Toshiba Regza 37RV635D review

Toshiba’s 37RV635D is an LCD TV with a native Full HD resolution, but at just over £400, it’s incredibly good value for a 37in model. It’s a simple design, with a chunky, glossy bezel and a matching plastic plinth for a stand, and it lacks a lot of the clever features seen on more expensive models. This means there’s no networking, Freesat receiver or SD card slot and no motion-smoothing technology.

This is to be expected at this price and the 37RV635D has some unique advantages. One is power consumption: just over 100W is surprisingly low for a 37in TV. Plus, it comes with a year of onsite warranty, which means you won’t have to pay to return the set for any necessary repairs. If you plan on wall-mounting the 37RV635D, you’ll be glad to find that the aerial socket points downwards and therefore the cable won’t interfere with the mount.

The remote control is small but has an intuitive layout, with large number keys. We also like the EPG, which is one of the most detailed we’ve seen, with 14 channels on display at one time. You can quickly change the view to display one or two hours in advance, and each program has a genre icon (you can customise which colours are used for each genre) which also shows the exact minutes past the hour that the program starts. If a program name is too long, the full name will pop-up in a little tool-tip window. Timers can be set to remind you of your favourite programs, or record them if you have a compatible recording device attached.

We were impressed by the image quality considering the price. Colours were vibrant, if a bit overblown, and flesh tones were especially good. The 37RV635D’s Dynamic mode was good, with subtle transitions as the backlight dimmed and brightened. If you don’t like this, contrast in Standard mode was decent as well. We found the Autoview setting made the backlight too dim, finding that Standard view with the active backlight control turned off gave the best results.

Plugging in our laptop via HDMI, we had to change the Picture Size setting to Native to get the Windows desktop to display properly. Text in Windows was clear and easy to read once we’d turned up the backlight (the PC display mode was far too dark) and colours and contrast were great. DVD upscaling was good too, with some jagged edges but no ghosting. In our Blu-ray tests, the 37RV635D compared very well to other TVs, with the most vibrant colours, yet natural skin tones.

The internal speakers pumped out a fairly decent volume and, at 50 per cent, the volume level was enough to fill our spacious labs. Audio quality was good, although naturally it can’t rival the bass of a home cinema speaker set. Nevertheless, the Stereo Extension option widened the sound stage considerably, while Bass Boost helped to make explosions a bit meatier.

If you plug in a USB flash drive, you’re prompted to open the “media player”. This is just a basic photo slideshow that supports only JPEG. It’s a far cry from other TVs, which play music and movies as well, but the 37RV635D is still incredible value. It costs less than most 32in models and despite its lack of bells and whistles, it impressed us with its decent image quality and clear EPG. However LG’s 37LF7700 with integrated Freesat is better value still, so the 37RV635D just misses out on an award.