Execs
- Beautiful slim design
- Footage typically look unbelievable
- YouView works effectively
Cons
- Some backlight points throughout darkish HDR scenes
- Horrible distant management
- Common sonics
Key Specs
- Overview Worth: £2799.00
- 65-inch LCD TV with edge LED lighting
- Slimline backlight drive for superior native dimming
- Native 4K UHD decision
- HDR playback
- Android TV sensible system
What’s the Sony KD-65XD9305?
The 65-inch KD-65XD9305 is the primary TV to emerge from Sony’s 2016 TV vary. A high-end set costing £2,800, it sits under solely the flagship 75-inch KD-75XD9405 mannequin in Sony’s newest TV lineup.
Inevitably, the KD-65XD9305 goes massive on its help for the brand new excessive dynamic vary image format, nevertheless it additionally provides the native 4K UHD decision that’s been a part of the luxurious TV furnishings for a few years now.
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Sony KD-65XD9305 – Design and Options
The KD-65XD9305 is a severely enticing TV. For starters, it’s exceptionally slim – and this is applicable to each the body across the display screen and the how far the TV’s rear protrudes behind it. At 36mm deep, it isn’t fairly as slender as Sony’s 2015 X90C/X91C fashions, nevertheless it compares favourably with most rivals. That is very true if the KD-65XD9305 is wall-hung, the place a brand new bracket design provides virtually no further depth in any respect to the TV’s profile.
Associated: Greatest 4K TVs 2016
The set doesn’t depend on slimness alone for its enchantment, nonetheless. The angular metallic design of the desktop stand is distinctive and funky, and the injection of a strip of gold into the TV’s edges gives a cute foil for the blackness round it.
It’s a disgrace, although, that the primary purpose the KD-65XD9305 is much much less cumbersome than its predecessor is as a result of it’s lacking Sony’s highly effective magnetic fluid speaker system. These audio system have enabled the previous three generations of Sony’s top-end units to be the best-sounding TVs I’ve heard – bar one or two Bang & Olufsen fashions.
The KD-65XD9305’s connections are in keeping with at present’s expectations due to their inclusion of 4 HDMIs, three USBs, and each LAN and built-in Wi-Fi community options. The community choices ship Sony’s on-line sensible options, in addition to providing help for multimedia streaming from DLNA-capable gadgets in your community.
The web options are predominantly dealt with inside the Android TV “wrapper”. This runs extra clean and secure than it did on final yr’s Sony TVs, and places an enormous variety of apps at your disposal. Nonetheless, whereas there are a couple of minor enhancements, for probably the most half the most recent Android system nonetheless feels over-complicated, in need of customisation choices and low on understanding of what commonest TV customers truly need from a sensible TV interface.
Simply as effectively, then, that Android is joined on Sony’s UK TVs by YouView, which introduces catch-up TV help for the massive 4 UK broadcasts. You’ll be able to entry the BBC iPlayer, ITV Participant, All 4 and Demand 5 apps immediately from Android TV’s cabinets, or name up a separate YouView EPG that scrolls again seven days in addition to forwards, enabling you to trace down missed reveals immediately from every channel’s timeline.
With HDR playback already firmly established as the primary focus for all the massive TV manufacturers in 2016, Sony has gone to excessive lengths to cater for HDR’s powerful calls for by introducing a brand new sort of LCD panel known as the Slimline Backlight Drive.
The important thing characteristic of this drive is that it pushes a particularly shiny backlight via two mild information plates, as an alternative of the standard one. These mild guides run in sequence and thus have the potential to offer twice as a lot mild management than you’d see with a traditional edge-lit LCD TV.
On paper no less than, edge-mounted LED lighting programs don’t seem like an incredible wager for HDR. It is a results of the difficulties they encounter in delivering their mild to solely the areas of the image the place it’s wanted. If Sony’s Slimline Backlight Drive is able to delivering twice as a lot native management as seen on typical edge LED TVs, then the hope certainly needs to be that the images it produces will probably be someplace within the area of twice nearly as good.
Different key options of the KD-65XD9305 are its native 4K UHD decision. Sony’s Triluminos vast color gamut know-how claims to ship near 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut that’s turn into the present goal for the most recent era of HDR-capable LCD TVs. Observe that the corporate’s potent X1 video processing chip already proved its price in 2015, significantly with regards to color dealing with and upscaling of non-4K sources.
Peculiarly, though Sony is adamant that the KD-65XD9305 is able to hitting the specs laid out by the Extremely HD Premium customary, the model has elected to not pursue a proper UHD Premium endorsement. As a substitute, the corporate defines the TV’s comparatively premium standing in its vary with a home-grown “4K HDR” label – regardless of Sony itself being a member of the Extremely HD Alliance!
The final characteristic price mentioning is the supply of 3D playback, utilizing the energetic 3D system. That is extra notable than it could be usually as a result of, earlier this yr, Samsung and Philips each declared that their TVs will now not be supporting 3D. Observe, although, that Sony doesn’t present any 3D glasses with the KD-65XD9305.
Sony KD-65XD9305 – Setup
On detecting an HDR sign, the KD-65XD9305 switches to an “HDR Video” preset. With this preset brightness and distinction are at most, and also you’re locked out of fixing a number of the TV’s options – together with the Auto Native Dimming mode. It is a bit ironic, since this characteristic is maybe the one one which I discovered myself wanting to alter with HDR, for causes I’ll get into within the Image High quality part.
In case you instigate a manufacturing unit reset of the image settings when watching HDR, you’ll obtain the choice to reset to both the usual HDR mode or another Vivid one. The Vivid choice tremendously will increase the picture’s color saturation and brightness, nevertheless it additionally causes vital further backlight issues resembling unstable mild ranges and extreme mild blocking and clouding.
There’s much more flexibility within the setup with regards to customary dynamic vary content material, nonetheless – which is, in fact, what you’ll spend most of your time watching.
These embody choices for “upgrading” SDR content material to the TV’s HDR-friendly capabilities, though for probably the most half I’d suggest ignoring the temptation to upscale the color and brightness of SDR pictures too far. As a substitute, set the brightness to round its 30% degree, the distinction to round its 80% degree, and Sony’s Dwell Color characteristic to its Low setting.
In addition to delivering natural-looking SDR pictures extra constantly, these comparatively subdued settings provide the form of wealthy, constant black ranges you want for a extremely immersive viewing expertise – particularly when you’re watching in a darkened room.
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