The Toshiba C350 Series 2023 is a budget TV that replaces the Toshiba C350 Series 2021. It sits between Toshiba's V35 Series and M550 Series TVs, and it runs Amazon Fire TV smart platform with integrated Alexa voice assistant support. It also supports Apple AirPlay if you want to cast content from your phone. It's compatible with Dolby Vision HDR and supports the Dolby Atmos and DTS Virtual: X audio technologies. Otherwise, it has little in the way of extra features. It's available in a range of sizes, including 43, 50, 55, and 65 inches.
Our Verdict
The Toshiba C350 2023 is a mediocre TV overall. Its wide viewing angle makes it a good choice if you're mostly interested in watching shows or sports in a wide seating area. It has decent reflection handling, but it doesn't get very bright, so it can't fight glare from bright lights or windows in a living room or office. It has terrible contrast and lacks a wide color gamut, so watching movies or playing games in a dark room is disappointing. With its decent response time and extremely low input lag, it isn't bad for gaming, but it has no extra gaming features. However, its low input lag, wide viewing angle, and proper chroma 4:4:4 support make it a decent choice to use as a PC monitor.
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Great for a wide seating arrangement due to its wide viewing angle.
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Handles reflections decently well.
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It's extremely color accurate without calibration.
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Terrible contrast and sub-par black uniformity.
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Lacks a local dimming feature.
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Low peak brightness in SDR and HDR.
The Toshiba C350 2023 is an adequate TV for watching TV shows. It has decent reflection handling, but it's not ideal for well-lit rooms as it doesn't get very bright. On the other hand, it has a wide viewing angle, which is great if you have a wide seating area, as the image remains consistent from the sides. It has okay upscaling capabilities, so low-resolution shows look alright overall despite lacking in fine detail. Unfortunately, its low-quality content smoothing is limited, so shows from streaming platforms have noticeable compression artifacts. Thankfully, the Fire TV OS has a wide selection of apps, so you can easily access your favorite streaming content.
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Great for a wide seating arrangement due to its wide viewing angle.
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Handles reflections decently well.
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Low peak brightness in SDR and HDR.
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Doesn't smooth out low-quality content well.
The Toshiba C350 2023 is okay for watching sports. It has a decent response time, so fast-moving content has some, but not excessive, blur. It also has a wide viewing angle, so you don't have to fight over the best spot with your friends, as the image stays consistent even at an angle. Its reflection handling is decent as well, but unfortunately, the TV doesn't get bright enough to fight glare from bright lights or windows. Its gray uniformity is okay, but in sports with large areas of bright uniform color, like hockey, the sides of the screen are noticeably dimmer than the center.
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Great for a wide seating arrangement due to its wide viewing angle.
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Handles reflections decently well.
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Decent response time.
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Low peak brightness in SDR and HDR.
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Noticeably darker edges on bright scenes of uniform color.
The Toshiba C350 2023 is mediocre for gaming. It has a decent response time and very low input lag for a responsive gaming experience. It also has a wide viewing angle, so it's a decent choice for couch co-op games or party games with a wide seating arrangement, as the image remains consistent when viewed from the sides. Unfortunately, it's not a good choice for gaming in the dark due to its abysmal contrast ratio, and it doesn't get bright enough in SDR to handle bright rooms, even with its decent reflection handling. Plus, it has no extra gaming perks like variable refresh rate support.
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Extremely low input lag for responsive inputs.
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Decent response time.
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Terrible contrast and sub-par black uniformity.
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Low peak brightness in SDR and HDR.
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Limited gaming features.
The Toshiba C350 2023 is sub-par for watching movies. Its SDR color accuracy is fantastic with minimal adjustment, so you can get an accurate movie-watching experience almost straight out of the box. Unfortunately, it lacks a wide color gamut, so HDR content looks muted, and it doesn't get nearly bright enough to make highlights pop. Its contrast is also terrible, with no local dimming feature to improve it, so dark scenes aren't displayed properly, and blacks appear raised. Its low-quality content smoothing capabilities are limited, so movies from streaming platforms have noticeable digital noise.
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It's extremely color accurate without calibration.
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Can't remove 24p judder from native apps or 60Hz sources.
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Terrible contrast and sub-par black uniformity.
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Lacks a local dimming feature.
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Low peak brightness in SDR and HDR.
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Doesn't smooth out low-quality content well.
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Can't display a wide color gamut.
The Toshiba C350 2023 is okay for HDR gaming. It delivers a responsive gaming experience thanks to its extremely low input lag and decent response time. However, HDR content doesn't look good because it has low HDR brightness and can't display a wide color gamut. The TV's contrast is terrible, with no local dimming feature to improve it, so the TV has grayish blacks in a dark room. It also has no additional gaming features, like variable refresh rate support.
