Toshiba Regza 37XV505D review

It's not quite as affordable as LG's 37LF75, but £650 is still a remarkable price for a 37in, 1080p TV from a major brand.

There are no signs of it being built to a budget, with its smart, glossy front bezel, three HDMI inputs and the full complement of sockets.

The default Dynamic colour profile was too lurid, but switching to Standard produced better results. It still needed some tweaking to eliminate clipping of vivid tones, but the smart menu system made it easy to adjust settings and apply customised profiles to different inputs as required. Having done so, the picture wasn't as bright and vibrant as Panasonic's TX-37LXD85 or Hyundai's E425D, but the black level was the darkest of the three. The 1080p footage was sharper than the eye could see at normal viewing distances, although this might be seen as an argument against - rather than for - buying a 1080p TV.

As with Toshiba's 32in TV, this 37in model did a fantastic job of sprucing up Freeview broadcasts, smoothing over blocky colours and suppressing MPEG2 compression artefacts. The EPG's appearance is a bit of a letdown, but it's informative and easy to navigate. Changing Freeview channels was pretty slow at around five seconds, though. Sounds were warm and full-bodied, though not quite as detailed as those from Panasonic's TVs.

DVD playback over analogue connections benefited from the same smooth gradients and sharp detail as Freeview playback, although there was a gentle fizz of interference around sharply contrasted parts of the image. Playing the same DVD in our Blu-ray player connected via HDMI eliminated it, but picture quality was a little smoother when we upscaled to 1080p in the player rather than the TV. The VGA input made a mess of a 1,920x1,080 Windows desktop, but when using a DVI-to-HDMI cable and selecting the Exact Scan aspect ratio, we were able to achieve a pixel-sharp image from a PC.

Toshiba's Regza 37XV505D isn't perfect, but it handles every video source superbly and its price is extremely competitive.