Toshiba 50-Inch Fire TV Edition (50LF621U19) Review

Last year's Element Fire TV Edition (and Westinghouse, but they were the same TV) showed that Amazon's Fire TV platform can be put directly on a 4K TV, without the need for a separate media streamer.

Amazon's continuing its Fire TV push with a new partner in 2018.

If you want the newest model with Fire TV built-in, Toshiba's now your go-to, with the Toshiba Fire TV Edition.

This series is even less expensive than the Element/Westinghouse Fire TV Edition (at $479.99 for the 55-inch 55LF621U19 we tested), and now supports high dynamic range (HDR).

It's functional, but poor contrast keeps it from being nearly as strong a recommendation as our Editors' Choice for budget TV, the slightly pricier TCL 6-Series.

Editors' Note: This review is based on testing performed on the 55LF621U19, the 55-inch model in the series.

Apart from the screen size difference, the $399.99 50-inch 50LF621U19 is identical in features, and we expect similar performance.

Savings Over Style

The Toshiba Fire TV Edition looks very plain, with a nondescript glossy plastic bezel around the screen measuring 0.7 inches wide on the sides and top, and 1.3 inches on the bottom edge.

An infrared receiver for the remote sits on the lower right corner, and the Toshiba logo appears in the center of the bottom bezel.

The two feet the TV stands on are equally unassuming, just glossy black plastic legs that extend from the bottom of the screen at an obtuse angle.

It's a functional design, but like most budget TVs, it won't get any points for style.

On the back of the TV, three HDMI inputs, a USB port, and an optical audio output sit just over a foot in from the left edge, facing left.

An Ethernet port, antenna/cable connector, and an RCA composite video input face downward, at the same location.

A combination power/input button rests on the lower right corner of the back of the TV, and that's it for physical controls.

The included Fire TV remote is designed specifically for TVs, and is a bit larger and more complex than the voice remote included with Amazon Fire TV media streamers.

It shares a similar design, though, as a slim black plastic wand with a prominent glossy black circular navigation pad.

Three menu buttons sit above the pad and three playback buttons sit below, with power and microphone buttons on the top of the remote near a pinhole mic.

That's the standard layout for Fire TV streamer remotes, but Toshiba adds a volume rocker, mute, and live TV button below the playback controls, and dedicated service buttons for Amazon Prime Video, HBO, Netflix, and PlayStation Vue below them.

The remote is also infrared in addition to Bluetooth, so you can use it to control the TV if the Bluetooth connection drops, without needing to re-pair the remote first.

Fire TV OS and Alexa

The Amazon Fire TV platform is built around using your Amazon account for transactions like downloading apps and renting or buying media, with an Amazon Prime membership adding instant access to a wide selection of streaming movies, TV shows, and music on top of that.

Because of this, you need to sign in with your Amazon account to access most of the Fire TV features.

However, unlike the Fire TV media streamers, you don't absolutely need an Amazon account to use the Toshiba Fire TV Edition.

An optional Basic mode lets you use the TV as a TV, cutting out most streaming and online features from the interface, but providing access to the TV's different inputs.

If you want to rely entirely on external video sources and not deal with an Amazon account, it's a viable option.

Still, most users will want to use their Amazon account to access the full features of the Toshiba Fire TV Edition, considering just how robust it is as a smart TV platform.

Fire TV lets you access most major streaming services, including (of course) Amazon Video and Amazon Music, Crunchyroll, Hulu, Netflix, PlayStation Vue, Sling TV, Spotify, and Twitch.

Google Play Movies & TV and Google Play Music are both absent from the Fire TV ecosystem, though, and YouTube curiously loads only through the Firefox or Silk web browsers, rather than through its own dedicated app.

While the Fire TV OS is ostensibly based on Android, Google and Amazon don't get along much in terms of content.

Fire TV includes access to the Alexa voice assistant, which you can use on the Toshiba Fire TV Edition by pressing the microphone button on the remote and speaking into it.

It isn't hands-free like an Echo or Echo Spot, but it's still functional out of the box with a button press.

You can also pair your TV with an Echo to access Alexa through the TV hands-free and control it with your voice.

This combination comes close to offering the functionality of the Fire TV Cube, but without the Cube's infrared blasters, home theater voice commands are limited to the TV itself.

Alexa is a very powerful voice assistant, capable of searching for content, controlling media playback, providing general information, and even controlling smart home devices.

While Google Assistant is a little more flexible with natural language and doesn't require quite as specifically phrased voice commands, Alexa can do a lot once you figure out how to talk to it.

On the Toshiba Fire TV Edition, you can ask Alexa for any media, bringing up movies and TV shows with multiple options for streaming on different services including Amazon's own.

You can ask Alexa questions about weather, news, and broad facts, and information will appear on the TV.

You can also use your voice to control the Toshiba Fire TV Edition itself, by telling Alexa to switch to different inputs, open apps, and adjust the volume (of course, it's faster to just use the volume buttons on the remote for that).

