While most premium TV brands are focusing on OLED panels for their new Ultra HD sets, Sony's latest high-end LED-lit LCD units show there are still benefits to the less-common technology.
The X9300E is Sony's top-of-the-line LCD for 2017, and aside from being hands down the best LED-lit TV I've tested for streaming TV, watching movies and playing games in 4K, it also provides a unique high dynamic range (HDR) experience compared to OLED sets.
Before we get to the screen, it's worth pointing out that the X9300E is a beautiful machine to look at. Ordinarily I'm indifferent to TV design, as long as it doesn't distract from viewing. However I was impressed by the textile finish on the rear of this set, which can be removed in panels to access the various inputs. Cable ties lead all your cords down to the metal stand, where they can be threaded through before the panels are snapped back in to hide the cables entirely. If you intend to have your TV away from the wall or in the middle of a room, this makes a huge difference. The metal borders are slight, and the TV overall is thin but very solid and heavy.
Performance
The first thing you'll notice when you see the X9300E in action is its frankly excessive level of brightness. While an LCD TV like this can't touch LG's finest OLEDs in terms of producing perfect blacks or infinite contrast, its advantage is tremendous brightness that can (once turned down to a less eye-searing level) produce stunning colours under any lighting conditions.
When viewing regular content (that is to say anything non-4K, non-HDR), the TV does a fine job of polishing it up, thanks in part to a new X1 processor that Sony dubs "Extreme". The local dimming can be tuned to smartly boost contrast on a per-object basis in regular content for a quasi-HDR effect, while the 120Hz panel can interpolate lower framerate video to smooth things out (or make everything look like a soap opera, if you set it to maximum).
But the X9300E comes into its own when displaying native 4K, HDR content. In dark scenes, colours stay clearly defined and delineated while the backlight allows bright elements like a torch or fire to punch through and really hit you in the face.
A high-end LG OLED would have more perfect contrast — i.e. a bright object could move next to a dark object without any light bleeding over — but the Sony's luminance makes for incredible looking films, TV and video games. Try as I might, I couldn't spot any blooming or unintentionally lightening of dark areas of the screen, which I was legitimately surprised by given this is an edge-lit TV. While a combination of processing effects and smart lighting can help make regular content look smooth and natural on the X9300E, 4K HDR content feels like it was built for a screen like this. It's far superior to LED sets from Vizio or Samsung, and offers a different set of skills to the best OLEDs from LG.Â
The set doesn't have many technical weak points, and those it does have are common to most LCDÂ TVs. For example the viewing angles aren't great, meaning content looks washed out if you're watching from the side. Conversely, I was actually impressed by the built-in speakers on the TV, which are generally woeful in skinny units. The sound is thin and lacking bass, so you'll still want a sound system for serious movie watching, but it's more than loud and clear enough for general broadcasts.
Apps and inputs
Like most of Sony's 2017 TVs, the X9300E runs a slick version of Android TV which can feel a little cluttered at first but offers a wealth of ways to get content to your TV. The search ability is particularly impressive, as once you make your query (by typing or simply by speaking into the remote), the system will pull up the movie or TV show you asked for with available subscription, rental or purchase options. There's also plenty of streaming apps and games available from the Google Play store, and Chromecast built in if you'd like to send streams from your phone.
If I had a complaint about the X9300E, it would be that the system seems laser-focused on making 4K HDR content look great in a world where most of the stuff we watch is 1080p (at best). For example the default brightness setting out of the box was '50', a setting that actually made looking at the TV quite uncomfortable with the 1080p broadcast I had on. For HDR content the brightness really only affects the highlights, so cranking it up can make things very dramatic, but otherwise it's a full frame of light hitting you in the face most of the time.
After some noodling I decided that viewing regular content was most comfortable with the brightness set all the way down to '1' and the auto local dimming racheted up. To its credit, the TV lets you set different picture options for HDR and non-HDR content for each input, and its cleanup of regular content can be impressive, so with a bit of organisation and fiddling you should get great images all the time. But if you're not that keen on manual calibration the TV doesn't do a lot to help you.
The other concern I have has to do with gaming. With a machine that outputs a 4K image (I tested with a PlayStation 4 Pro, Xbox One S and a PC), the X9300E is an incredibly good gaming TV. When you're using one of the two dedicated high-speed HDMI ports — and assuming all your cables, AV receivers and such are up to spec — you'll get clean, almost blur-free 4K images at 60 frames per second, incredible HDR for supported games and all the bells and whistles as far as colour profiles are concerned. Games built with HDR in mind — like Horizon Zero Dawn or Gears of War 4 — are greatly improved in a cinematic sense by this TV.Â
Most impressively you'll also get a very low amount of input lag, meaning you should be able to play the twitchiest games at 4K without noticing a delay between your button presses and the movement on-screen. Yet when you use a machine that outputs a lower resolution image (I tried the same consoles at 1080p, plus retro games running through hardware that upscaled to 720p), the input lag is much increased. Even with every image-processing option disabled, perceivable lag affected all games running through a sub-4K connection, which is an issue for fast-paced modern games and an absolute killer for anything developed in the pre-HD era. I can only assume the issue is a result of the TV converting the image to 4K, meaning it's possible it could be improved in future software updates. If you're not planning to play games, or only use a machine that outputs in 4K, this won't affect you.
Should I get one?
As usual, Sony is charging a premium for its wares. The X9300E starts at $3999 for the 55-inch model, up to $5299 for the 65-inch. The cost is steep compared to other lesser LCDs, but it stacks up well against similarly sized OLEDs.
If you're outfitting a dedicated viewing room or a warehouse-sized loft and need something bigger, Sony also makes a 75-inch version of this TV. Called the X9400E, it's a direct LED set (rather than being edge-lit) and comes in at $8999.
It's worth noting that the X9300E and X9400E lines are not the only 2017 Sony TVs to make use of its new processing hardware, and a lot of the benefits seen here can be had for less money if you're willing to compromise.Â
The X9000E series is similar, but it lacks the premium cable-hiding design at the rear and has a less powerful processor (the high-end sets are the only ones with the "Extreme" branding). X9000E sets also won't hit the same heights of brightness and local dimming that the 9300E and 9400E sets do, but subsequently they cost $1000 less across the board and add the option of a 49-inch model for smaller rooms.
Moving further down the line the X8500E is side-lit, so can't boast the consistent black levels, local dimming or precision HDR of its more expensive siblings, but it starts at a reasonable $2500 for 55-inches, a $1500 difference compared to the top-of-the-line LCD. For what it's worth though, I would take a 55-inch X9300E over a 65-inch X8500E any day, and they cost the same.
Sony fans unsure of whether OLED or LCD is for them might want to hold onto their wallets a bit longer, as the company's own A1 OLED series is on its way.Â
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