Toshiba 32RL958 review

The USB ports can also turn the TV into a rudimentary PVR if you have a spare USB stick or hard disk to hand. We connected a blank 2.5in hard disk that can run solely on USB power and had no trouble using the scheduled recording and time shift functions conveniently placed on the remote control. It isn’t going to replace a Sky+ or Virgin set-top box, but we didn’t have to format the USB drive before using it, which is handy if you only want to record programs occasionally and don’t want to tie up your hard disk.

Whether you’re playing it back or watching it live, standard definition TV looks surprisingly good at 1,920×1,080. You must sit much closer to the screen to see the digital noise artefacts that are typical of broadcast TV, as you don’t notice them when viewing more than a few feet away. High-definition broadcasts look much better, with sharper images that show plenty of detail. Colours look overly saturated at the default picture settings, but with a few quick changes we came away impressed.

It’s only when we switched to our dark Blu-ray footage that the RL958’s major weaknesses were revealed. There’s definite backlight clouding around the right side of the screen, which meant black images appeared milky grey. You can reduce the backlight to compensate, but it never truly goes away.

As you might expect from such a small TV, the internal speakers aren’t very loud and sound a little tinny.

With very few similarly priced TVs having quite such comprehensive feature lists, the 32RL958 is a bargain. Yes, you could buy a bigger screen for only slightly more, but it’s unlikely to have integrated Wi-Fi, Smart TV or DLNA media support. Its picture quality isn’t going to blow you away, but it’s a massive improvement over any own-brand/no brand sets from the supermarkets. If you’re after a second TV, this could be a great buy.