After spending some time with Sony's LED-backlit Bravia XBR-55HX929 ($2,899.99 list) it's easy to see why XBR series HDTVs are the company's flagship product line. With its attractive, minimal design, incredibly dark blacks and vibrant colors, the 55HX929 is one of the most visually stunning HDTVs we've seen. This 55-inch set is also 3D ready, comes with built-in Wi-Fi, and offers a generous selection of Web apps. Its flaws are few and relatively minor: At $2,899.99 (direct) it's not cheap, and you'll have to shell out even more for 3D glasses. You also get some minor dark-screen blooming, but you'll have to look closely to see it. Overall, though, the 55HX929 is tough to beat on features, design, and performance, so it earns our Editors' Choice award.
Design and Features
The 55HX929 radiates elegance. The 54.6-inch panel and black bezels are covered by a single sheet of tinted Corning Gorilla glass, which is known for its pleasing aesthetics and durability. The all-black cabinet is just 1.5 inches thick but for some reason Sony stuck a raised RS-232 remote control port off on the back of the TV. It's fairly small but it juts out about ?-inch and looks out of place, as if it were an afterthought. The rectangular glossy black stand provides effortless swivel maneuverability and does an adequate job of supporting the 58-pound cabinet.
At 9.8 inches the remote is larger than most but there's a reason: Sony populates it with 53 buttons and a four-way rocker panel, which makes things a bit crowded. In fact, I accidentally pressed the wrong buttons several times while calibrating the set. It's nice to have dedicated Netflix, Qriosity, Widget, and 3D mode buttons, but Sony could do a better job of spreading them out on this oversized remote. On the upside, the buttons are illuminated with cool blue backlighting and are very easy to identify in the dark.
Amazon Video On Demand, Hulu Plus, Netflix, and CinemaNow! get top billing in the online-streaming offerings that come with the 55HX929. Additionally, there are loads of lifestyle, sports, and entertainment services including Crackle (movie and TV), Daily Motion, XOS Sports, NHL Vault, Billabong Sports, Pandora, Slacker, and YouTube. Sony's Digital Concert Series channel offers concert footage of acts such as ThirdEye Blind, Chickenfoot, and Creed, and you can also sign up for Sony Entertainment Network's Qriosity, a fee-based on-demand service offering an extensive catalog of video and music.
You get a nice array of picture settings with this set. Among the basics are Brightness, Picture (contrast), Backlight, Color, Sharpness, Hue, and Color Temperature. You can also enable noise reduction to smooth out artifacts and engage the CineMotion and Motionflow options to help smooth out film-based content and reduce motion blur. I was unable to detect any motion blur whatsoever on the 240Hz panel and suggest leaving the MotionFlow option disabled.? There are more than a dozen Picture presets available including several variations of Cinema, Photo, Game, and Animation modes, as well as Standard and Custom modes.
Advanced settings let you enable black correction, set gamma, enable/disable the Dynamic LED Control (local dimming), and turn on edge enhancement. Here you can also enable the Advanced Contrast Enhancer, which automatically adjusts the contrast and backlighting in relation to overall screen brightness, and switch on the Auto Light Limiter to help reduce glare in overly bright scenes. I found that the picture was much more stable when these two functions were turned off.
The Intelligent Presence Sensor is a cool feature that uses a small built-in camera-based sensor to detect user motion for power saving and safety reasons. If the sensor does not detect the presence of a viewer the picture will darken or turn off completely to conserve power (depending on your settings).? The sensor can also be used to enable a distance alert for children; if a child gets within three feet of the screen, the picture will turn off and send a warning message and an audible alert. Finally, you can use the sensor to detect your position in relation to center screen and adjust speaker output to provide a well-balanced audio experience.
Performance
The set uses a full array of LED backlighting with local dimming technology to deliver an unbelievably sharp and highly detailed picture. After a basic darkroom calibration using images from the DisplayMate Multimedia Edition diagnostic suite, the 55HX929 produced an impressive contrast ratio of 22,819:1 as measured by the Konica-Minolta Chroma Meter. Its black level measurement of 0.01 cd/m2 goes toe to toe with even the best plasma screens and the Editors' Choice LED set, the Sharp Aquos LC-70LE735U ($4,799.99, 4 stars). Moreover, its red and green color levels were right in line with CIE 1976 Chromaticity standards, and blues were only off by a hair. As a result, color quality was excellent and skin tones were natural. The dark blacks gave colors some pop while providing very good shadow detail in my test clips from the BBC's Planet Earth on Blu-ray. The picture was crisp and free of artifacts and background noise, and off angle viewing produced no noticeable color shifting. Not surprisingly, it aced the HQV Blu-ray and standard definition tests for noise reduction, film processing, and jaggies.?
I did detect some blooming on the DisplayMate dark screen tests, but that's a fairly common byproduct of local dimming technology. The good news is that the blooming was not at all noticeable while watching Blu-ray movies or while streaming Web content and will likely only be evident (if at all) at the end of a picture while the credits are rolling against a black background. Even then you'll have to look closely to notice the slight glow behind the text.
The 55HX929 handles 3D very well. Sharks 3D on Blu-ray was impressive. It gave a great sense of the depth of the ocean with little crosstalk. Images didn't pop as much as with other HDTVs, like the LG Infinia 47LW5600 ($1,699.99, 4.5 stars) and the Sharp Aquos LC-70LE735U, but the 3D effect was solid and artifacts were minimal. The effect worked fairly well off-axis, but when you get too close to the screen the pictures start to separate.? Glasses are not included in the box so you'll have to come up with another $69 for one pair, or $139 for a two pack.
Power consumption was good but not great; the 55HX929 used 125 watts of power while viewing a Blu-ray movie in Standard mode. By way of comparison the same-size LG 55LW9800 ($3,799.99, 3 stars) averaged 89 watts, while the 55-inch Toshiba 55TL515U ($1,999.99, 3.5 stars) used 148 watts.
Sony's XBR-55HX929 may cost a bit more than other 55-inch LCD HDTVs but that's money well spent. Not only does this gorgeous set utilize the latest LED backlighting technology but it's loaded with Web apps and gives you Wi-Fi, 3D, and some neat child safety and power-saving features. You'd be hard pressed to find a set that delivers a picture with this level of detail, color accuracy, and clarity, which is why the Bravia XBR-55HX929 earns our Editors' Choice.
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