Toshiba 20WLT56 Review

Overall Rating

Picture quality
Sound quality
Ease of use
Styling

Plastic finish

Firstly, I would like to say that when I bought the Toshiba 20WLT56 LCD TV set, I had a real bargain, so my lower score on the value is based on the Retail price of £599. You can purchase it if you shop around for about £450 delivered. I got mine for £380 as a sweetener because of a mix up, but that's another story. SO... back to the set itself.

I had a set criteria as to what I wanted from a TV, and this one was for my bedroom and I needed Freeview and picture in picture, and this one in fact has PIP, PAP, and picture and Text. There are more than enough sockets on the back as it has 2 scart (1 RGB) and a connection for a computer and sound. On the front, behind a pull-down flap, are connections for S Video and phono. There's also a headphone socket just to the side of the TV casing.

Having opened the box I connected the aerial and DVD player I have, and switched the set on. I had the Toshiba Welcome screen greet me. I pressed the one button (OK) which tuned into all the Freeview channels available in my area, and put them in order. Nice one that! No more shuffling them around. You can also tune into the analogue stations. This can be tricky to do, but the picture was equally as nice for analogue.

There's not much in the way of buttons to press for gizmo's and unnecessary things you don't need; after all, you buy a TV to watch a good picture and hear good sound, and this set excels in that department. The picture is crisp and clean with no over bleed of colours; even bright blues and reds are held together solidly, and the blacks are black and whites white, unlike some LCD TV's I've looked at. There's certainly no wash out of here. The picture quality running my Sony DVD player through it was equally as impressive, and I could not fault it there. Just in case you were wondering, it also has several picture format settings, and by adjusting them you can even get rid of those annoying black bars at the top and bottom without too much distortion; something Toshiba call 'Super live', and it works very well too. All in all you have Auto, Wide, 4:3, Cinema, subtitle and Super live, which is more than enough.

The sound is equally as good, offering more then enough umph with 10 watts RMS on offer, and a selection of preset music parameters, including pop and jazz etc, or you can play around yourself. It also has a spatial button which offers a pseudo surround sound. It's OK, but the novelty soon wears off. One nice touch though is the AVL (auto volume level) setting which keeps the volume at the level set, even when those loud annoying adverts come on, which seem to think that people need hearing aids. Another nice touch that.

Like I said earlier, it also has PIP and PAP. This is great! The PIP has a default setting in the top right hand corner, but you can put it into 6 other positions around the edge of the screen. You can even adjust the size of the PIP screen 3 times, giving you a choice so as not to interfere too much with your viewing. The PAP is also useful. This gives you 2 x 10" pictures side by side, and you can swap the sound from one to the other with one press of a button, but you can also listen to either through the headphone socket. This can be useful at times when two people want to watch different programs. The only argument you can have now would be who gets to wear the phones?

Navigating the remote is a doddle as there are only the most wanted buttons on there, and that's all you need.

Up to now there have been only plus points, and there are a few negatives also, which I must point out...

The casing on the set and the remote have a plastic feel, and they do not feel as though they would stand up to much of a knock, BUT as long as you treat this TV with respect and don't throw it around, you should have no problems. I'm not sure if this would classify as a minus point, but the set runs from a power pack, and it is quite large at 8 x 3 x 2, and it can run quite warm when the TV is on, so hiding this box may be a problem for some. It wasn't for me, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

The set itself performs beautifully, and it's slim silver finish would compliment any room, and it does look smart. Up until now I have no complaints.

Shop around and get a good deal, and compare it with other sets, but I doubt you will find a better set for the money.

Members' Comments onSteveTC's Review

• Terry B on 6th Aug 2006

  Agree completely with everything Steve says. It's a great set. Got mine from Digital Point on the web at £390.95 - a snip!

• puretoon on 28th Apr 2007

  It was so lovely to read this review as the person reviewing the Toshiba simply does that! review the set itself and not the 'why's and wherefors' of the store they bought it from.
  
  I know this comment is coming in at a much later date than the review itself, but we've just bought this set after looking at it in our local John Lewis store and believe we've got a right good bargin here!
  It's on undersale just now so the price we've paid IS good in comparison for what you seemingly get with this set.
  
  We had orginally gone in for a 15" Sony but were put off this and guided to the Toshiba instead.
  
  We've actually had a huge Toshiba tele two sets before and, as far as we know, it's still going strong-you can't say that about many things today, so are naturally hoping this ones going to be as reliable.