Toshiba 47ZV650U

The Toshiba 47ZV650U is the middle child in the family of three ZV650U televisions that have been introduced by Toshiba as a slightly expensive product in the respective size categories, but has the added ClearScan 240™ emulator and features their Deep Lagoon design technology which for them justifies the price tag. So, are we in agreement or did we find that the performance just wasn’t there? A 47-ich screen is at the larger end of the screen sizes and needs a decent sized room or it just may take over, and as with a lot of LCD televisions is too heavy to be wall mounted so you do need the space on an entertainment unit to stand this television.

Overview

As with its smaller 40-inch brother, the Toshiba 47ZV650U is DivX® certified, which means that in the words of the DivX team themselves ‘The DivX® Certified Program for HD ensures support for creation and playback of DivX® video up to HD 720p and HD 1080p’, and to the consumer means that you are getting a product that is guaranteed to integrate with this important technology, which Toshiba hope is going to give their products an edge in what is already a heavily saturated market place, and in our opinion is a good feature to look for, but isn’t make or break stuff, just a nice touch.

This is another 1080p television that is gaming ready and has input labeling, which again is standard stuff for this range of televisions, and with these being the only features which Toshiba rate as ‘key’ on their own marketing pages, we wonder if they are somewhat selling the range short or whether the range just isn’t really anything special.

Actual user review:
“I’ve had mine for about a month now and can’t get home quick enough to watch it every day. Compare it side-by-side with mid-level Samsungs and Sonys, and you’ll have to agree the picture is every bit their equal, and it costs hundreds less. I’m kinda picky and have never had a TV that I could leave in “Automatic” picture mode before, but I do now. Reflections from the glossy screen are not bad at all in my living room, the sound is better than in my other LCD TVs, and recent versions of the firmware have eliminated the setup nag at turn-on (mine, built in May 2009, does not have the issue.) I’m not saying it is the best TV out there, but if you give it a fair look you may just take one home. Toshiba has become serious about playing with the big boys in LCD TV, that’s for sure.” – P.Manuel (USA)

 

Key Features

The big technology is the much mentioned ClearScan 240™ which is an emulator software that changes the television which is actually only a 120Hz set, but with the emulator switch on is supposed to give the effect of having a 240Hz set which doesn’t quite hit the mark at all levels. We felt that Toshiba would be better saying that this is actually just designed to give an anti-blurring effect as this is the bit that does what it says, resolving at between 700 and 800 lines. However, even this is slightly below some of the true 240Hz televisions where we have seen resolution at between 900-1000. Granted that a lower end 60Hz can only resolve at between 300 to 400 lines, and for that reason the Toshiba 47ZV650U does offer a significantly improved performance in terms of anti-blurring.

Sadly the emulator doesn’t help the black level with the Toshiba 47ZV650U, coming very definitely last in terms of the depth of black on the three other comparable sets we tested, giving a much lighter image of black than the others and leaving the picture quality seeming somewhat washed out and faded.

In terms of color we have definitely seem Toshiba improve this area significantly, with the color quality of the Toshiba 47ZV650U being excellent. That was before we even looked at the extensive color management module, which gives even more range for perfecting the picture quality, albeit with the not so good black level being a persistent problem. However, we were impressed with the true to life coloring on things like trees, grass and sky. None of them appeared garish or false, yet the brighter colors we saw in a party scene such as disco lights looked really good too.

Conclusion

This is an average high definition television unit that does offer a good build quality and comes with the Toshiba name which we know is good. However, the technology is somewhat patchy and perhaps they should have waited to release this range until they had upped the performance of the ClearScan 240™ emulator technology to cope with the black depth. The actual screen is glossy and not their normal matte which also gave quite a lot of room reflection, which again did annoy us a little as we found ourselves looking at our own reflection as well as the picture being shown from the Blu-ray DVD that we used in testing the screen when the room was brightly lit. This was a new experiment for the lovely technical people at Toshiba and we hate to say it but it didn’t do too well, and we would hope they switch back to matte screen effects with anything new they release in future or work on the glossy screen so it performs more like a Sony matte screen, as that one works.

Average User Rating:

• “I searched around and has narrowed it down to a Sony or Toshiba. This TV has met all my expectations. Several features that I really like. The effect of 240 Mhz motion flow. Also the TV up converts regular cable pretty well. The last feature I really liked is it compensates if you the TV goes to commercial that is a lot louder. For the price you can’t beat the picture and features.” – J.Borders (USA)
• “I went to best buy to actually compare the latest generation Panasonic and Samsung Plasmas. I saw this TV and it really stood out as by far the best LCD color and picture. It is a crapshoot in the stores with funky lighting, inconsistent video sources, and callibration but this is what I saw. Much better than the Samsung LCD and LED tvs and the Sonys. In fact, it was better than the Samsung plasmas. The only thing that matched it was the Panasonic two top plasmas – the U series was about even and the G series plasmas had the best picture in the store, with the possible exception of the Pioneer Kuros, but it was just slightly better than this TV and the Panansonic has a cheap plastic looking frame design. I came home and had to look up the Toshiba, as I had never seen it mentioned in the reviews of ConsumerReports, CNET and HDGURU, my typical “advice” sources online. Off angle viewing seemed very good as well. There was no sound on, so no idea on that and I couldn’t tell on the glare – not as good as the Panasonic G series, but at least equal to everything else I saw.” – J.D.Leggett (USA)

 

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