Toshiba 37WLT58 review

The menu system looks great with brightly coloured graphics separated into various options using clear icons. There are three unlabelled picture presets, which only appear to adjust brightness levels, and a wide range of other standard and advanced settings. You can fine-tune the picture as far as adjusting individual colours and experiment with features such as Black Stretch, which exaggerates dark areas to improve contrast.

There's also a varied group of sound settings, including a bass booster and some amusingly titled SRS WOW sound effects. These attempt to recreate surround sound from the TV's stereo speakers with varying levels of success. You can individually adjust the effects to sound more spatial, focused or to add depth.

Digital channels are accompanied by an equally attractive 7-day electronic programme guide. The colourful menus are uncluttered and easy to read, but while digital menus elsewhere include moving thumbnails of the current programme, the EPG itself doesn't.

Not all the 37WLT58's functions are terribly effective, but if you like to tinker there's plenty to play with, although the unresponsive remote occasionally frustrates. The tall, tapered design is well arranged and spacious but a touch temperamental. And it's too easy to unwittingly flick the slide switch, which changes the device it controls, leaving the remote useless until you realise what's happened.

Performance
Picture performance is more than competent without threatening the true class leaders -- but the competitive price makes it easier to forgive the 37WLT58 for its slight flaws.

Despite the wealth of picture-processing technology, images are still affected by widespread instability, with TV broadcasts suffering the most. As with most flat screens, analogue programmes are afflicted by a cacophony of white noise and blurred colours that's best left ignored. The bright digital TV pictures are far superior, using strong colours and solid definition, but movement could be smoother and backgrounds frequently fizz.

Playing DVDs produces a cleaner picture, which progressively improves as you advance through the hierarchy of connections from analogue Scart to digital HDMI. Upscaled digital images from a corresponding HDMI DVD player enhance colour vitality and deepen black levels to create meticulous detail and improved contrast. But there's still a smattering of instability, especially with colour and shadow gradations, that class-leading screens cope better with.

Only subtle weaknesses separate the 37WLT58 from reference screens like Sony or Panasonic but the law of diminishing returns dictates that you could spend significantly more in search of only slight improvements.

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Nick Hide