Sony KD-49X9000E (49")

Brilliant TV – We are so happy with our purchase of this TV after spending all the Christmas holidays researching! So satisfying when research pays off. Before we got to buying the Sony, we actually bought the Hisense N7, but returned it next day it just wasn't up to scratch. We spent ages fiddling with sound quality and picture quality and in the end decided… Read more

all too hard. It just didn't live up to all the glowing reviews. We were lucky we were able to return.

After a very good chat with JB HiFi manager, he suggested the Sony X90 might be what we are looking for. We needed a 50in size so they had do a special order as this isn't floor stock. They price matched to the Sony website that was having a Christmas sale for $1499.

Immediately right out of the box, we haven't had to adjust sound or picture. It is PERFECT. We can't stop saying how much we love it.

My partner has an android so rapt with the android TV features. I'm an apple user and it syncs well with mine too.

Built in chrome cast. All the apps we need plus Foxtel play installed if we want to sign up for Foxtel now. Bluetooth compatible if you want to use headphones. We use Kodi app when accessing our external hard drive, as we prefer a list view to the thumbnails Sony uses.

I'm no tech expert but if you watch FTA TV through Foxtel, this is where the Sony knocks everything else of the park, the upscaling is great. The HD quality is superb too, amazed at the picture quality. Not so crisp as the Samsung TV we have, which, in our opinion makes everything look fake and you can see it's filmed on a soundstage.

The sound is fantastic also. No need for speakers.

There is one downside - and for this I am taking off 1 star, otherwise it's a 5 star review. The Sony operating system ... arghh, I can see why there are complaints. It is so clunky and confusing.

The remote is also annoying. Have to put glasses on and shine a light at night to see the buttons. And it's confusing which button to choose. But none of this is enough to make us fall out of love with our TV or regret our purchase. Just a disappointment that Sony is lagging behind on their competitors in regard to usability.

Great image quality, poor interface – This is a review of the 49" Sony X9000E: Pros: - Image quality has excellent results when tweaked to suit the content you're viewing - Has a fair amount of brightness for HDR purposes compared to cheaper HDR TVs (otherwise it's plenty bright for non-HDR viewing) - Low input lag for gaming - Beautifully sharp upscaling. Text and graphics on… Read more

free-to-air TV look nice and sharp (despite Aussie TV looking like garbage), and retro games look pixel-perfect without looking like they've had a blur filter applied. When I saw Sony models and LG models at the store, the Sony TVs always had a sharper image for free-to-air TV.

- One of the best quality 49" TVs you'll find (it can be difficult to find high quality 49" TVs in Oz)

- Plenty of inputs, including 2x HDMI 2.0 inputs specifically for 4K, one of which has ARC.

Neutral:

- Has a large power adapter/brick. If you are wall mounting, you will need to consider what you'll do with the power brick. For 55" and above you can mount the brick to the back of the set. Also note the 75" does not have a brick as the power supply is internal.

- If you are serious about HDR, you may wish to go with the next model up (X9300E/X9400E), which apparently can get a lot more brighter. What I find with the X9000E is that the TV prefers to go fairly dark when HDR is on, so that it can accurately display bright lights in proportion. You can of course make the set brighter to compensate, but then you lose that dynamic range where sunsets and bright lights actually look immensely bright compared to the rest of the image (if everything on the screen is always bright, then you lose the effect). I find the X9000E is a nice compromise between a cheap HDR set that has less brightness and a very expensive model. As mentioned before, for general viewing I find this TV is definitely bright enough.

- Audio: Can't complain, they're typical TV speakers. In fact after all the reviews saying the speakers were horrible, I was actually surprised how good they sounded. I use my own speakers now, so the TV speakers are irrelevant.

Negative:

- The interface, the OS, the software. Whatever you want to call it, it is Sony's downfall. As soon as I turned on the TV, I downloaded the latest 1GB update. It all installed fine. But in using the TV the same day I plugged it in, it crashed on me no less than three times when I was doing mundane things. It pops up a window saying "such-and-such app is not responding". All I was doing was browsing through the EPG or the Home menu. After some time and a factory reset, it seemed to work better.

- It comes with Android TV, which is an alright interface if there's some grunt powering it (like nVidia Shield), but Sony have it running on an inadequate CPU. So it's a bit laggy. Sometimes it'll also lag when all you're doing is adjusting the volume...probably because it has to load a different operating system for volume control, which leads to the next point:

- There's four different interfaces for the TV: The Action Menu for general settings, the Discover menu which is a popup menu for recommendations and whatnot, there's Freeview (for catch-up free-to-air TV), and then there's the Home button for the Android TV interface. It's like having a phone that is Android, Apple and Windows Phone all in one. It's messy and inconsistent.

- The remote looks like it belongs in 1995. Why does it have so many buttons? Who the heck needs a dedicated number pad these days? The build quality is good, but the remote is embarrassing and is a chore to use. Wait, I know why it has so many buttons: It's because the operating system is poor. When the OS is not user-friendly, you need extra remote buttons to compensate. Numbers and playback controls (for example) should be part of the screen interface, you don't need a physical button for every function.

- It takes no less than 15 button presses to turn HDR on and off. HDR is supposed to turn on automatically depending on the content, but it doesn't generally happen for downloaded HDR files (ie 4K demos). One of the TV's main features really needs to be accessible much faster.

Summary:

If you don't care about the interface and/or will be primarily using another interface like the nVidia Shield, then grab this TV. Especially if you're after a 49" with fantastic image quality. If you watch TV a lot, then you will be seeing the interface often, and will need to get used to its quirks. Many no-name brands have it worse though, so Sony is not the bottom of the barrel. At the end of the day, the picture quality is fantastic and the TV itself looks very nice.