Professionals
- Sensationally vibrant and vibrant HDR footage
- Good upscaling of SDR/HD pictures
- Good sound high quality
Cons
- Backlight blooming round vibrant HDR objects
- Enter lag could possibly be decrease
- Restricted efficient viewing angle
Key Specs
- Evaluate Worth: £2400.00
- 55-inch Extremely HD TV with edge LED lighting
- Slim Backlight Drive+ backlighting
- Triuminos color expertise
- HDR 10, HLG, Dolby Imaginative and prescient HDR assist
- Android TV good TV system
What’s the Sony KD-55XE9305?
The KD-55XE9305 is the primary TV to succeed in us from Sony’s 2017 TV line. It’s a premium mannequin that mixes Sony’s strongest video-processing engine with an improved model of the model’s proprietary Slim Backlight Drive expertise.
Although the latter isn’t with out its flaws, it does play its half in making the XE9305 a significant enchancment over its 2016 predecessor. It’s additionally one of the crucial dramatic HDR performers we’ve seen so far.
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Watch: What’s HDR and Hybrid Log-Gamma?
Sony KD-55XE9305 – Design and Construct
The 55XE9305 is one severely well-built TV. At almost 30kg, it weighs excess of most fashionable 55-inch TVs. Each side of its end – from its glassy entrance to its gold-tinted, cross-hatched rear – seems suitably posh.
The trace of gold extends tastefully to its centrally mounted stand. The crisp, minimalist strains of its 1232(w) x 715(h) x 40(d)mm body are backed up by an unusually complete cable-management system.
Sony has mercifully improved the distant from 2016’s disastrous design. There’s nonetheless an excessive amount of going within the central space for consolation, however at the very least the almost flush buttons have been changed by extra tactile keys that you’ve got an opportunity of finding by contact.
The distant’s devoted Google Play and Netflix buttons are a lot appreciated too, and the mic button ought to come into its personal later within the 12 months as soon as the Google Assistant voice-recognition/management system is added by way of a firmware replace.
Sony KD-55XE9305 – Setup
The XE9305 options among the best out-of-the-box image presets round, minimising the necessity for many customers to get too concerned with the setup menus.
There are just a few areas price tinkering with. First, I’d counsel treating Sony’s “Actuality Creation” expertise with warning, because it tends to over-sharpen each native 4K and upscaled HD content material to the purpose the place issues begin to look noisy.
The set’s noise-reduction programs additionally are usually pointless – disruptive, even – when watching native 4K or good-quality HD. The True Cinema setting from Sony’s motion-processing choices is your finest wager for films, although you would shift to the Commonplace setting for sports activities viewing.
The Clear motion-processing choice truly delivers probably the most constantly natural-looking outcomes, however for me it dims the image an excessive amount of to be usable.
One final characteristic to be cautious of is Reside Shade. I discovered it preferable to show it down from its Medium default place to Low when watching standard-dynamic-range content material. That stops color tones beginning to look too pressured.
Sony KD-55XE9305 – Options
Two issues actually set the XE9305 aside from final 12 months’s XD9305: an improved backlight and extra highly effective processing.
Like its 2016 predecessor, the XE9305 makes use of two units of edge LED lights and two units of sunshine information plates to ship extra localised mild management than you normally get with edge-lit LCD TVs. Nevertheless, the XE9305 apparently will increase the variety of dimming zones to supply mild administration all the way down to an much more localised stage.
The XE9305’s processing is delivered by the X1 Excessive chip first launched in Sony’s improbable ZD9. This delivers 40% extra processing energy than the unique X1 chip, in addition to two key new options. Firstly, a dual-database system improves upscaling and video noise administration. Secondly it gives sufficient energy and adaptability to deal with the addition of Dolby Imaginative and prescient by way of a firmware replace due later this 12 months.
Dolby Imaginative and prescient, when you’re not aware of it, is a complicated type of HDR that provides a layer of metadata to the bottom HDR sign to supply directions to TVs on how finest to indicate the pictures they’re receiving. Samsung and Panasonic preserve that Dolby Imaginative and prescient is pointless, but it surely’s yielded good outcomes on LG OLED TVs already, and positively appears to be a characteristic many AV followers need.
Sony has additionally confirmed that assist for the upcoming Hybrid Log Gamma HDR format shall be added to the XE9305 by way of a firmware replace later within the 12 months. And naturally, the TV helps the HDR10 trade normal proper out of the field.
One doubtlessly helpful characteristic due within the coming months is Google Assistant. This bolt on to the set’s Android TV working system will allow superior voice recognition to make it simpler to entry content material each on-line and in your related units. You may, for instance, inform your Google House to activate Netflix.
I’m nonetheless no nice fan of Android TV. The menu construction on the newest implementation carried by the XE9305 nonetheless feels over-complicated, counter-intuitive and extra excited about ‘pushing’ content material Google thinks you must like forward of stuff you actually do like. It nonetheless causes irritating sluggishness within the OS too, each throughout the Android menus and the TV’s setup and management menus.
Android TV additionally continues to lack assist for the ITV Participant, All 4 or My 5 UK catch-up TV platforms. Luckily, Sony has addressed this by equipping the XE9305 with YouView. This provides you all the important thing UK catch-up TV providers, together with an easy-to-use digital programme information that allows you to scroll again in time to search out archived reveals.
Netflix and Amazon Video are supported of their full 4K/HDR incarnations – and the XE9305 will presumably ship these providers’ Dolby Imaginative and prescient streams as soon as the Dolby Imaginative and prescient firmware replace has taken place.
One closing key characteristic is the Triluminos color system. This delivers an expanded color vary to assist the wide-colour-gamut expertise discovered on most HDR sources.
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How we check televisions
We check each TV we evaluation totally over an prolonged time frame. We use trade normal exams to match options correctly. We’ll at all times let you know what we discover. We by no means, ever, settle for cash to evaluation a product.
Discover out extra about how we check in our ethics coverage.
Used as the primary TV for the evaluation interval
Examined for greater than per week
Examined utilizing trade calibrated instruments, discs and with actual world use
Examined with broadcast content material (HD/SD), video streams and demo discs
