Toshiba 32WLT58 review

Toshiba 32WLT58 Review

Reviewed by: Guy Cocker

Reviewed on: 4 April 2006

Toshiba's last range of LCD TVs lost out to those of Panasonic, Sony and Samsung in the mid-range market, thanks to dull styling, poor connectivity and no digital tuner. The last two criticisms have been addressed in the WLT58 range, but the fact still remains that the WLT58 is a dull-looking TV.

Appearances aside, Toshiba's latest LCD is a decent flat screen that has a number of things going for it. It's the first range we've seen to include dual HDMI inputs, meaning you can connect two high-definition sources up simultaneously and enjoy them in all their digital glory. In fact, connectivity is the biggest selling point on the 32WLT58, with a massive selection spanning standard and high definition.

The TV boasts Toshiba's Active Vision picture-processing technology, and if you can pardon a reviewer's cliché, the better the source you feed in, the better the results. Toshiba's images certainly aren't at the top of the league, and if you're a purist you'll need to look to Panasonic or Philips for your fix, but if you plan on forking out on high definition later this year and want to save money on your display, the Toshiba 32WLT58 is a fine candidate for your shortlist.

Design
Although companies like Samsung, Sony and Panasonic have been marketing their TVs solely on how cool they look, Toshiba's last LCD range was boring. The WLT58 range is a small improvement, but the plastic grey finish and lack of design flourishes mean that it will struggle to command attention in your living room.

The last Toshiba range struggled on connectivity, but this new model makes amends, and then some. If you have the electrical equipment necessary to fill every hole on this television, you're probably spending too much. The clear highlight is the dual-HDMI input allocation, which is ahead of anything else in the 32-inch flat-screen market. We'll see other manufacturers catching up in the coming months, but it's great that Toshiba is pushing next-generation connectivity, because soon people will want to connect a Sky HD box and a Blu-ray player simultaneously.

But it's not like Toshiba has peaked early in a high-definition frenzy. One of the other most noteworthy design choices was to include three Scart inputs, two of which are RGB. This allocation means that you can connect a standard Sky receiver and a current-gen games console for a good-quality picture. The VGA socket on the rear is useful for connecting a media centre PC, and there are component video inputs for an Xbox 360 or DVD player. They accept high-definition and progressive-scan pictures, making them the best quality analogue connections available. The downside is that they're located on the side, which makes them easier to access but means the cables sprout out of the side. However, there are two panels to cover up all the cables once they are in place.

The Toshiba remote control seems unnecessarily large, but at least it's able to accommodate large buttons, which are spaced out but slightly unresponsive. They're well organised, however, and combined with the logical and unobtrusive menu system, the television is a cinch to set up.