Sony Bravia XBR-55HX929
The good: The Sony XBR-HX929 series produces deeper black levels than any current LCD or plasma TV, giving excellent overall picture quality. It evinces accurate shadow detail and color; offers plenty of video processing options; and can properly handle 1080p/24 sources. It has a beautiful, thin-profile exterior design with Gorilla Glass, and its Internet suite includes numerous streaming services and widgets as well as built-in Wi-Fi. Its 3D image shows minimal crosstalk.
The bad: The extremely expensive XBR-HX929 shows some blooming artifacts, and its picture deteriorates more noticeably than usual when seen from off-angle. Its menu and Internet service design is lackluster, and Sony does not include 3D glasses. When displaying 3D, the image flickers when dejudder is turned off, and it deteriorates rapidly when you tilt your head.
The bottom line: One of the best-performing LED-based LCDs we’ve ever tested, the expensive local-dimming Sony XBR-HX929 competes well with the top plasmas.
The first so-called LED TVs were local-dimming models, where the LEDs behind the screen could be dimmed or brightened in different areas to correspond to darker or brighter areas of the picture. The result was excellent contrast, on a level no other LCD-based TV could muster. Since 2007 when these TVs debuted, they’ve remained uncommon and expensive while so-called edge-lit models have populated store shelves and living rooms with abandon.
The XBR-HX929, Sony’s most expensive and, we’re willing to guess, best-performing TV of 2011, is also the company’s only local dimmer. It boasts that excellent contrast by way of inky black levels not found on any TV aside from the oft-cited Pioneer Kuro plasma, and improves upon the color accuracy of its predecessor XBR. In short, it represents the pinnacle of LCD picture quality, so if you’re shopping in the extreme upper end of the TV market and were only going to consider plasma, the XBR-HX929 might change your mind.
In our view the Sony XBR-HX929 is the best-looking TV this year aside from Samsung’s thin-bezel UND6400 and UND8000/7000 models. Seen from the front it earns the company’s Monolithic moniker: the panel is a featureless black slab when turned off, thanks to its one-piece face and darkened glass. The extreme edge is metallic-looking and very slightly set back from the main pane, and we love the low-profile swivel stand with its thin metal base.
The HX929 exudes class and high cost everywhere except the back panel, which is cursed by a small protrusion that houses the RS-232 port. Otherwise its profile is significantly thinner than last year’s XBR-HX909, rivaling those of edge-lit LEDs.
We’re big fans of Sony’s remote. The logically sized and placed, flush-yet-still-tactile keys emit a satisfying low-pitched click. The concave shape along the clicker’s length sends the thumb to the Home key and the middle of the big cursor control. We like the ability to control other devices via infrared or HDMI, but we wish the blue backlight also illuminated more button labels.
Sony revamped its Home menu this year, ditching the PlayStation 3/PSP-style XMB interface for a new scheme that creates a main horizontal bottom row and a right-hand vertical column flanking a smaller, inset TV image (tweakers fret not; the TV image expands back to full size during picture adjustments). The menu shows all of the horizontal options at once, but there are simply too many of them–10 total: Settings, Widgets, Applications, Qriocity, Internet Content, TV, Media, Inputs, Favorites/History, and Recommendations (which is removable…a good thing since it appears to be in-menu advertising). None of the main horizontal choices is labeled until you select it, so you must either remember Sony’s quirky iconography or scroll a lot to find the right one. Each option has its own column of suboptions, for a total effect that can easily become overwhelming.
Submenus for Options and Favorites/History, as well as those dedicated buttons, help a little, and we appreciate that the numerous “small fry” niche video services are shunted into a submenu. Overall, however, we feel the company could have done a much better job of organizing the TV’s numerous features and options.
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