Toshiba 22EL833 > Reviews (1)

We bought this Toshiba television to go in the dining room, with so many people in our house it can be stressful when programmes clash so we thought it made sense to buy a (slightly bigger than) portable TV for that room so that someone could go in there if they particularly wanted to watch something.

We chose this TV simply because it was on offer for £169 in Tesco, it had everything we were looking for so I popped it into the trolley on a whim. After rescuing it from the ridiculously huge box it came in I (read: Mark) proceeded to set it up. The set up of this television is so easy; after switching it on and inputting a few details the TV really does it all by itself, pausing only a few times for you to select an option to ensure the settings are personalised to your requirements.

This TV is HD ready, an important consideration for us as we were planning to connect a Blu-Ray player to it, and also has built in Freeview (although unfortunately not HD Freeview). The Freeview was as simple to set up as the TV itself, I actually did this myself and once I'd found the correct menu (a bit of a mission actually) it was a simple case of pressing 'start' and allowing the TV to scan for available channels. This was done and dusted within five minutes, the only problem being that for some reason the Freeview channels had over-ridden the five terrestrial channels - I had to call Mark to deal with this and after a few shouty episodes he managed to suss it out.

Once set up using the TV and remote control is extremely easy - as usual with Toshiba there seem to be too many buttons on the remote and not all of them we use (or even know what they are), the instruction manual doesn't dwell for long on the remote and doesn't feature an illustration naming each button so some of them I doubt we'll ever know what they're for! The simple channel/volume changing buttons and the various menu options are easy to find and use, with the remote itself being designed in a way that you'll quickly become oriented to it and be able to practically use it in the dark.

This TV is LED backlit, which visually means it provides crisp clear picture and better contrast levels and functionally means it consumes less electric than other types of television. I'm looking at the screen now and even when watching non-HD images I'm very impressed with the colours displayed on screen, personally I think contrast levels are excellent on most modern TVs so I wouldn't say this is particularly special in this respect although it's as good as on our main TV in the living room. When watching in HD the screen comes to life, delivering deeply coloured and incredibly sharp images - this became completely apparent over Christmas while watching 2012 with the kids, despite the fairly small 22" screen the film was as crisp, sharp and colourful as you'd expect from a Blu-Ray disc.

As well as watching TV and films, we have also connected a PS2 to the television so the kids can have a play - this was a simple case of plugging the console into the back of the TV and allocating a channel for its own personal use.

This would be the case whether it was a different console, a second DVD player or even a Sky box - I've listed the various different types of connection available at the end of the review, basically it's all gubbins to me so I'll let you read the facts for yourself! It is, apparently, possible to connect your modem to the TV and use it as a monitor for surfing the internet - I say apparently as we haven't done this but my brother-in-law tells me it can be easily done.

I'm 100% happy with this TV and considering the ease of use and quality I think we got quite a bargain. Aesthetically the design is good, the black casing of the TV is stylish (as you'd expect from Toshiba) although these types of flat panel TVs all look pretty similar so I'm not sure a purchase would be decided on looks anymore. We haven't had any screen burn or issues with the screen and I doubt we will have based on my experience with other Toshiba TVs of a similar standard. Obviously the fact that this is a 22" TV means it's not suitable for use in a large room or the living room, in our dining room however the picture remains clear and crisp wherever you're standing or sitting and the volume can be adjusted in increments to the perfect level.

So, that's my experience of this television and now onto the aforementioned gubbins. There are two HDMI connections, a USB port and a Ci slot (what?) for you to use and also a scart socket - which Mark says is very important, I say what's a scart for?! The aspect ratio for this TV is 16.9 and sound is delivered through Dolby Digital, there is a parental control function (note to self, set it to avoid Jonathan Ross and Eastenders) and it has a fairly standard resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. This information was taken from the user manual and may or may not be of importance, I thought it best to include it as obviously different people look for different things when shopping for a TV.