A couple of months ago, I asked how much you would pay for a new television. Unsurprisingly, half of the respondents said under $1,500, and almost half again said under a grand. Well, if that's you, the Toshiba 5200 LED-based LCD series might be a TV to consider.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
While it doesn't have many features to speak of, unless you count 120Hz, it does boast decent picture quality for the price. Black levels are better than many of its nonplasma peers can conjure up and shadow detail is fairly good. The main picture quality drawback is color, if you want Skywalker Ranch-style accuracy you're better off going for a different brand. The Toshiba's odd color and grayscale controls make it difficult to wrestle something more faithful than the TV's oversaturated Movie mode. If you're paying about a grand, I would still say you should seriously consider the Panasonic UT50 instead, but the Toshiba does a decent job of home entertainment for the modest price.
Series information: I performed a hands-on evaluation of the Toshiba 50L5200U, but this review also applies to the other screen sizes in the series. All sizes have identical specs and according to the manufacturer should provide very similar picture quality.
Models in series (details) | ||||
Toshiba 40L5200U | 40 inches | |||
Toshiba 46L5200U | 46 inches | |||
Toshiba 50L5200U (reviewed) | 50 inches |
Design
When you've been following TV design closely over the last few years, you begin to see patterns and perennial trends. Silver-and-black bezels bled into piano black and then recently into metallic finishes. But you don't have to look that hard at the Toshiba to see it looks like a lot of other TVs. That is, it features a piano-black bezel with a subtle, silver triangle at the bottom. It has a simple rectangular stand at the bottom.
As there's no Smart TV component, the onboard menus are quite simple and fairly easy to navigate, with a stark black-and-green color scheme. The remote control is also a fairly straightforward affair, though the location of the menu button in the bottom right of the D-pad will initially confuse users used to it being top left.
Key TV features | ||||
Display technology | LCD | LED backlight | Edge-lit | |
Screen finish | Glossy | Remote | Standard | |
Smart TV | No | Internet connection | No | |
3D technology | No | 3D glasses included | N/A | |
Refresh rate(s) | 120Hz | Dejudder (smooth) processing | Yes | |
DLNA-compliant | No | USB | Photo/Music/Video |
Features
In a refreshing change among TVs we've reviewed this year, the Toshiba is bare-bones in regard to features and yet still appears to care about giving customers the most picture possible for a budget price. There is no 3D, onboard camera, or even Internet connectivity, just a full-HD screen with 120Hz processing.
The TV does offer the company's DynaLight feature, which is a universal backlight dimmer, but such budget implementations tend to make the picture too dim with obvious transitions, so I just leave them off.
Picture settings: The TV offers the usual three modes plus a user mode, but if you try to alter any settings it immediately bumps you to the Preference mode. There's very little to adjust beyond your usual color controls. Toshiba does offer Green and Blue adjustment in the White Balance Menu, but as I found they're difficult to tweak correctly.
Connectivity: Without any form of internet access, the number of connections are what you could call "economical." You get three HDMI, a component/composite input, USB, and a PC port. Digital audio out is also included if you use the onboard tuner and want to route it to an external AV system.
Picture quality
Toshiba is not the name hovering on people's lips when they think of LCD televisions, but based on the performance of the L5200 alone perhaps it should be. It managed to outperform two higher priced TVs from the Samsung and Sony primarily by producing a deeper shade of black. Shadow detail was also quite good, but compared to the similarly priced Panasonic UT50 plasma it's obviously not able to compete. There was also some minor issues with uniformity with some spotlighting in the corners, though it paled in comparison to the backlight clouding of the Sony HX750. Colors showed good saturation but the television's biggest problem was with color accuracy, with slight green casts to midlevel tones.
Click the image above to see the picture settings used in the review and to read more about how this TV's picture controls worked during calibration.