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Extremely low input lag for responsive inputs.
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It's extremely color accurate without calibration.
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Decent response time.
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Terrible contrast and sub-par black uniformity.
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Lacks a local dimming feature.
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Low peak brightness in SDR and HDR.
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Can't display a wide color gamut.
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Limited gaming features.
The Toshiba C350 2023 is a decent choice if you're looking for a TV to use as a PC monitor. It has a decent response time, so fast-moving windows or mouse cursors don't leave excessive trails behind them. It also has an extremely low input lag, providing a very responsive experience overall. It displays proper chroma 4:4:4 on all its supported resolutions with the lowest input lag possible, simultaneously offering sharp text with responsive inputs. It has a wide viewing angle, ensuring the sides of the screen remain consistent when sitting up close, although the sides are noticeably darker than the center on large areas of bright, uniform color. Unfortunately, the TV doesn't get bright enough to fight glare in a bright office, even with its decent response time.
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Great for a wide seating arrangement due to its wide viewing angle.
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Handles reflections decently well.
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Displays chroma 4:4:4 with the lowest input lag.
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It's extremely color accurate without calibration.
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Decent response time.
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Low peak brightness in SDR and HDR.
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Noticeably darker edges on bright scenes of uniform color.
- 6.4 Mixed Usage
- 6.9 TV Shows
- 6.9 Sports
- 6.4 Video Games
- 5.8 HDR Movies
- 6.7 HDR Gaming
- 7.3 PC Monitor
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Updated Nov 15, 2024:
We've updated some of the text for clarity to ensure the review is up to date.
- Updated Sep 28, 2023: Review published.
- Updated Sep 20, 2023: Early access published.
- Updated Sep 11, 2023: Our testers have started testing this product.
- Updated Aug 28, 2023: The product has arrived in our lab, and our testers will start evaluating it soon.
- Updated Aug 21, 2023: We've purchased the product and are waiting for it to arrive in our lab.
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
We tested the Toshiba 65C350LU, and this review is also valid for the 43, 50, and 55-inch models. The 50" model of this TV has four HDMI 2.0 ports versus three ports for the other sizes. In Canada, the TV uses the C350LC model code and has three HDMI ports on all sizes, but is otherwise identical to the US model.
| Size | US Model | Canada Model |
|---|---|---|
| 43" | Toshiba 43C350LU | 43C350LC |
| 50" | Toshiba 50C350LU | 50C350LC |
| 55" | Toshiba 55C350LU | 55C350LC |
| 65" | Toshiba 65C350LU | 65C350LC |
Our unit was manufactured in May 2023, as you can see on the label.
Compared To Other TVs
The Toshiba C350 2023 is a basic entry-level TV and is one of the cheapest options you can get. It's a good choice if you're just looking for a decent-sized option and don't care about extra features or picture quality, although it's a bit worse overall than the similarly priced TCL S4/S450G or Amazon Fire TV 4-Series. It's also a solid improvement over its predecessor, the Toshiba C350 Series 2021. If you're willing to pay a bit more, the Hisense A6/A65K is a much better option, although it's exclusive to Costco.
See our recommendations for the best budget TVs, the best smart TVs, and the best small TVs.
The Toshiba C350 Series 2023 is slightly better than the Insignia F30 Series 2022. They both have terrible contrast, but the Toshiba's is a bit better overall. It is also the brighter TV in HDR and SDR and is more accurate in SDR, although the Insignia is more accurate in HDR. The Insignia has better HDR native gradient handling and low-quality content smoothing, while the Toshiba has better upscaling performance. They're close enough that you might want to opt for the cheaper model, even if the Toshiba slightly outperforms Insignia.
The Hisense A6H and Toshiba C350 Series 2023 are very similar TVs overall and are of similar quality. They both have terrible contrast, but the Toshiba's is a bit better overall. The Toshiba also gets a bit brighter, so it looks better than the Hisense in any brightness setting. The Hisense has better upscaling capabilities, so it's better at cleaning up low-resolution content, and it can remove 24p judder from more sources than the Toshiba, making it a bit better for watching low-resolution movies or TV shows.
The TCL S4/S450G is a bit better than the Toshiba C350 Series 2023, although the Toshiba is the brighter TV of the two, making it better overall as a bright room TV. The Toshiba also has a much wider viewing angle, making it a better choice for a wide seating arrangement. However, the TCL has vastly better contrast and black uniformity, so it looks significantly better in a dark room or even in a moderately lit room with its good reflection handling.
