Push and pull a little on the contrast and brightness settings, and this TV will render the complex cloudy sky with the kind of shading and subtlety that outstrips plenty of last year’s models at this level, including those of bigger brands, such as Panasonic. Samsung LG Philips Sony Toshiba Sharp TCL Salora Thomson Grundig JVC Medion Haier Hisense Acer Panasonic Toshiba continues to support Dolby’s dynamic HDR format for improved picture quality (at least over HDR10) with apps such as Netflix and Disney+. Again, there’s Dolby Vision and Atmos sound processing makes it to this model, while there’s the ‘Works with’ support for both Alexa and Google, so a connected device is required if you want to operate the TV ‘hands-free’.

The UL21 is one of four 4K and HD Ready TVs launched by Toshiba at the end of 2021 that balance a handful of high-end features at an affordable price. Used to ensure user session remains with the same AWS instance to improve performance and stability. You can switch that off and try the DTS processing instead, which we feel is an improvement. It means losing the width, but there’s a touch more clarity and precision about the audio as it offers up a better sense of detail.The colour gamut coverage is also limited, with the UK31 struggling to cover the whole of BT.709, let alone the larger DCI-P3 standard used for HDR. In the more accurate Cinema mode, the Toshiba is only able to cover 81% of DCI-P3, resulting in an average DeltaE of around 19, which is fairly high and means colours aren’t reproduced very accurately. On the plus side, the TV rendered the fine detail in native 4K content with skill. In fact, the only HDMI 2.1-related feature the 50UK3163DB’s HDMIs do support is automatic low latency mode switching, so that the TV can activate its low input lag game mode when a game source is detected. This results in a seriously good input lag figure of just 10.1ms. Die playing in Call Of Duty on the Toshiba 50UK3163DB and you’ve only got yourself to blame. There’s a combination of rear and side-facing connections, with the latter located 33cm from the edge of the screen. As a result, you shouldn’t see any cables poking out of the side when viewing the TV from the front. Contains a token that can be used to retrieve a Client ID from AMP Client ID service. Other possible values indicate opt-out, inflight request or an error retrieving a Client ID from AMP Client ID service.

The use of direct LED lighting, where the LEDs sit right behind the screen rather than around the edges, joins the extensive HDR support in boding well for the 50UK3163DB’s picture quality, as this approach typically yields better contrast than lighting systems that use LEDs ranged around the picture’s edges.There are more premium features this year with Atmos sound and eARC connectivity on selected sets. Alexa integration is a headline feature, but there’s assistance from Google on some models too.

This is a good TV from Toshiba and a big improvement on what we’ve seen from this former great in recent years. The sound performance is poor, but that’s not an insurmountable problem, given that we’d usually advise some form of external sound source anyway. Toshiba has also recently introduced an Ambient Screen Mode called ‘Alexa Home Screen’ for its Alexa Built-In models. This acts as a customisable screensaver feature when the TV is in standby mode, displaying information such as the time, weather and calendar events.To test the Toshiba UK31 we used Portrait Displays Calman colour calibration software. Toshiba UK31 LED LCD review: Gaming The 50UK3163DB isn’t just unexpectedly bold with HDR, either. It also gets impressive value from its native 4K resolution. Good-quality native 4K sources, especially 4K Blu-rays, look much richer in texture, clarity and depth than HD images do, despite the 50-inch screen being fairly small by today’s 4K standards.