Introduction and features
Sometimes I have to search quite hard for reasons why a TV I’m testing might be particularly interesting. With the 84L9363, though, its USP hits you right between the eyes.
Basically, it’s an 84-inch TV with a native 4K resolution that you can buy at the time of writing for just £7,500. Incredibly that’s barely half the price of the next cheapest 84-inch 4K TV, the LG 84LM960V.
Obviously I’ll have to be on the look out in the course of this review for the inevitable compromises that must have been made somewhere to deliver such a low price. But on paper at least the 84L9363 has the potential to be the UK’s first genuine 4K bargain. Slightly absurd though that sounds when we’re talking about a TV that costs a hardly mainstream £7.5k!
Toshiba has two other 4K TVs in its current range: the £4,500 65-inch 65L9363 and the startlingly cheap £2500 58-inch 58L9363.
Rival brands of 84-inch 4K TVs aside from the aforementioned LG model include the Sony 84X9005A at a whopping £25000 (!) and the Samsung UE85S9000. The latter uses premium direct LED lighting with local dimming and costs – wait for it… £35000.
Fair to say, then, that for most people the only realistic competition from a cost point of view for the 84L9363 will be a 65-inch 4K model like the Sony 65X9005 or Samsung UE65F9000. But of course, 65 inches is no 84 inches. At 65 inches you’re talking about a TV. At 84 inches you’re talking about a home cinema display. And let’s not forget, of course, that in the 4K/UHD world the bigger a screen you can lay your hands on, the more impact you’re likely to get from native UHD resolution playback.
Design
The 84L9363 doesn’t make a big deal out of its screen size in design terms. Its black frame is fairly slim, focussing you on the acres of screen rather than unnecessarily exaggerating the set’s already considerable physical presence. The contrast of the black bezel with a silvery bottom-edge trim adds a nice little touch of pizzazz, too.
Features
Connectivity is strong, keeping pace with the majority of other 4K TVs we’ve seen to date. Four HDMIs get the ball rolling, all built to the v1.4 standard to support the TV’s passive 3D playback capabilities, while the sort of multimedia features we now expect from a high-end TV are serviced by a pair of USB sockets (for playing multimedia from USB drives or recording from the built-in Freeview HD tuner to USB HDD), an SD card slot (these remain annoyingly rare in the TV world), plus both integrated Wi-Fi and LAN network connections.
These network jacks can either stream multimedia from DLNA PCs or take the TV to Toshiba’s Cloud TV online content platform.
One key limitation of the 84L9363’s connectivity is its lack of support for the HDMI 2.0 standard. This means it can’t handle native 4K sources at higher frame rates than 30Hz without compromising on the colour resolution of the source. But it’s hardly alone in this regard; so far only Panasonic has produced a 4K TV with a true HDMI 2.0 socket able to deliver 60Hz 4K images with full 4:4:4 colour sampling.
Cloud TV
Toshiba’s Cloud TV platform shows signs of promise – especially as the 84L9363’s configuration avoids the extreme sluggishness witnessed with the system on cheaper Toshiba TVs.
We quite like the way a series of avatars are used to recommend different types of themed content from the upcoming TV listings, for instance. And the provision of an electronic programme guide app for your phone or tablet that lets you surf TV listings on that rather than on your TV is very welcome.
However, the 84L9363 comes a cropper with its online video platform support. You get the BBC iPlayer, Deezer, BBC Sport, BBC News, Blinkbox, YouTube, Viewster, KnowHow Movies and Netflix along with a few more niche offerings, but at the time of writing there’s no Lovefilm, no ITV Player, no 4OD, and no Demand 5 – all of which are available on Samsung’s current Smart TVs.
Also a misstep is Toshiba’s decision to slap a big Twitter window right at the heart of its main smart TV screen, despite the fact that – as Twitter is wont to do – the feeds that appear there tend to be rife with unfilterable profanities any kids in your household will doubtless lap up.
Shifting focus to the 84L9363’s 4K resolution, it has the predicted 3840×2160 pixel count, while the heavy-duty processing required to upscale HD and even standard definition sources comes courtesy of Toshiba’s CEVO technology. This should provide enough power to enable the TV to create all the necessary extra pixels to upscale in real time without generating many unwanted artefacts.
Toshiba thoughtfully provides a couple of options for fine-tuning the 4K processing system, one focussed on reintroducing fine textures to 4K sources and one devoted to reintroducing the brightness that tends to get removed from sources during the video compression process.
Also interesting is a Resolution+ feature that claims to be able to boost the sharpness of native 4K content as well as upscaled HD! We’ll look at this more closely later.
The 84L9363 carries an extremely comprehensive suite of picture adjustment tools, including enough colour, gamma and white balance management facilities to secure the set the backing of the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF). In other words, you can pay an ISF engineer to come round your gaffe and calibrate pictures so that they’re optimised for your specific environment.
