Toshiba 50-inch 4k Ultra Hd Smart Led Tv With Hdr - Fire Tv Edition Reviews
Our Verdict
The Toshiba 55-inch 4K Burn TV Edition (55LF621U19) is the best Amazon-branded smart TV we've seen, merely mediocre hardware and over-aggressive advertising still weigh it down.
For
- Amazon's Fire Tv set Os is easy to navigate
- Built-in Alexa
- HDR support
Against
- Aggressive advertising
- Confusing app shop
- Mediocre picture and audio
Tom'southward Guide Verdict
The Toshiba 55-inch 4K Burn down Telly Edition (55LF621U19) is the all-time Amazon-branded smart Idiot box nosotros've seen, but mediocre hardware and over-aggressive advertising still weigh it down.
Pros
- +
Amazon'southward Burn TV OS is easy to navigate
- +
Built-in Alexa
- +
HDR support
Cons
- -
Aggressive advertising
- -
Disruptive app store
- -
Mediocre picture show and sound
The Toshiba 55-inch 4K Burn TV Edition (55LF621U19) is Amazon's second crevice at selling its own smart TVs, the 2018 follow-up to final year's Westinghouse and Chemical element Amazon Burn TV models.
While the new TVs are better in nigh respects, with improved display quality, HDR back up and a more refined user experience, the stop issue is still weighed down by Amazon's reliance on tertiary-party manufacturers and less expensive hardware. While the sub-$500 price is a strong selling point, it introduces some weaknesses that make it difficult to recommend Amazon's solid smart Boob tube platform, seeing as it'south tied to less-impressive hardware.
Editors' Notation: (Updated April xviii, 2019) Amazon and Google have made up, and YouTube is now available on Amazon Burn down TVs, fixing one of our biggest problems with the Amazon-powered smart Idiot box.
Toshiba 55-inch 4K Fire TV Edition (55LF621U19) Specs
| Price | $479.99 |
| Screen Size | 55 inches |
| Resolution | 3840 x 2160 |
| HDR | HDR10 |
| Refresh Charge per unit | 60 Hz |
| Ports | three HDMI, i USB |
| Audio | 2 ten ten-watt aqueduct |
| Smart TV Software | Burn down TV Bone |
| Size | 28.7 x 49.one x iii.7 inches |
| Weight | 32.4 pounds |
Design
The 55LF621U19'south design is quite basic, with a adequately thick plastic cabinet. Without the stand, the TV measures 28.vii 10 49.one x 3.seven inches and weighs 32.iv pounds. The back of the TV cabinet is uncomplicated black plastic, but it'southward not one single piece.
The rear console is actually several split pieces held together with visible screws, and the entire display cabinet is pretty chunky, thicker than the TCL Roku 55-inch 55S405 (3.0 inches) or the Insignia 55-Inch Roku TV (iii.5 inches).
The stand consists of ii crescent-shaped feet, fabricated of sleeky plastic. While the stand seems fairly stable, it's not the most aesthetically pleasing design we've seen. The footprint of the stand measures 29 10 12 inches and raises the TV up i.5 inches.
From the front, the 55LF621U19 has a very basic design, with glossy black bezels that are fairly wide (0.7 inch). In the middle of the bottom bezel is a Toshiba logo, while a single button for power and input selection gives you lot a concrete command if your remote isn't handy.
The rear panel too has holes to accept a 200-millimeter 10 300-millimeter VESA mount, should you want to hang information technology on the wall or attach a flexible mounting arm.
Ports
On the left-facing side, yous will notice one USB port, iii HDMI ports (including one with Arc support), a optical digital audio port, and a headphone jack. While nosotros wish these ports were closer to the edge of the screen — they are more than than a human foot in from the edge — they are at least visible and accessible.
On the back, you will find additional RCA composite-video inputs, a LAN connection, and a screw-on coaxial connector for antenna and cablevision. These ports are considerably less accessible, thanks to an inset, downwardly-facing position. Thankfully, the networking cable and antenna or cablevision connections are the sort that you connect once and mostly leave unchanged.
While yous tin employ the LAN port to connect the TV over a wired Ethernet connection, you lot can too use the congenital-in Wi-Fi. The TV supports 802.11ac.
Smart Features
Amazon'southward Fire TV OS has an easy-to-navigate home screen, but it's got lots of content recommendations and advertising banners to deal with. Unfortunately, nosotros couldn't find a mode to disable this advertizing, which makes sense given Amazon's retail focus. So, you'll need to simply put up with aggressive promos for movies and shows on Amazon Prime.
