REGZA 46XV560A

A 1080p 100Hz Toshiba LCD TV with fantastic colour depth.

Good Gear Guide

  • Review
  • Specs
  • Images
  • User Reviews
  • Buy Online

The Toshiba REGZA 46XV560A 1080p LCD television has all the trimmings and a great quality panel. If you can spend a little time tweaking the colour, contrast and brightness settings, you will be impressed with this television.

Pros

  • Great depth, gradation and vibrancy of colour, 100Hz mode is great, great SD upscaling

Cons

  • Needs a little tweaking to achieve the best picture, unimpressive design

Bottom Line

As an evolution from the impressive XV500A series, Toshiba’s latest televisions stack up well against the best 100Hz LCD televisions on the market.

Would you buy this?

  • Price

    $ 3,629.00 (AUD)

The design of this Toshiba LCD TV isn't spectacular; it has a body almost identical to the earlier Toshiba REGZA 46XV500A LCD television, with a piano-black finish and a slim bezel. A non-swivelling base is wide enough to easily support the television but does not protrude significantly past the panel itself. The bundled remote is easy to navigate, with rounded buttons and a clear layout.

The inclusion of four HDMI ports means you can plug in a multitude of high-definition digital devices simultaneously, while the usual composite, component and S-Video analog connectors also make an appearance. The connectors face towards the rear of the television rather than downwards, which might make wall mounting difficult without specialised cables.

The Toshiba REGZA 46XV560A has all the technology you would expect from a top-of-the-line LCD television. A 100Hz mode is included — called ClearFrame — and plenty of other features make an appearance. Toshiba’s wonderfully named Power Meta Brain makes a triumphant return, taking care of noise reduction and scaling.

The most notable improvement on its predecessor is the addition of a 14-bit colour processor. The end result of this is colours that are exceptionally well defined — we preferred the default colour settings over the Samsung Series 8 LCD TV. After some adjustment of colour saturation, contrast and backlight brightness we were very impressed with the accuracy and vibrancy of the picture.

The 100Hz mode is well implemented, smoothing out jittery inputs and improving fast motion response. When watching sport through the integrated high-definition tuner we found that enabling the ClearFrame 100Hz mode made a big difference.

Black levels were also impressive. With the dynamic backlight control, dynamic contrast control and ambient light sensor active, black levels in a dark room were impressive. They still did not rival the LED-backlit Samsung or Sony LCD televisions, but the Toshiba made a good attempt at displaying true, deep black.

A dynamic contrast ratio of 30,000:1 means a wide range of colour gradation and detail can be displayed. Deactivating this mode drops the contrast ratio to 3000:1, but we preferred having it on — dynamic contrast adjustments were smooth and quick and were generally unobtrusive.

Full HD 1080p content was displayed crisply, with a huge amount of fine detail visible in our Transformers HD-DVD and The Guardian Blu-ray disc. We used a Panasonic DMP-BD35 Blu-ray player and a Microsoft Xbox 360 HD-DVD Player for testing.

Standard-definition content was also displayed brilliantly, with 480p DVD content as well as digital TV upscaled smoothly to the panel’s native resolution. This is the content most televisions will usually be playing, so the inclusion of quality upscaling is a huge bonus.

Toshiba’s 46XV560A LCD television has all the functionality you would expect from a top-of-the-line model. With no huge flaws, it is a great choice if you are looking for a quality screen at a good price.

Keep up with the latest tech news, reviews and previews by subscribing to the PC World newsletter.

Be the first to comment.

Post new comment

Users posting comments agree to the Good Gear Guide comments policy.

Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.

Most Popular

Tethering tutorial: How to use your iPhone as a modem
Capacitive vs resistive touchscreens
How to pick the right size TV for your living room
LCD vs plasma vs LED TVs buying guide
The next Xbox reveal: What to expect from the Xbox 720

Best Deals on PCWorld

TVsView all »
Home EntertainmentView all »
ProjectorsView all »
MonitorsView all »
Digital VideoView all »

Resources

TVs Product Finder
Find the product you're looking for with our TVs search tool.