Fabulous!!! This television has replaced my previous Sony Bravia 43” Smart television which I purchased six years ago and which has provided excellent trouble free service since I bought it. Setting up the new one and tuning it in was very easy to do. It was good to see that all the input sockets are all conveniently located together on one side of the set making cable routing tidy. Sony’s ECO Dashboard allows you to make adjustments that help to reduce the power consumption of the set and save you up to 30% on your usage. Once it was up and running I was pleasantly surprised to see just how good the picture quality is thanks to Sony’s 4K picture processor X1 which brings scenes vividly to life in bright true to life detail with strong colours and high contrast. Ultra High definition is available to view on selected Netflix content and there is also some content available on the BBC iPlayer for free! – the picture definition in ultra high definition is breathtaking. The sound is pretty good too for a flat panel TV but a sound bar would be a nice addition. The built in You View tv guide has improved a lot since the last version I had on my previous TV. Channel listings are clearly displayed and it’s also easy to access the “catch up” services such as the BBC iPlayer , ITV X, CH4 etc. The Google Home page displays viewing suggestions for you based on your existing viewing habits and preferences, it covers all the main content providers. Most of the apps you need are all on the home screen and you can download others if you wish from the play store. “Now” tv was absent so I simply downloaded it from the Play store and it now resides on the home screen. Personally I would have liked a bit more control over the layout of the home screen and also to be able to “hide” apps that I have no interest in, just to tidy up and simplify the home screen and organise things to my liking. I was really surprised to find that there was no “Google Movies” app shortcut anywhere, especially as this is a Google TV! After a bit of google searching I found that it is built in but you have to access it by using the built in microphone on the remote control and asking it to “open google movies” which it does. Maybe something for a future update? The ability to use voice commands proved to be really useful the more I used it. The TV comes supplied with two small remote controls, please see my photo’s. Personally I would have preferred to have just one remote that covered all the functions. The menu structure is very good and accessing the settings menu to make adjustments to the picture and sound etc. is much improved over the previous model. Five free movies are available automatically with this set when load up the Sony Core movie channel. The channel offers higher picture quality to the likes of Netflix and Amazon and no registration is required! To conclude I have to say that this is a truly excellent television. It offers fantastic picture quality with a good feature set. It is excellent value for money and I can wholeheartedly recommend it. You will not be disappointed!