Wrapping up the 84L9363’s features are an AMR800 800Hz-like processing engine devoted to reducing/removing motion judder, and the passive 3D system I alluded to in the connectivity section of the review.
Taking the passive approach means you won’t get to see 3D in full – albeit upscaled – 4K resolution like you can on the Samsung F9000, Panasonic 65WT600 and, oddly, Toshiba’s own 58L9363. However, on the upside passive 3D on a 4K TV does mean you get to see genuine full HD resolution 3D (rather than the resolution-compromised passive 3D pictures you get on normal HD TVs) without having to worry about the crosstalk ghosting noise or flickering issues still fairly commonly witnessed with active 3D TVs.
Picture quality
I’ve got a mixed bag to report in this section sadly. Let’s kick things off positively, though, with the main good news about the 84L9363’s picture quality: its native 4K playback.
Fed the full gamut of native 4K sources we can currently lay our hands on (which is essentially a series of lengthy demo reels from Sony, Samsung, LG and, of course, Toshiba itself) the 84L9363 consistently delivers on the key thrills I chiefly associate with native 4K. Obviously this includes the extra sense of texture and detail you’d expect from including four times as many pixels in the picture as you get with normal full HD images – and the sheer enormity of the 84-inch screen does no harm to the impact of all those extra pixels.
Also key to my love of 4K is the extra depth you get with ‘large scale’ images like views across cities or landscapes. Having more pixels to play with enables the screen to resolve smaller details right in to the distance, meaning you don’t get into that ‘flattening off’ sensation as quickly as you do with HD. Again the impact of these endless vistas is particularly spectacular on a screen as big as this.
Colour
Colours, too, benefit from the 4K difference, as the 84L9363 comfortably illustrates the way colour blends look more subtle, refined and just more realistic thanks to the way the extra pixels can portray more minute tonal shifts.
It must be said that the 84L9363’s colour handling isn’t quite as stellar as that of Toshiba’s 65L9363, which appears to use a particularly high-quality source panel. But it’s still a cut above your typical HD colour performance, and again the benefits are underlined by the sheer vastness of the screen they’re appearing on.
One of the biggest surprises during my testing with native 4K sources is the effect of the Resolution+ processing. For this really does add another level of sharpness to even a native 4K presentation. And surprisingly it does this without making pictures look too gritty or ‘stressed’. We could readily imagine many users preferring to leave this feature on with their native 4K sources – even though purists will doubtless opt to avoid it like the plague.
Motion
When you’re talking about sharpness and detail at the level made possible by native 4K content, the sort of motion blur caused by LCD technology’s relatively slow response time can become a serious irritation. But the 84L9363 does OK in this department, suffering only a little with resolution loss over moving objects even if you opt not to use the TV’s motion processing tools.
Actually, we’d advise that you don’t use the motion processing (at least with 2D material) even if you quite like the smidge of extra motion clarity and fluidity it delivers. During my tests I found that the motion processing tended to greatly increase the chances of the set suffering from lip-synch issues, where soundtracks distractingly slip out of time with the video stream.
Having slipped almost accidentally into negative territory, I might as well tuck into the other problems I have with the 84L9363 that take the edge off its potential budget 4k appeal.
Contrast
The biggest problem by far is that the 84L9363 is lumbered with a pretty uninspiring contrast performance. Deactivate the set’s automatic backlight controls and dark scenes look distinctly grey where they’re supposed to be looking black – a fact which makes them look unconvincing and also tends to lead to some of the subtle detail in the darkest corners getting greyed out of the picture. This sense of missed detail is, of course, particularly painful in a 4K environment.
So why not just turn on the auto backlight controls then, we hear you cry. Because while doing this does indeed produce a dramatically deeper and more credible black colour from the 84L9363 – so long as you use the most powerful Adaptive Backlight setting – it comes with significant problems of its own.
The thing is, as it goes about its automated light control business it tends to create some pretty distracting fluctuations in the picture’s illumination, on both macro (whole picture) and micro (in localised areas) levels. Particularly hard to ignore are the fairly frequent occasions where you can make out clear bands of extra illumination spilling right across dark shots to illuminate any bright elements there might be towards the centre of the image.
Distracting enough at any time, this light blocking issue kicks into overdrive when you’re watching a wide-ratio film requiring the appearance of black bars above and below the picture.
Another (much less disturbing) issue with the 84L9363 is its upscaling. For while the set actually does a surprisingly good job for its money of making sure upscaled pictures don’t look excessively noisy, it doesn’t manage to also present upscaled content with quite as much crispness and apparent extra detail as the stars of the 4K upscaling world (mostly the Samsung F9000 and Sony X9005 series).
3D, sound and value
The final problem I found with the 84L9363’s pictures materialises when you switch to 3D playback. In many ways 3D pictures look pretty great, thanks to their brightness, vibrancy, and their complete freedom from both flicker and crosstalk ghosting. The size of the screen helps too, making sure the 3D images completely fill your field of view for a truly immersive sensation.