While many smart TV platforms include some course of advertising, usually in the course of recommended content from preferred apps and services, Amazon'south Burn down TV likewise includes ads for Amazon trade. This ranged from the obvious, similar movies and home theater gear, to the interest-specific, like sports equipment and recommendations personalized to my Amazon history. Sometimes, information technology got a piffling weird, such every bit the time I turned on the Toshiba Amazon TV to be served an ad for the Samsung Q7F television.
While many smart TV platforms include some form of advertising, the Toshiba Burn TV also includes ads for Amazon trade.
Vocalisation-banana integration has get common on smart TVs, and Amazon'southward Fire Telly is no different, with the same Alexa voice assistant built in that's found in the Amazon Repeat and similar devices. Using Alexa, you can search for content, adjust settings on the Idiot box ranging from volume and channel command to picture settings and some apps, and control whatever Alexa-compatible smart home device.
Amazon's app ecosystem is quite big, with the Burn TV OS benefiting from the years of app development done for Amazon'south other Fire products. The most-pop apps, like Netflix, HBO Go and others, are promoted and easy to notice on the home screen. Yous'll have to notice the residuum in the app shop. These will be spread beyond 27 dissimilar app categories, including both common smart-TV uses such as Movies & Telly, News, and Sports, as well as less common designations, like Business organization, Reference and Transportation. The Amazon ecosystem of apps numbers in the thousands.
One problem with the app store, nonetheless, is that it tin can be difficult to navigate. Some of this is due to an opaque browsing system that'southward broken up into dozens of categories. You can detect individual apps by searching for an verbal name, but in that location is no manner to browse all of the apps bachelor, short of earthworks through the app shop one category at a time.
Using Alexa, you can search for content, conform TV settings and control any Alexa-compatible smart home device.
Some other problem comes in the loading times. Scrolling through a menu of bachelor apps can take quite some time, considering not all app icons will load immediately, and you will often miss entire rows of apps considering they weren't even on the page when you lot tried browsing through the available options. Search manages to be even slower.
Another upshot is quality control. Many of the apps available are of low quality, and you'll detect foreign listings in the app shop. 1 entry in the Food & Beverage category is simply titled, "Ilovemangoes," with the not-then-helpful app description reading, "mangoesmangoesmangoesmangoes." It's far from the polished experience offered past the more tightly controlled, proprietary app stores seen on other smart TVs.
Categorization is of varied quality likewise. For example, the pop anime-streaming app Crunchyroll is filed under the Novelty category, alongside fart apps and repackaged YouTube channels. Finding a specific app is easier with a search rather than by browsing category by category.
You'll as well have to deal with some company politics. Amazon and Google have oft butted heads, pulling each other's respective services from the list of supported apps on their devices, significant you tin can't go the YouTube app on your Amazon Television receiver. However, there is an app tile found on the home screen, which but says YouTube.com — no YouTube logo, no familiar cerise branding, just plain blue tile with that URL.
It'southward really a redirect to a bookmark that lets y'all utilise YouTube through the Television receiver's built-in browser. It'south an irritating extra hoop to spring through only to utilise an extremely popular app. If y'all want a dedicated app for YouTube, you tin can observe some. I quickly discovered at least 4 in the Amazon app shop, simply the official YouTube app is nowhere to be seen.
Editors' Notation: (Updated April 18, 2019) This upshot has been fixed, with Amazon and Google publicly like-minded to piece of work with each other once more. This means Burn TVs will get an official YouTube app , forth with other YouTube apps and services, such as YouTube Kids, YouTube Music and (about-critical for cordcutters) YouTube Tv set.
Performance
The Toshiba uses direct LED backlighting with no local dimming, which results in some expected deficiencies. When displaying solid colors, such every bit blue sky or championship cards, the console has singled-out shadowing in the corners.
The television set offers HDR support, with compatibility with HDR10 but not Dolby Vision. Oddly enough, the TV doesn't list HDR10 Plus every bit a supported format, fifty-fifty though Amazon Prime Video is one of the few sources of HDR10 Plus content. That said, the HDR back up does provide fantabulous midtones, with plenty of subtle item in shadowy and dimly lit scenes. While the HDR back up is not perfect, it is even so a pregnant footstep upwardly in quality from standard dynamic range.
The 55LF621U19 has some deficiencies in light blooming and backlight consistency, but it does offering rather first-class item. Vivid objects on screen are also a fleck hazy, with indistinct edges, but that's a modest upshot.
When I watched scenes from Blade Runner 2049, the unwanted blooming was axiomatic in scenes of an abased casino. A halo of unwanted light surrounded a brightly lit doorway at the stop of a dark hallway. In another scene from Bract Runner, a deject banking company over a futuristic Los Angeles was striped with banding where there should accept been a smoothen gradient.
The Toshiba has some deficiencies in light blooming and backlight consistency, but information technology does offer rather splendid detail.
