The Toshiba Regza 40XV645U is a 40-inch LCD HDTV that offers a couple of interesting features at a reasonable $899 price point. Most notable are are a USB port and 120hz refresh rate, which is meant to improve motion. The design of the television is nothing special, with a standard glossy black bezel around the display and a non-rotating stand.

The Toshiba Regza 40XV645U sports a full 1080p resolution, which means it's capable of displaying the highest quality of HD content.     Connectivity on the 40XV645U includes the aforementioned USB port, but that can only be used to view photos, not music or video. There are three HDMI ports, optical audio out and a good selection of older connectivity options lie component and analog audio. There's also a VGA port for using the television with a computer. All the ports are reasonably easy to access.

The remote that ships with the television is no more stylish than the television itself, and is peppered with buttons from top to bottom. The buttons are comfortable to press, and the remote is well balanced. We also like that the buttons glow in the dark, although strangely the associated labels do not. Audio quality from the 40XV645U's speakers was unimpressive.

Performance (Read the full lab performance results at Televisioninfo.com)

We were very happy with the Toshiba Regza 40XV645U's black and white performance. Blacks were very deep, and combined with reasonably bright whites this produced an impressive contrast ratio. Unfortunately the color performance was nowhere near as good. We noticed a blue tinge to darker colors, noticeable color bands in the reds, greens and blues, and innacuracies in the color gamut. All this adds up to a television that won't reproduce accurate colors.

One of the Toshiba Regza 40XV645U's signature features is a 120Hz refresh rate, which should help improve motion performance. In our tests we did see this helping in some situations, for example complex patterns like faces held up better with the option turned on. Unfortunately we still saw significant motion blurring in other places, for example blocks of color. We also saw a lot of artifacts, which are things that appear on the screen that shouldn't be there. For example we saw a major rolling shutter effect in almost all of our motion tests. We also saw a very limited viewing angle on the Toshiba Regza 40XV645U, with the contrast ratio falling below 50% at an angle of only 18 degrees from center.

Comparisons (Read more in-depth comparisons at Televisioninfo.com)

The Toshiba Regza 40XV645U tries to do a careful balancing act, offering a reasonable price point at $899 combined with higher-end features like a full 1080p resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. Unfortunately we found that the performance of the television was decidedly unimpressive. Although the contrast ratio was competitive with other HDTVs like the Sony Bravial KDL-46Z5100 and Samsung LN40B650, those two televisions far outperformed the 40XV645U in almost all other respects. Of course you'll be paying significantly more for the improved performance you see from those models. If you're not willing to pay that premium the Toshiba Regza 40XV645U could be a good buy. Our advice, however, is to find a television at a slightly smaller size with better overall performance.