Comparison models (details) | ||||
Panasonic TC-P50UT50 | 50 inch plasma | |||
Sony KDL-55HX750 | 55 inch, edge-lit LCD | |||
Samsung UN46EH6000 | 46 inch, full-array LED | |||
Sharp LC-60LE640U | 60 inch, info |
Black level: Black levels are the most important measure of a television's picture quality, and compared with the other LCDs in the lineup, the Toshiba performed fairly well here. Sure the UT50 plasma kills it in comparison, but the Toshiba has deeper blacks than two more expensive TVs, the Sony HX750 and the Samsung EH6000. The only other LCD to do better here was the surprising Sharp 640U, which was able to give out deeper blacks than the Toshiba in the darkest scenes, although in many other scenes the two were very close.
Meanwhile shadow detail was solid, with a fair amount of depth and a lack of crushing in dark areas. During the climactic scenes of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," for example, the Toshiba was able to handle the murky scenes well, with specs of detail appearing from within the gloom. However, I did notice some subtle "iris-type" effects in which moving from a light scene to a dark scene would cause the screen to darken slowly.
Color accuracy: While saturation was fine, with vivid colors during bright material, color accuracy was the Toshiba's biggest problem. As this is a budget TV it can be excused for a lack of advanced color controls, but the TV is simply is not able to reproduce accurate colors. Low level skin tones are a bit too green, which means that in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II," our hero Harry looks even sicker than usual. This wasn't a problem with any of our comparison TVs. Bear in mind this was in our calibrated picture, which itself was an improvement on the overly blue and deeply crushed Movie mode.
In our testing lineup the only other TV to give a green cast was the UT50, but its talents in other areas mean that it's still the better TV overall.
Video processing: While there were traces of judder during the flyover of the Intrepid during our "I Am Legend" test, it wasn't quite enough to warrant a failing grade. The TV was able to pass all of the other picture processing tests without a glitch, so it should be able to handle most sources you subject it to.
Uniformity: As an edge-lit LED, uniformity can suffer, but the Toshiba performed relatively well. Compared against the Sony HX750, the Toshiba had a little bit of spotlighting in the corners but none of the backlight clouding of the Sony.
On a recorded game of ice hockey there was a "dirty-screen" effect in which light parts of the screen looked like they had a smudge on them, but this wasn't noticeable enough to warrant recommending against this model.
Off-axis viewing of the Toshiba was OK with a tell-tale purpling of blacks at extremes, but the competitive Samsung and Sharp behaved similarly.
Bright lighting: The Toshiba features a glossy screen, and this coating can have a detrimental effect on use in a bright room because you end up looking at a reflection of yourself. There is what appears to be an antireflective filter on the TV, as use in a room with a mix of overhead lights and natural light was possible without eyestrain. The Samsung and Sharp performed in a similar way with some slight reflection on black bars, but not enough to distract you from a movie.
GEEK BOX: Test | Result | Score |
---|---|---|
Black luminance (0%) | 0.0088 | Good |
Avg. gamma | 2.1355 | Good |
Near-black x/y (5%) | 0.2711/0.2822 | Poor |
Dark gray x/y (20%) | 0.3233/0.3399 | Poor |
Bright gray x/y (70%) | 0.3123/0.3239 | Average |
Before avg. color temp. | 8002.5694 | Poor |
After avg. color temp. | 6592.6278 | Good |
Red lum. error (de94_L) | 1.7357 | Average |
Green lum. error (de94_L) | 5.4944 | Poor |
Blue lum. error (de94_L) | 7.673 | Poor |
Cyan hue x/y | 0.2144/0.3142 | Poor |
Magenta hue x/y | 0.3345/0.155 | Average |
Yellow hue x/y | 0.4208/0.4858 | Poor |
1080p/24 Cadence (IAL) | Pass | Good |
1080i De-interlacing (film) | Pass | Good |
Motion resolution (max) | 700 | Average |
Motion resolution (dejudder off) | 330 | Poor |
PC input resolution (VGA) | 1,920x1,080 | Good |