If you have Alexa-compatible smart lights, thermostats, and locks, you can control them by speaking into the remote, as well.

You can even bring up live feeds from Alexa-compatible home security cameras like the Amazon Cloud Cam on the TV.

Modest Colors, Disappointing Contrast

The Toshiba Fire TV Edition supports 4K high dynamic range (HDR) content with the HDR 10 format.

It does not support Dolby Vision.

We test TVs using a Klein K-10A colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and SpectraCal's CalMAN software on a Razer Blade Pro laptop using testing procedures based on Imaging Science Foundation's calibration methods.

Out of the box, in Movie mode with all extraneous image processing features turned off, the Toshiba Fire TV Edition shows a solid peak brightness of 352.79cd/m² and a dismal black level of 0.2cd/m² for a disappointing 1,764:1 contrast ratio.

The TV has a dynamic backlight feature that adjusts luminance based on the picture, but without full-array backlighting that can dim different zones, this feature doesn't improve contrast; setting the mode to high reduces the black level to a below-mediocre 0.12cd/m² and cuts the peak brightness by nearly a third to 249.44cd/m².

For comparison, the similarly priced Element Roku TV has a much dimmer peak brightness than either setting (201.77cd/m²), but a much more reasonable 0.06cd/m² black level for a 3,363:1 contrast ratio.

The above chart shows Rec.709 broadcast standard color levels as boxes and measured color levels as dots.

While the Toshiba Fire TV Edition supports an HDR signal, it doesn't offer a particularly wide color gamut, and barely exceeds broadcast standards, with reds appearing slightly undersaturated.

The colors are balanced and not tinted, but they aren't particularly vivid.

This performance is common in budget TVs, which is a continuing shame in the wake of TCL's 6-Series.

While the 55-inch TCL 55R617 is nearly $200 more expensive than the 55-inch Toshiba Fire TV Edition, it offers a much better picture than the Toshiba in every way.

Its measured contrast ratio is nearly 30 times greater than the Toshiba's, thanks to a much brighter panel that can produce a 0.01cd/m2 black level, and its color range is much wider to boot.

Despite the poor contrast and limited color range of the Toshiba Fire TV Edition, BBC's Planet Earth II on Ultra HD Blu-ray looks quite nice on it.

Fine details like fur and leaves are sharp and clean, and colors look natural and balanced, even if they aren't nearly as vivid as they are on the TCL 6-Series.

Sunny scenes look bright, though the panel's low contrast means that shadows tend to look blown out against the light.

This isn't the best picture you can find, even on a budget TV, but it still manages to look pretty good considering its limitations.

The Toshiba Fire TV Edition makes an admirable attempt with The Great Gatsby, doing its best to keep up with the very high-contrast party scenes with black suits and bright white setpieces.

Highlights and shadows both manage to preserve fine detail most of the time, with the cuts of black suits and white shirts coming through clearly on the screen.

Occasionally very bright or very dark details become blown out or muddy, particularly the texture of black hair and the edges of light fixtures, but these are minor exceptions rather than huge weaknesses.

The limited contrast still means that black suits can appear occasionally washed out, but for the price it is a consistently pleasant picture.

Off-angle viewing is acceptable, but saturation dips and colors start to appear gray when you move beyond 30 degrees off-axis from the center of the TV.

Input Lag and Power Consumption

Input lag is how long it takes for a display to update after it receives a signal.

In Movie mode, the Toshiba Fire TV Edition shows a poor 70.6ms input lag.

Switching to Game mode cuts that down to a much more reasonable 40.2ms, but that's still far too high for us to consider it to be a good TV for gaming.

The TCL 55R617 and 50-inch Element Roku TV both have far better performance, respectively lagging only 17.9 and 14.8ms in their Game modes.

Under normal viewing conditions, the 55-inch Toshiba Fire TV Edition consumes 137 watts in Movie mode.

The TV doesn't have any specific power-saving features or modes available, though you can save a bit of electricity by dimming the backlight.

This is in line with similar 55-inch LCD TVs; the TCL 55R617, the 55-inch model in TCL's 6-Series, consumes 163 watts under normal viewing conditions with its brightest settings, and 129 watts with a power saving mode that dims the picture to a comparable level as the Toshiba.

A Frugal, Functional TV

The Toshiba Fire TV Edition is a more economical smart TV than the Element Fire TV Editions we saw last year, and the addition of HDR 10 support is a nice benefit on paper.

It makes significant compromises in picture quality to hit its low price, however, resulting in downright poor black levels and a color range that no HDR signal will improve past broadcast standard levels, but that's to be expected when you find a 55-inch TV for under $500.

The Amazon Fire TV platform is still very full-featured and useful, especially with Alexa integration, and while the picture quality is uninspiring, it doesn't make any massive mistakes like skewing colors or completely destroying highlights or shadows.

This is a solid choice if you want to get a 4K, HDR-capable smart TV while spending as little as possible, but we still strongly recommend the slightly pricier TCL 6-Series, which remains our Editors' Choice for budget TVs.