LCD TV Reviews

Black: 0.000
White: 39.9
Full-On/Full-Off Contrast Ratio: Infinite

The above readings were taken with the Sony in Custom mode, the Picture setting at 80, the Brightness at 52, and the backlight on 1. It was still possible to see a very low level of brightness on the screen with a full-screen black image (that is, the peak contrast is not infinite), but it was unmeasurable with our Minolta LS-100 light meter. This means it was below the meter’s 0.001-ft-L minimum sensitivity.

At the maximum Picture setting (100, which did not clip the peak whites) and with the backlight turned all the way up (10), the peak whitewindow brightness reading was 131.3 ft-L, and the black level remained just visible but still unmeasurable. I can’t imagine any need for this much brightness in the home. But it does show that the LEDs are a powerful light source and that even such an extreme setting can’t compromise the set’s astonishing black level. If you need more output than the 40 ft-L my preferred settings provide without going bizarro-bright, you can get nearly 70 ft-L with a Picture setting of 80 and the backlight on 5.

There isn’t much more that needs to be said about the Sony’s measured color performance. After calibration, the color tracking is nearly perfect, the color temperature ranged from 6,477K to 6,585K across the full measured brightness range, and the Delta E was 2.1 or less. (Delta E is a figure of merit that shows how likely it is that the eye will see a deviation from a perfect D65 white point. Errors of 4.0 or below are generally considered undetectable.) The color gamut (with the Color Space control in Standard and Live Color off) is nearly spot on to the HD standard. The slightly oversaturated red might explain why the Sony’s reds were a bit deeper than the Samsung’s, but the deviation is so small it’s difficult to say for sure.

The HD resolution was outstanding in HDMI at 720p and 1080i/p. But it dropped to fair in 1080i component. (We do not measure 1080p component resolution.) It was poor in 720p component, where it would not reproduce a 37.1-MHz burst. Oddly, the 480i/p HDMI resolution was poor, then improved to fair in 480i component, and to excellent in 480p component. HDMI at 1080i/p and 720p clearly provides the best performance with this set. If you must use 480, make it 480p component, which produced the best 480i or 480p resolution result by far.

The set’s overscan was zero on all sides in 1080i/p, either component or HDMI and zero in 720p HDMI, but it increased to 2.5 percent per side in 720p component (approximately a 10-percent loss of the overall image). 480i/p HDMI overscan averaged just over 0.5 percent per side (a 2-percent image loss) and 3 percent in component (a 12-percent loss).—TJN