These are interesting times where on one hand we can see the world move to smartphones and tablets as their primary source of entertainment while the market for large screen televisions is also growing. With 4K content starting to gain traction and the advent of high-end streaming services in India as well, users are demanding a large screen to get the best viewing experience possible. The Sony Bravia 55X9300D 4K HDR television is a strong competitor towards delivering just that but does it succeed? We find out in our review.
Design
The Sony 55X9300D’s design is an exercise in minimalism. The gigantic display surrounded by the most tiny of bezels ensures that the screen is what is the center of attention. Also gone are the front facing speaker panels from the previous generation which leads to a cleaner design that simply takes lesser space. As for its effects on the sound quality, we’ll talk about that below. Look at it from the side and you’ll observe a tapering edge that hides away all the inputs along the side.
The mounting mechanism is also placed at the back and is rather convoluted to use but since this procedure is mostly done by service technicians, it shouldn’t really bother you. Talking about the base mount itself, the television is designed in such a way that the display panel appears to float above the metal base unit. The base unit on its own has a gentle incline and is finished in a brushed aluminum finish that looks very visually appealing. The entire assembly hooks on to the rear of the television. Back to the front then where you can observe an LED indicator right below the Sony logo. The bright white LED can on occasion detract from the experience but thankfully it is possible to dim this or even shut it off entirely from the settings menu. Above it is a Sony logo and that’s about it.
As we mentioned earlier, the television takes a very minimalistic approach to things just the way we like it. The television is quite the looker and unlike some manufacturers, Sony has taken an approach that places the display panel front and center. Be it wall mounted or on the stand, the Sony KD-55X9300D will not detract from the decor of your living room. The entire assembly weighs about 24.9 kgs with the television mounted on the stand which ensures that it doesn’t shake at all.
Hardware Inputs
The Sony KD-55X9300D comes well endowed with connectivity options. The ports are placed at the back of the television and are divided across two sections. The first section essentially hides behind the mount and allows for excellent cable management. In fact Sony has made it possible for you to place the television on a table in such a way that not even a single cable would be visible which is a very impressive feat indeed.
Additions ports on the right hand side includes a single HDMI port, composite input as well as RJ45 amongst others. All ports are well labelled out which means that even users who are less technically inclined should have no issue figuring things out. There are a total of 4 HDMI ports available all of which are HDCP 2.2 compatible making. Other ports include 2 component inputs, 1 composite input, an RF-in, optical out for digital audio as well as an analog audio output. This is essentially par for the course for smart televisions.
Display Panel
Coming to the panel itself, the 55 inch display area has a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels making it a UHD display. The DCI standard for 4K has opted for a resolution spanning 4096 × 2160 pixels but since the television and movie industry has veered towards the UHD standard, you’re not missing out on anything with the Sony KD-55X9300D. As is the case with most high end panels, the viewing angles are suitably wide at 178 degrees. The display goes up to 350 nits of brightness which is enough for even a well-lit room. The panel does tend to reflect a lot though so it would be best to place it away from direct sunlight.
Sony televisions usually have a lot of proprietary technology built into them and that’s the case here too. Starting with the TRILUMINOUS Display tech, which uses quantum dots to boost the color gamut. Since these dots produce pure green and red colors, you are able to get a cleaner color instead of that obtained by mixing primary colors. An X-Reality Engine is also available that serves as an image processing engine to improve contrast, sharpening and also for upscaling video. Talking about upscaling, even regular HD content looks very good on the panel. The fact remains that a large segment of media consumers in India are still viewing SD content which makes the presence of a quality upscaler even more important. Keeping that in mind, we observed that the television lives up to its reputation. SD content is watchable for the most part. Artifacts are visible but not jarring, the colors though are pretty washed out. If you do buy the television, do yourself a favor and upgrade to an HD source of content.
