Toshiba 65L9300U Review (65L9300)

65 inch Cloud TV 4K LED UHD TV

by Robert Wiley, Senior Editor

The 65 inch 65L9300U is Toshiba's entry to compete with Sony and other manufacturers in the smaller 4K UHD TV market. The L9300 series is quite loaded as a top tier models should be. Aside from the 4K resolution, this set has 3D playback, the new Advanced Cloud TV, and a ton of picture quality features to get the best out of the TV. This TV does suffer from the typical LCD/LED TV issues with color and black levels, but it's not enough to make this TV an unworthy choice for displaying 4K content when it comes around.

This shot from the L9300 really shows off the amount of detail it can display. Depth is also another strong suit with the foreground, focused areas, and background are all clearly separated

Picture Quality Features

Toshiba has really focused on picture quality in their 65L9300U for the 2013/2014 lineup. Since there isn't really much 4K content to choose from, it is important that the TV does the best job it can when playing 1080p and lower resolution content. These features are a big help for up converting 1080p content past its native resolution. The Clear Scan 240Hz refresh rate processing is a feature worth mentioning. This feature is used to further reduce motion blur. The result is smooth fast action playback with greater clarity. Some other additions are the Color Gamut Enhancer and the Surface Brilliance Enhancement. These settings bump up color intensity and brightness for a more lifelike image.

Color and Depth Adaptive Resolution+

The Color and Depth Adaptive Resolution+ is an interesting feature that really caught out attention. This feature really shines when it comes to upconverting content to play on the 4K screen. As you all know, color and depth are two out of many factors that go into our picture quality rating, so we were interested to see how it affected the picture. When enabled color saturation level appear very lifelike, which is one of the highest goals our calibration settings. Picture depth also benefits slightly from this feature too. A TV that displays good depth makes all the difference in good picture versus a bad picture.

Here we still see a great sense of depth in the L9300 series. Notice the brightness issues in both the bright and dark areas of the screen.

CQ Engine

Toshiba's CQ Engine on the 65L9300 is comprised of a long list of menu features that allow viewers to obtain the best possible picture quality for any viewing situation and content. This will be a heavily used feature for picture tweakers out there. Options include: Edge Enhancer, Dynamic Gamma, Color Master and Expert Mode Calibration Capability, and a new UltraClear Dynamic Noise Reduction feature. The inclusion lets us know that Toshiba wants viewers to play with their picture settings since we all have personal preferences on what looks best.

3D Performance

3D playback on the 65L9300 is strong because of the 4K resolution screen. 2D to 3D functionality is available as well. In the past year we have noticed a lot of improvement in conversion features. By all means, 2D content does not have the same results as original 3D content, but this is a great way to refresh movies and shows you are familiar with.

The L9300 displays bright colors that come off a bit over saturated. This picture highlights the screen uniformity issues seen in some LCD/LED TVs.

Advanced Cloud TV

The move to take Smart TV to the cloud is a smart one on Toshiba's part. The Cloud TV functionality on the L9300 makes it easier to achieve a more personalized experience. Since it has been dubbed 'Cloud TV' there must be a way to access it from anywhere right? Right you are. Toshiba plans to release mobile companion apps for all the major smartphone and tablet operating systems. That is iOS, Android, and Windows 8. The move is a step in the right direction for Smart TV integration and interaction. Here is a short list of all the features available:

Family Calendar is a simple feature that lets family members schedule events in a centralized location.
Personal Messaging is kind of like e-mail for the TV
Photo Album allows photo storing and sharing.
Streaming News lets you customize where your live news is coming from
MediaGuide is a TV programming guide with advanced search capabilities and program recommendations
Miracast and WiDi makes it possible to share screens from smarthphones, tablets, and laptops. With both router and peer-to-peer wireless capabilities

Built-in Wifi and Dual Core Processor

The 65L9300U includes a built-in wifi adapter as well as a web browser for connecting to the internet with ease. You also get immediate access to the Advanced Cloud TV features. All of this is powered by Toshiba's CEVO 4K Quad+Dual Core Processor. It may be a mouthful, but it gets the job done. Smart TVs, especially 4K TVs, need a lot of power under the hood to run applications and process images with lots of detail and information. Everything works very well in this realm.

Appearance

The 65L9300U features a good looking gun metal trim with a stand to match. The thin black bezels are less than an inch but much wider than most of the ultra thin bezels found on other top tier models. The display is supported by two pillars coming up from each side of the hollowed out square stand. It ends up being very pleasing to the eye. Other top tier LCD/LED models from Samsung, Panasonic, and LG really have the upper hand when it comes to design though. Toshiba's design is a good one, but modest.

^{Having reviewed and written about Television Technology for over 10 years, Wiley never tires of researching the newest qualitative trends related to the technology. Most people do not get excited about possibilities behind the latest video engine...Wiley does. Read more about Robert}