However, the quite decent motion processing witnessed with 2D playback vanishes with 3D Blu-rays, as the picture is suddenly invaded by some pretty excessive judder.
Removing this requires you to use the set’s motion smoothing processing, but unfortunately – perhaps because of how hard it’s having to work – this tends to cause some quite distracting side effects, such as blurry haloing around moving objects and a flickery sensation over areas of very fast motion. Plus, oddly, using the motion processing increases the likelihood of you being distracted by lip-synch errors.
Speedy menus
Many of Toshiba’s current TVs have come in for a bit of a pasting where usability is concerned on account of the painfully sluggish nature of their onscreen menu systems. The extra processing power Toshiba seems to have stuck inside the 4K 84L9363, though, greatly reduces this sluggishness.
This makes it easier to focus on the solid layout of the remote control and the straightforward if slightly ‘low-res’ appearance of the multi-hub onscreen menu system.
The set also guides you through initial setup better than most, with a handy ‘flow chart’ approach that means you always know exactly whereabouts you are in the installation process.
The provision of a separate app for accessing TV listings remotely is a great user-friendly touch too, and the content-searching facilities on offer show promise even if they’re a bit cumbersomely implemented at the moment.
It’s impossible to ignore, though, the fact that many big-name brands now ship separate point and click or touchpad remotes alongside their standard ones to aid navigation of smart TV menus. It would be nice to see Toshiba following suit with its next TV generation.
Sound quality
The 84L9363 manages to produce a soundstage that feels big and brash enough to keep the scale of its pictures company – no mean feat when you’re talking about pictures 84 inches across. The speakers are powerful and open enough to go loud and proud, and there’s even a decent amount of bass to be heard. Actually sometimes the set tries a bit too hard with bass, resulting in some cabinet ‘phutting’ and not leaving much room for treble detailing to manoeuvre. But overall the basic quality of the sound impresses.
As mentioned previously, strangely the 84L9363 does suffer rather regularly with a loss of synchronisation between the sound and picture tracks, resulting in a rather jarring situation where people’s lips don’t move in time with the words they’re saying.
Value
Here lies the true heart of the 84L9363’s appeal. By undercutting its nearest 84-inch 4K rival by an astonishing £7,000, Toshiba has made it surprisingly easy to forgive the 84L9363 for its occasional performance foibles. Especially as it delivers its headline 4K images – unless they’re very dark – pretty successfully all things considered.
Verdict
The 84L9363 is so groundbreakingly cheap for an 84-inch 4K TV that I wasn’t sure whether to be excited or worried about it. As it’s turned out, though, while it does show signs of price-based compromise, it’s not the unmitigated disaster I was concerned it might be.
The compromises you’ll have to suck up if you want such a huge chunk of 4K telly action for so little money are an iffy contrast performance that’s especially noticeable in dark rooms when watching movies; some 3D motion issues; a second-tier smart TV system; and upscaling that’s not quite as sharp as that of some rival 4K TVs.
However, the 84L9363’s native 4K images look good, colours are natural and vibrant, and basically the set is more often than not eminently watchable no matter what you throw at it.
We liked
The price here is so right it’s almost insane (despite the fact that most people still won’t be able to afford it), and bright native 4K pictures look surprisingly good. The set’s a solid upscaler of HD too, and it sounds pretty decent.
We disliked
The set struggles to deliver dark scenes with conviction, thanks to a lack of native contrast and a clumsy adaptive backlight system. More online video catch up services would be nice too, there are some strange lip-sync errors at times, and the otherwise impressive 3D playback is let down by judder.
Verdict
If you simply can’t resist the idea of 84-inch 4K pictures for just £7500 it’s unlikely you’ll feel disappointed by what the 84L93673 can do, especially when the AV world reaches a point where you can feed Toshiba’s set a decent amount of native 4K content. Sure, it lacks some of the finesse of more expensive sets, especially in the contrast department, and we’d love Toshiba to get a few more catch up TV channels on board. But what did you expect for something that costs only half as much as its nearest 84-inch 4K rival?!
Also consider
If you’re stuck on the idea of an 80-inch plus 4K TV, you’re going to have to dig very deep to find an alternative to the 84L9363. In fact, you’ll need an extra £7000 to get to LG’s 84LM960V. And to be honest, we’re not sure the LG really justifies the extra on account of its fairly major backlight clouding problems. Beyond that you’ll need many thousands of pounds more to get up to Sony’s impressive 84X9005A.
If you’re trying to keep costs this side of five figures – which, let’s face it, you probably are – then 4K alternatives to the 84L9363 are only found at the much smaller 65-inch screen size level. And easily the most compelling alternatives here are Sony’s outstanding (where contrast, colour and sound are concerned) 65X9005A and Samsung’s stunningly sharp, brilliant at upscaling UE65F9000. Both of these sets cost between £4,500 and £5000.
Panasonic’s £5,500 65WT600 deserves an honourable mention too for its lovely design and HDMI 2.0 socket, though its pictures have a flaw or two.
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