Toshiba Regza 32HL833 review

Like a lot of this year’s budget TVs, the 32HL833 includes a Freeview tuner but not Freeview HD, so you’re restricted to standard definition television broadcasts unless to connect an external set-top box. Standard definition footage on higher-bitrate channels such as BBC One had very few artefacts and the level of detail was reasonable. Lower-quality channels such as BBC News suffered a lot more: facial details were often missing and there was a great deal of noise around on-screen text and the scrolling news ticker. Enabling the noise reduction modes did little to improve the overall picture, but there were at least a reasonable number of options with which to tweak display settings.

Once we’d connected a Blu-ray player to test high definition footage, everything looked much sharper and there was a lot less noticeable noise. Although the edge-lit backlight did a surprisingly good job of keeping light bleed to a minimum, we still had to reduce its brightness considerably to try to improve contrast. Even after doing so, blacks still appeared as dark greys rather than their true colours. With no motion smoothing, fast-moving scenes suffered from jerkiness, but for the most part picture quality was decent enough for a budget TV.

One area that really shows up the 32HL833’s budget price is the rather basic on-screen interface. The grey colour scheme isn’t particularly attractive, but it was at least responsive. Helpfully, the OSD minimises when tweaking the image so it’s easier to judge when you’ve reached your desired display settings, unlike several other budget sets we’ve seen. Audio continues to play while you look at the EPG, but there’s no video thumbnail – the image plays behind the EPG. Audio quality isn’t great, as the speakers are too tinny for our liking.

It might have a better than average user interface for a budget TV set, but the 32HL833 costs a similar amount as the excellent Sony Bravia KDL-32CX523, which has Freeview HD, internet TV options and USB hard disk recording, as well as superior image quality. The choice between the two is an easy one.