Elegance and efficiency
I tend to be a relatively early adopter of technology, as a result I tend to pay significantly more than people a few years down the track to have "The Best" early.
With Ultra HD, or 4K TV's, I was a little sceptical. Would I have much or any 4K content? Am I paying for a technology too early?
It will be replacing my beautiful and fully functional Bravia XBR, so will I be gaining much?
The answer was immediately evident once I have mounted my new KD-55X9004a on the wall. This process in itself was a very simple procedure. I already had the XBR on the wall, thus my mounting was ready, but the weight of the new TV was lower and mounting was simple. Looking at the new piece of art on my wall was instantly a pleasurable experience even prior to turning it on. It simply is a beautiful television, and lives magnificently on my wall. Connectivity and interoperability with my other existing hardware was easy, and it looks at home where it lives.
My PS3 and PS4 were connected without any extra work, and up and away we went. On to usability, functionality and capability. Put simply the TV does everything I want and more.
It see's everything within my home network and just works. One thing that I have found the TV to be extremely useful for that I hadn't thought of, is its ability to view the very high resolution photos that DSLR camera creates. The 12 bit colour is quite simply amazing. Simply, this is the best computer monitor I have ever seen, and that wasn't even the reason I purchased it in the first place. I always have a computer connected to each TV in the house, it hadn't dawned on me what that extra resolution and desktop real estate would equate to when using it as a monitor.
When connected to a powerful computer, the TV becomes the most incredible computer screen. The screen's natural colour reproduction in full motion high frame rate video as well as static images is second to none. It is simply brilliant.
The local darkening across the screen gives true black, and the triluminous display has pure reproduction of colour just breathtaking. One of this particular TV's selling points were its speaker system, the abilities of these speakers are not usually fully utilized in my house. I have used them sometimes and in those times they are brilliant.
I had the choice of wireless and or wired connections, during the setup proceedure, I went with wired, but that was just a personal choice when connecting to my LAN, the TV picked up an IP address instantly and offered me web dynamic content and also offered to auto update its own firmware, that means one less thing I have to do, a great idea!
Navigating the menu systems was instantly easy.
So... It looks great both on and off, it sounds great. It's easy to operate. It connects to EVERYthing and any thing. it's colour reproduction is magnificent, it does high speed sports perfectly, it does static images perfectly. It does dark tone as well or better than ANY TV. In short it is has become a brilliant addition to the home, and a great purchasing decision.
About the only thing I could put as a slight negative is the high gloss screen, but that is only due to the location in my house and at certain times of the day. It is reflective as one would expect, and I knew it would be, but it really isn't THAT reflective. To counter that though, it is a major part of the elegance of the product, and if I was to design it I would not change that.
So that is my opinion of the latest SONY addition to the household, I hope that it will help you in deciding if this or it's younger siblings will be the right product for you.