I watched a scene from Spider-Human: Homecoming in which a gang armed with conflicting weapons shot up a bank branch, with glowing, regal free energy beams punctuating the action. While these elements popped on screen, a faint glow surrounded them, the result of the Toshiba's less precise backlighting.
Viewing angles also exit a lot to be desired. Horizontally, sitting off-centre by equally little as 30 degrees causes noticeable color shifting. It'south really worse when looking at vertical viewing angles. What looks expert on the TV while sitting on the couch will take pregnant color issues once you stand up upwardly, even with no other change in position.
Our instrumental testing bore out this mediocre performance in our anecdotal tests. Colour reproduction is rich, just inaccurate, as the Toshiba reproduced 98.2 percent of the sRGB color gamut — slightly improve than results from the Insignia (96.7 percent) and concluding year'southward Westinghouse Amazon Fire Television (98.1 percent) but slightly behind the TCL 55S405'due south showing (98.4 pct).
Accuracy was another affair, with the Toshiba scoring a Delta-E rating of 5.05 nether the best picture way available. Lower numbers are meliorate in this test. Once more, the Toshiba scored slightly better than last year'due south Westinghouse Amazon Burn down Tv set (5.v), but information technology was significantly less accurate than either the 55-inch Insignia Roku Television (2.03) or the TCL 55S405 (2.16). This inaccuracy was especially noticeable in pink shades, which all skewed purple.
Brightness was more in line with the contest, with maximum brightness landing at 358.89 nits in our testing. With competitors' scores ranging from 314.xiv on the TCL 55S405 to 385.13 on the Westinghouse, the Toshiba offers centre-of-the-road brightness; that's common for a upkeep-friendly set.
Audio
The Toshiba is outfitted with a pair of ten-watt speakers with DTS sound. The overall sound quality isn't peachy, but the book gets quite loud. It easily filled our testing lab, and it steers clear of the buzzing and baloney that oftentimes plagues less-expensive TVs. Regardless of the volume and clarity, yous'll probably yet want to get a soundbar, because overall audio quality is decidedly mediocre.
MORE: Smart TV FAQ - The Pros and Cons of Smart Televisions
Listening to "They Tin can't Accept That Away from Me" by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, the unmistakable vocals and distinctive trumpet tones came through quite clearly at most volumes. Still, when volume was turned up to 75 per centum or higher, the audio quality got thin and reedy, and there was some noticeable clipping at high book.
With no built-in subwoofer on this TV, bass is virtually nonexistent. When listening to "Resistance" by Knife Party, the lack of bass severely muted what should take been a thumping, driving bass line. What's worse, some of the treble sounded muffled and indistinct.
Remote control
The remote that comes with this TV is rather minimal in design, looking far more than like to Samsung's one remote than the push button-festooned models that come with Sony's TVs. The Toshiba remote feels rather lite and flimsy, but no more so than the Roku remotes that come with a TCL TV or similar. The remote has a glossy ring that functions as a four-way directional pad, surrounded with defended buttons for dwelling, back, menu and media playback controls.
Some other button lets you switch to live Goggle box, while an up and downwards button lets you adjust book and another button lets yous mute the sound. There are four app-specific buttons at the bottom of the remote. These are labeled Prime Video, Netflix, HBO and PlayStation Vue. Thankfully, the branded buttons are located at the bottom of the remote, where you lot tin be hands them.
Up at the top of the remote is a microphone button used to speak to Alexa for voice control. This is especially handy when searching for content and apps, because it eliminates the need to enter text with the on-screen keyboard, and search is oftentimes a much faster method for finding a specific app or bear witness.
Bottom Line
The smart Tv set category is ripe for the advent of another strong competitor to Google'southward dominance and Roku's ubiquity amongst less-expensive sets, but the Toshiba 55-inch 4K Fire TV Edition (55LF621U19) won't be the model that turns the tide in Amazon'south favor. The 55LF621U19 may offer a better motion-picture show than last year's Westinghouse Fire Edition TV, only the improvements in picture quality — adding HDR support and improved colour gamut and accuracy — don't do enough to strongly recommend the Television set on its ain merits.
As long equally Amazon sticks to budget-tier hardware and competes with Roku equally a deal-toll smart-Television Bone, it will go along to seem second-rate compared to the proprietary platforms used by LG and Samsung, or Sony's Android Telly offerings. Every bit such, we recommend sticking to upkeep-friendly Roku sets in this cost range, like the Insignia Roku Idiot box 4K Ultra Hard disk drive 55-Inch (NS-55DR620NA18) or the TCL Roku 55-inch 55S405.
Amazon Fire TV platform isn't bad equally smart TVs go, simply it leaves me wondering when Amazon volition put this platform on a decent Television set.
Credit: Tom's Guide
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/toshiba-55-inch-4k-fire-tv,review-5671.html
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