Taking things up a notch, the television also supports 4K HDR content. By boosting the contrast between blacks and whites, you can see more in the content than you would be able to on a regular panel. The downside? There’s practically no 4K HDR content available yet outside out of some samples floating around. Yes, we’re getting there and Netflix has added support for it but it’ll be at least a year or more till you can begin to see 4K HDR content widely available.
Our only concern with the Sony KD-55X9300D was the motion enhancement being done on a panel level. Meant as a way to smoothen out motion in fast action sequences, we noticed that on occasion the content felt sped up. This was particularly true while streaming local content over Plex. All in all though, the panel is absolutely gorgeous and is amongst the best that you can get hold of right now. Short of a OLED display, you just won’t get better dynamic range and contrast ratios.
Smart TV Features
The Sony KD-55X9300D runs Android TV as its smart television platform. On that note, the interface is very easy to work with and brings with it the wealth of the Play Store which allows you to install a bevy of apps.
The television comes preinstalled with apps for Bigflix, Netflix, Notify Bravia, Serial Abtak, Sony Liv and YouTube. As mentioned earlier, there are catchup apps for a whole host of networks now so you can install them via the Play Store itself. There’s also games and a lot more which you can check out on your television thanks to the Android base of the smart features. Also, since the television runs Android TV instead of a forked and modified version of Android, you are guaranteed an interface and usage experience that is perfectly suited for the large screen. Worth noting is that since this is a full-fledged Android TV running device, it also acts as a Chromecast thereby allowing you to cast content from apps on your smartphone.
Performance is one area where the TV really suffered. Compared to the likes of the buttery smooth Nvidia Shield TV, the Android TV experience on the Sony KD-55X9300D suffers massively. There is a lot of lag all around the interface but dive into an app and it gets better. We believe that the lag is a by product of the not so great processor being used and the limited amount of RAM onboard since Kodi would occasionally pause to buffer even over a very fast local network. The Sony KD-55X9300D is powered by a Mediatek MT5890 processor which has 2 X Cortex A17 cores. The television has just 1.5GB of RAM which would explain the buffering related issues we faced.
Video playback itself though was flawless. No matter what format we threw at the television, it managed to play it without a pause. While Kodi was our choice, it is possible to install VLC player as well to playback any obscure formats you might have lying around. You can also plug in your hard drive of course and we had no issues playing back content from both NTFS and FAT formatted drives.
Audio
There are 4 7.5 watt speakers built into the television but hidden away from the front of the display. Volume is loud enough to fill a decently sized room but there’s very little bass here. A television like this definitely deserves a good audio system to accompany it but if you don’t want to invest in one, the built-in speakers should suffice for the most part. Treble tends to be slightly harsh here and we weren’t too fond of using the built-in speakers for audio listening.
Remote
The TV ships with a pretty large remote that runs off two AAA batteries. n addition to the regular television controls, the remote also has direct shortcuts for Google Play Movies and Netflix. While it is nice to have these shortcuts, we’d have preferred it if the controls were programmable instead.
Beyond that the, the same remote doubles up as a way to control the Android TV interface. Media control buttons placed below work over HDMI CEC as well thereby letting you control playback on connected peripherals including a Chromecast. A button near the top activates the built-in microphone allowing you to perform all the voice related functions built into Android TV. We observed this to work very well in practice and is a great way to look for search and play content on the television.
Conclusion
The Sony KD-55X9300D is a phenomenal television that offers you cutting edge display technology. With 4K HDR compatibility, excellent viewing angles and smart capabilities built-in, there’s not many 55 inch panels that can deliver what is being offered here. Unfortunately, as with all good things, you must pay the price for living on the bleeding edge. The Sony KD-55X9300D costs a searing Rs. 2,64,900 which places it strictly in the enthusiast category. With the advent of cheaper 4K televisions including those from LeEco and Vu, most would be willing to make the compromise of image quality that’s not as good as the Sony KD-55X9300D but with a price point that is a fraction of the latter. For cinemaphiles though, you can’t go wrong with the television and we’d highly recommend it.