Toshiba Regza 32RV753 review

The Toshiba Regza 32RV753 has the honour of being the cheapest TV in this test, but on paper it doesn’t appear to be missing very much. Okay, so it’s not the most stylish looking TV, with a somewhat generic looking bezel and stand design, but at £350, we can forgive its staid looks.

Despite its low price, the 32RV753 still manages to pack in four HDMI ports, which is one more than we’re used to seeing on budget TVs. You also get component, two SCART, composite and a VGA input for PC connection. Unfortunately, the 32RV753 can only manage a maximum resolution of 1,024×768 over VGA, but it will display a full native 1,920×1,080 resolution over HDMI.

You get both analogue and Freeview HD tuners built in. As there’s not much HD content on Freeview at the moment, it’s a good thing that the 32RV753 does an excellent job of upscaling standard definition content. You have Toshiba’s Resolution+ engine to thank for this, and it really does do a sterling job, making even low bit-rate Freeview channels watchable.

High definition content is treated well too, with surprisingly good black level response. Toshiba claims a 50,000:1 contrast ratio, but of course that number is achieved through the use of a dynamic backlight. That said, the annoying side effects of a dynamic backlight are less obtrusive in a small screen like this. If you find the changes in brightness too annoying, the feature can be disabled, leaving very respectable black levels.

The 32RV753 turned in a good performance when faced with Dark City on Blu-ray. Blacks looked reasonably dark and rich, while most of the shadow detail remained intact. The subtle green and brown tints throughout the film were also well rendered.

The high intensity chase scene in Casino Royale was also no problem for the 32RV753. The colours didn’t look quite as rich against the sun bleached background as they did on more expensive sets, but it was a close-run thing.

Even the slightly ropey-quality Firefly Blu-ray box set looked pretty good on this TV, which, considering its impressive SD performance, isn’t that much of a surprise. Even the sound quality isn’t bad for a 32in set.

However, despite the fact that this TV is meant to be able to stream media from a network or USB storage devices, we simply couldn’t convince it to do so. It refused to play any video encoded in XviD, whether over the network or from a USB key. It even refused to play MP3 music files from a USB device.

Other negatives include a remote control that looks as dated as the TV design itself, and a horrible looking eight-day EPG. There’s no preview window within the EPG either.

All that said, this is a very good value 32in LCD TV with better picture quality than we could rightly expect at the price. The dated design and the poor media streaming may be annoying, but the surprisingly good image quality and low price make this the ideal TV for anyone on a very tight budget. It wins a Budget Buy.