The Hisense A6/A65K is much better than the Toshiba C350 Series 2023. The Hisense gets just as bright as the Toshiba but has vastly better contrast and black uniformity, as well as a much wider color gamut, so content on this TV pops far more than the Toshiba does in all brightness settings. The Toshiba does have a much wider viewing angle, so it's better suited for people who need a cheap TV for a wide seating arrangement.
The Toshiba C350 Series 2023 is a solid improvement over the Toshiba C350 Series 2021. The 2021 model is flicker-free in all picture modes and all brightness levels and has better HDR gradient handling than the 2023 model. Outside of those two things, the newer model is better than its predecessor in every facet.
The Amazon Fire TV 4-Series is better than the Toshiba C350 Series 2023 as long as you don't care about color accuracy, as the Amazon TV has truly awful pre-calibration color accuracy. Still, the Amazon TV has much better contrast and black uniformity than the Toshiba, so it looks much better in a dark room. The Amazon TV also has much better image processing, making it the better choice for watching movies from all sources. The Toshiba is, however, the brighter TV of the two and has a much wider viewing angle, making it the better choice for a wide seating arrangement in a bright living room.
Test Results
The TV has a modern design that looks great in any room. It has thin bezels on three sides, with a thicker curved bottom bezel. The feet are slim and made of metal and don't take up much space.
The TV has metal feet that support it well. There is some slight wobbling front to back, but it's not excessive. The feet raise the screen 2.8 inches from the table, so some soundbars fit fine, but thicker ones don't.
Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 46.8" x 11.8".
The back has a mostly flat metallic top part and a thicker plastic housing on the bottom half. The metallic portion is rigid, while there's some flex on the plastic housing, but it isn't excessive. Most of the inputs are side-facing, so they're easy to access unless the TV is mounted flush against the wall. There are clips built into the feet to help with cable management.
The TV's build quality is decent. The materials are fairly sturdy, especially the metal portion on the back. There's a bit of flex in the plastic portion of the back, but this isn't uncommon and won't cause any issues. The metal feet are sturdy and support it well, but there's some wobble front to back.
The Toshiba C350 2023 has terrible contrast, so blacks look dull and gray in a dark room, and there's no local dimming feature to help improve it further.
This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so there's no blooming around bright objects or subtitles in dark scenes. But, as it can't brighten highlights without impacting the rest of the image, dark scenes look washed out.
This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so it can't adjust the backlight of individual zones to brighten up highlights without impacting the rest of the image. However, this means that there is no distracting flicker or brightness change as bright highlights move across the screen.
Switching to Game Mode makes no noticeable difference in dark scene performance.
Unfortunately, this TV has mediocre peak brightness in HDR. HDR content looks flat and dull overall, as it isn't bright enough to bring out specular highlights, and with no local dimming feature, bright spots don't pop at all.
These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:
- Picture Mode: HDR Film
- Backlight: Max
- Color Temp: Warm 1
- Dynamic Backlight: Off
- Local Contrast Enhancement: Off
Switching to Game Mode causes a slight decrease in overall peak brightness.
These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point, with the following settings:
- Picture Mode: HDR Game
- Backlight: Max
- Color Temperature: Warm 1
The PQ EOTF tracking is just alright. Almost all scenes are darker than the content creator intended, even in dim and moderately lit scenes that aren't limited by the TV's low peak brightness. Near blacks and dark shadows are significantly raised because it lacks local dimming.
The TV's SDR brightness is passable. There's no distracting variation in brightness with different scenes, which is great, but it's not bright enough to overcome glare in very bright rooms.
These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:
- Picture Mode: Film
- Contrast: 83
- Mid Luminance Gamma: 0
- Color Temperature: Warm
The Toshiba 65C350LU has just an alright color gamut. It can't display a wide color gamut in HDR, with undersaturated greens, yellows, and reds. However, its tone mapping is good, so colors are accurately represented except for saturated greens and blues.
Unfortunately, this TV has mediocre color volume due to its narrow color gamut and low HDR peak brightness. It can't display bright colors very well and struggles with dark, saturated colors.
This TV's pre-calibration accuracy is fantastic. The white balance and color accuracy are nearly perfect, and its gamma is almost exactly on the 2.2 target for moderately lit rooms, although very dark scenes are slightly overbrightened.
The accuracy after calibration is fantastic, with a slightly better white balance. The calibration settings are very limited, with only four settings to tweak, making calibration more challenging than it should be. Still, this isn't a TV that you need to calibrate, as it's very accurate after only a few minor adjustments.
See our full calibration settings.
The TV's gray uniformity is just okay. The sides of the screen are significantly darker than the center, which is noticeable when watching content with large sections of bright, uniform color, like a hockey game. Uniformity is much better in near-black scenes.
The Toshiba C350 2023 has disappointing black uniformity. The entire screen looks blue and cloudy because of the low contrast ratio and raised blacks, and there's noticeable backlight bleeding near the TV's bottom edge.
