Toshiba 42RL853B

Toshiba 42RL853B review

It's business as usual on the Tosh telly front, with nothing but meek budget offerings. The Toshiba 42RL853B is one of the latest journeyman shelf-fillers. At 40mm thin, it's in line with higher-end designs from rival screen makers. But its plastic back panel creaks in a distinctly budget fashion and build is average. The screen offers four HDMI inputs (one side-mounted), plus component, stereo phonos, PC input and a digital audio output. There's also a single USB input and Ethernet LAN. There's no integrated Wi-Fi (unsurprisingly), but you can always buy a dongle if you don't have wired access. The set does have 'net connection, enabling you to browse your photo library on Flickr, watch catch-up TV via BBC iPlayer or browse YouTube. Since the latter are the two biggest IPTV draws anyway, their inclusion may suffice for some. And it must be stressed that the YouTube XL API used here is actually very good. It grants access to 720p HD streams when they're available, which is more than some other brands offer. The set also lays claim to media streaming. However, in this regard it's largely ineffectual. While the TV will spot PCs and NAS devices on your network, it blanks most file formats.