogue channels did need reordering afterwards, but this was simple enough. Picture quality was acceptable over analogue, and excellent when using the digital tuner.

When it came to watching standard-definition interlaced video, the Regza 32C3030D did better than any LCD TV we've seen. Images were sharp and completely smooth, with no jagged edges on straight lines, such as the edge of a table or programme credits. HD video also looked really good on the 32C3030D. Colours were rich and vibrant and the picture was very sharp.

Its performance as a computer monitor was also impressive, displaying a pin-sharp image at its native resolution of 1,366x768. Text was crisp and legible, whites were pure and clean and colours were deep and vibrant. Skin tones in our test images looked a little ruddy, however.

Our main problem with the 32C3030D was that blacks aren't pure. It's possible to adjust the screen by lowering the backlight and brightness, but this resulted in a loss of detail in dark parts of an image.

Two 20W speakers are housed in a thin strip across the bottom of the display. These produce a reasonable amount of bass and are quite loud, but get painfully distorted at top volume. There's an S/PDIF audio output and a 3.5mm jack for connecting to a sub-woofer.

Apart from the problem of getting sufficiently dark blacks, the Regza 32C3030D produced excellent image quality, but LG's 32LC2D still has the edge.