The Toshiba C350 Series has a great viewing angle. The image remains consistent as you move to the side, although it's visibly darker at a wide angle. Still, it's a good choice for a wide seating arrangement, since the image stays consistent even when viewed from the side.
The Toshiba C350 2023 has decent reflection handling. The semi-gloss coating doesn't disperse reflections very well, so direct reflections are very noticeable and can be distracting. It handles moderate amounts of light well, but considering it doesn't get bright, it's best to avoid placing it in a bright room.
The Toshiba C350 2023 has passable gradient handling in HDR. There's heavy banding in bright grays and blues and noticeable banding in most other color gradients. Dark reds and blues are displayed well, though, with minimal banding.
Unfortunately, the TV's low-quality content processing isn't very good. It doesn't smooth out macro-blocking and pixelization well at all.
The upscaling capabilities are okay. Upscaled images are a bit blurry, but details are preserved well overall, and text is readable.
Sharpness processing was calibrated for low-resolution or low-bitrate content, with no over-sharpening, with the following setting:
- Super Resolution: On
- Sharpness: 5
The TV has an RGB sub-pixel layout, which helps with text clarity when using it as a PC monitor.
The TV has a decent response time. Response time performance is consistent with different types of content, which is great, but it's slow enough that you'll see some motion blur when gaming or watching sports.
Unfortunately, the backlight uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim the backlight, and there's a low flicker frequency at all backlight levels below the maximum. This low-frequency flicker causes duplications in motion and can cause eye strain if you're sensitive to flicker. However, the backlight is flicker-free at max backlight, and since the TV can't get very bright, you can just set it to maximum, and you won't have any issues. This backlight behavior is consistent across all picture modes.
This TV doesn't have an optional backlight strobing feature, also known as BFI. Instead, the backlight always flickers at 180Hz with the backlight below max, which helps reduce persistence blur but introduces severe image duplication below max brightness.
This TV doesn't have a motion interpolation feature.
The TV's decent response time results in good stutter performance. There isn't much stutter in slow-panning shots in 24p content, like movies.
The Toshiba C350 2023 automatically removes 24p judder from 24Hz sources like Blu-ray or DVD players, which helps with the appearance of motion in movies. However, it can't remove 24p judder from native apps or from 60Hz sources.
The TV doesn't support any variable refresh rate technologies.
The TV has extremely low input lag, resulting in a responsive gaming or desktop experience. It outputs proper chroma 4:4:4 when in Game Mode or 'PC' picture mode, so you can have clear text and the fastest possible input lag when using this TV as a PC monitor.
The TV supports most common resolutions except 1440p. It displays chroma 4:4:4 signals properly at 1080p and 4k in its 'Game' or 'PC' Picture Mode, so you can have clear text and the fastest possible input lag.
As the TV doesn't support high-frame-rate content, you're limited to 4k or 1080p gaming at 60Hz from the PS5. It has an Auto Low Latency Mode setting that automatically switches the TV into a low latency mode when it detects a game console.
The TV doesn't support high-frame-rate content, so you're limited to 4k or 1080p gaming at 60Hz from the Xbox Series X|S. It has an Auto Low Latency Mode setting that automatically switches the TV into a low latency mode when it detects a game console.
This TV is limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth on all three HDMI ports. The 50-inch model has four HDMI 2.0 bandwidth ports instead of three.
This is a rare TV that still has a composite in port with the included adapter, which is great if you have old entertainment devices like DVD players or legacy gaming consoles.
Unfortunately, this TV can't passthrough some 7.1 audio formats like DTS:X or DTS-HD MA, and is instead limited to 5.1 channel audio. For the best audio experience, connecting your external source directly to your soundbar or home theater receiver is best.
The frequency response is mediocre overall. It has very little bass, meaning there's no thump or rumble. At mid-range, the frequency response is fairly well-balanced, ensuring that most dialogue sounds clear. It can't get very loud, though, and there's significant compression at max volume.
The distortion performance of this TV is decent overall. There's very little distortion at moderate listening levels; increasing it to max only slightly increases the total distortion.
The TV comes with the Amazon Fire TV platform built-in. It's user-friendly, and the menu navigation feels smooth with no obvious bugs.
Like most TVs on the market, this one has ads throughout the interface, and you can't disable them.
The app store has a great selection of additional apps to download, and you can also cast content from your mobile device.
The remote is nearly identical to the voice remote included with most Fire TV streaming sticks or TVs. It has built-in voice controls that you can use to change inputs, launch apps, or search for content, but it can't change settings.
There's a button underneath the center of the TV to turn the TV on/off and switch inputs.
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