Toshiba 47ZV650U

Toshiba 47ZV650U

The Toshiba 47ZV650U, a 47-inch HDTV, features solid picture quality, but it could be easier to use. The Toshiba the Toshiba 47ZV650U ($1300, as of 09/20/09) is a pleasant-looking HDTV that delivers a more than acceptable viewing experience, but its rough edges need smoothing, and it's short on extras. In the PC World Labs' tests, the 47ZV650U put up slightly above average scores in picture quality. Color saturation is a weak point for the 47ZV650U. One judge complained that a scene in the Phantom of the Opera DVD looked murky. Another noted that a scene from The Dark Knight Blu-ray Disc looked hazy, and complained about the "washed out" skin tones in a 720p Wheel of Fortune clip. Like some of our other judges, I found the images dull, flat, and uninteresting--the result of a slight lack of color saturation. But I liked how it handled 720p content, giving it high marks in the clips at that resolution. The 47ZV650U did moderately well in four out of five benchmark tests. Instead of actual movie and television content, the benchmarks use specially designed moving and still images intended to catch certain problems common in HDTVs.