To help us provide you with free impartial advice, we may earn a commission if you buy through links on our site. Learn more
Toshiba’s 32RL858 isn’t the most attractive TV we’ve seen – at 32in it won’t dwarf your living room furniture, but the outdated silver plastic bezel isn’t exactly cutting edge. Appearances are deceptive, though, as this small, TV has Smart TV features and a Freeview HD tuner.
The RL858 has an array of ports on the back. Three HDMI, VGA, Ethernet and USB are all present, so you should have no trouble hooking up a Blu-ray player, PC or games console. It’s a shame that they mostly face outwards, rather than down, as they could get in the way of a flush wall mount – the TV is just 30mm thick, so would look great mounted on a wall.
There’s no in-built Wi-Fi, but you’ll still want to connect the TV to your network – Toshiba has added its Places online system, which is one of the best-looking Smart TV systems we’ve seen. It’s not as comprehensive a system as that of its rivals – you have to jump through different menus to find different services, whereas on Sony and Samsung Smart TVs they are all in one place. YouTube, BBC iPlayer and film rentals from AceTrax are all present and correct, as is USB and network playback for your video files. File format support is excellent – we had no trouble playing MKV, DivX or XviD video. There’s only one USB port, so you won’t be able to play files directly if you use the optional Wi-Fi dongle (part code WLM-10U2, £32 from www.amazon.co.uk).
We weren’t expecting much from the menu system, based on the rather cluttered on-screen programming guide. It takes up the entire screen and doesn’t have a picture-in-picture mode, so you won’t be able to watch one program while searching for another. However, digging a little deeper reveals a comprehensive amount of image options for a budget set. With a colour management system that gives you control over red, green, blue, magenta and cyan colours individually, the option to disable active backlight control and several noise reduction settings, as well as the usual brightness, contrast and sharpness controls, there’s a huge amount of scope for tweaking the picture.
Out of the box, the 32RL858 copes surprisingly well with both standard and high definition sources. Pictures appear sharp and detailed, even during scenes with lots of fast motion. Colours are amazingly vibrant, leaping off the screen in a way that few other entry-level TVs manage to achieve. Freeview channels were mostly noise-free, although some of the lower-bandwidth channels had understandably less detail. Freeview HD channels fared better, but Blu-ray video is where the TV looks its best.
Although we were impressed for the most part, picture quality isn’t perfect. Dark scenes were the main offenders, revealing some grey areas where they should be black, and we noticed some inconsistencies in the backlight. Some areas of the screen look much brighter than they should, so we would recommend dropping the backlight to compensate.
Even the speakers, which are only rated at 10 watts, are reasonably clear and produce loud enough audio for a medium sized room. As a TV of this size will probably find a home in a second room, we were happy to see that you won’t need to invest in a speaker system for everyday viewing. However, its weaknesses were revealed during our Blu-ray tests – at higher volumes or when producing bass, they start to sound muddy and distorted.
If you’re looking for a second TV to pair with a games console or Blu-ray player, the 32RL858 could be ideal – picture quality is good for a budget set as long as you stick to high definition material, it has Smart TV features and the price is spot on. It isn’t perfect, but it’s difficult to find a better TV for the money. The fact that we haven’t seen the Toshiba set’s main rivals yet means you should wait to see what the competition comes up with before you buy, however.
