Sony XR-65X90J £1499
There’s no substitute for size when it comes to home cinema. But we can’t all afford to go big and go super-premium. The Sony XR-65X90J could be just what you’re looking for thanks to its heady mix of fancy features, perfectly pitched picture performance and that mid-range price tag.
The X90J has a very solid selection of physical connections including two 48Gbps HDMI 2.1 ports. Plenty of content options come courtesy of the Google TV operating system, and marshalling the whole user experience, from navigating the OS and opening apps to taking care of the picture and sound processing, is Sony’s Cognitive Processor XR chip.
A nice extra bonus with the Xr-series is the built-in Bravia Core app, which streams movies at bitrates similar to those of a 4K Blu-ray disc. You need 115Mbps minimum to hit the highest quality, but you’ll get more than adequate quality from connections of 10Mbps or more
Although this mid-range, direct-backlit LCD TV can’t match OLED for black depth, with the set only ever reaching very dark grey, the backlight is consistent, with none of the clouding or blotchiness that is common with big TVS at this price. There’s impressive overall contrast on offer, too. The set may not go perfectly black, but it goes very bright, and scenes that contain a mix of dark and light look excellent.
Colours are excellent throughout Lost In Space in Dolby Vision. It’s a cinematically warm and rich delivery, but whites are still clean and detailed. Skin tones are superb with a subtlety of shading that’s extremely rare at this end of the market. Edges are more than sharp enough, with no hint of exaggeration, and detail levels are exemplary for a TV this big at this price. Switching to Blade Runner 2049 in HDR10, the motion processing is excellent, broadly sharpening and smoothing movement somewhat without adding any artificiality.
It may have only a modestly rated 20W sound system but it’s still capable of going really rather loud. That said, it gets a touch flustered at extremely high volumes, but the performance at normal levels is reasonably dynamic. And, though there’s not much bass weight, the overall tonal balance is pretty good. It’s also clean and clear, and dialogue is both well projected and, thanks to the placement of the drivers halfway up the set’s edges, intrinsically linked to the on-screen action.
While you could buy a 55in OLED for less, it’s perfectly reasonable to go for a TV that’s a little less premium but a full 10in bigger. If that’s your choice, the X90J absolutely demands your attention.