Toshiba 46TL868 Pro Reviews

Were it not for a couple of irritating traits then there’s no doubt the Toshiba 46TL868 could have been looking at a Recommended - or even perhaps a Best Buy - Award. As it is, the problems marring the images are such that it misses out. It’s a pity that the highly noticeable panel banding eats away the extremely respectable black level performance; and it is equally lamentable that a likely bug in the software causes the motion interpolation engine to seemingly kick in at random as, otherwise, Toshiba would have had a cut-price winner on their hands, particularly as the 3D presentation was so good.. Toshiba have managed to produce a classy looking television for a tight price point, even if the build quality doesn’t feel as high-end as the appearance would suggest. We were also quite fond of the almost retro remote control, even if it was a touch cumbersome to operate. The menu structure is far better planned than those we’ve seen from Toshiba’s recent efforts and the fairly generous suite of ‘Smart TV’ applications now sit happily under one roof. Toshiba Places, the manufacturers cloud based internet service, has certainly grown since last we saw it but it does lag some way behind several of their competitors' offerings, in terms of sheer content.

For its money, the Toshiba 46TL868B is a really excellent TV. It cunningly ticks all of the key feature boxes right now - Freeview HD tuner, active 3D playback, USB and network multimedia playback, Edge LED lighting - and encases them in a fashionably thin chassis that wouldn't look out of place on a TV costing twice as much. As if that wasn't enough, it also delivers HD 2D and 3D picture performances so clean, bright, colourful and sharp that they make the efforts of many other 'budget' LCD TVs seem positively grubby by comparison. There are issues, for sure. Backlight inconsistency during very dark 3D scenes is one, and a pretty flimsy audio performance would be another. But taken as an overall package, with its price positioned to the front and centre of our thinking, the Toshiba 46TL868B is one of Toshiba's biggest bargains yet.

Although the 46TL868 doesn’t manage to hide absolutely all traces of its budget focus, it remains a much more enjoyable all-rounder than it really ought to be for so little cash.