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Toshiba’s 22DV555DB is a 1,680×1,050 LCD TV with a built-in Freeview tuner and a DVD player. If you use the TV’s VGA input with a PC you’re limited to a maximum resolution of 1,360×768. Windows text looked fuzzy, due to the picture being upscaled, and the small amount of desktop space felt cramped. If you use the HDMI input for your PC, you can run Windows at the monitor’s native resolution of 1,680×1,050. While this made the picture a bit sharper and gave us more desktop space, we still found that text was a little fuzzy and hard to read. The 22DV555DB’s main failing is its colour reproduction. Our comparative tests revealed subtle differences between the other 22in models here, but the 22DV555DB stood out for all the wrong reasons. Colours were muted and lifeless, and a green tinge dulled reds and made flesh tones especially unnatural. Setting up digital TV channels was easy and took only one and a half minutes. The electronic programme guide shows eight channels at a time, but there’s no preview and the interface is cramped and the text hard to read. The colours, while more vibrant than in Windows, were still inaccurate, and there’s no digital noise reduction to get rid of compression artefacts in the Freeview signal. The one saving grace is the DVD player, which loads via a slot on the left-hand side. Picture quality from DVD movies was much better, and there was very little ghosting. Action scenes were smooth and colours more accurate, although we weren’t able to do a direct comparison with another screen as there’s no video output.
However, £300 is too much to spend on a 22in display, even if it does have a built-in DVD player. The screen really isn’t up to standard, and it certainly isn’t viable as a desktop monitor. LG’s 22LG3000 is a much better multifunction display.
