Sony 49" Bravia XBR49X800D

Mira Yurizaki · October 28, 2016

I recently picked up a 49" Sony Bravia X800D, the lowest end model that has 4K UHD and HDR.

So I'm not going to put down any objective measurements on the display's performance, mostly because I don't have the equipment to do so, but if you want to know that much http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/sony/x800d is a good place to start. I just see the floor models and go "okay, it looks good enough to me." But since the display is what matters most in a TV, I'll give some of my opinions on it:

The brightness is pleasant enough, even in a dark room. Most of the time I do use my TV though I keep my room as dark as possible. Unless it's night and I don't want to be a vampire and so I have a 800 lumen light on. But otherwise I'm fight with it.
The colors can be really rich and that's after playing around with the picture settings. But that doesn't bother me that much. I happen to notice the reds are really deep for some reason.
4K content looks amazing of course. 1080p upscaled looks great as well. If you're wondering where to get 4K demo videos: http://kodi.wiki/view/Samples
- HDR content also looks great, and I almost swear that the HDR content is just brighter than the non HDR content, but maybe it's just better contrast ratios in play.

If I'm not here to gush over the display and such, what am I here to gush over? The user experience. One thing that I did pick up on but didn't really care about during my research for a new TV was that this is an Android TV... TV. I figured it was going to be like some of the other smart TV OSes like Samsung's Smart Hub and LG's WebOS. Since I can't sort my thoughts into paragraph form, here's a bullet list of them:

Setup was similar to any other Android device, you start with language, network, and Google account login.
The interface itself is grid based with more room in the horizontal axis. I'm sure once you have enough apps, it creates a new row. The only thing I'm "eh" about but I haven't bothered to get around to it is that the home screen pulls up dozens of "recommended" stuff that I usually don't care for.
Downloaded apps are sorted into two categories: games and not games. The most you can do organizational wise is rearrange the tiles.
Oh yeah! The TV is compatible with a bunch of Android games. Notably Final Fantasy (but not Dimensions for some reason...) You have to use a controller to play them but the TV is compatible with Bluetooth controllers and Dual Shock 4. This is something that had me gushing (I can finally play said Final Fantasy games "properly"!)
- Pairing a Dual Shock 4 also lets me control the TV with it.
Inputs show up on their own row. If you have devices with HDMI CEC, they'll also show up as their own tile. Strangely it ID'd my Roku 2 as a Roku 3.
- When I select either my PS3 or PS4, if they're off, the TV turns them on. The other thing is that I can use the TV's remote control as a media remote for either console.
- If the Dual Shock 4 was used to power on the PS4 (I haven't tested with the PS3), then it can control the PS4 like normal. Although the pairing doesn't go from the TV to the PS4, so you lose the touch pad, share, and options buttons (which you know, are important to have).
I have my sound system hooked up through the ARC HDMI port, and for some reason the TV always turns it on. Not that I mind, speakers on TVs suck anyway.
Turning the TV off is more like putting an Android device to sleep. Depending on what you were doing earlier, it'll resume where you left off.

And now some quirks that might be annoying for some:

For some reason I couldn't connect the TV to the internet via Ethernet. It was on the network fine, but not the Internet.
If you plug in a USB drive for videos, it will scan the entire drive for videos before putting them up on the video player app. I'm not sure why the video apps use some kind of file explorer mode and scan only which directory you're in.
The remote control sensor is on the bottom near the light bar. This wouldn't be a problem if my sound bar didn't cover it.
Not all streaming apps available on Android are available for Android TV, including some that I use on the Roku 2, so I guess it'll stick around for a while.
Android TV can't connect to a Bluetooth speaker of any sort. There goes my dreams of using my Bluetooth headset.
It seems to have odd hardware supports for different codecs. I have a collection of anime that plays terribly on the TV (MX Player is the only one that can play them remotely alright) but for some reason it plays the 60FPS 4K HDR video I have just fine.
The interface can be a bit laggy at times.

My recommendation? If you're invested in the Sony and Android ecosystem, this is a good TV for the price ($800 USD) to have. I really like that all of my devices play nice with each other and I can control a good bit of them with one remote. Also the TV has analog video support, whereas TVs in this price range are increasingly not having it for some reason.

anybodykek · October 28, 2016

cool, unfortunately i'm a broke edgy teenager who thinks the iphone 7 is the greatest thing ever created

GooDBoY920 · November 21, 2016

Thanks for your feedback. I'm interested in the little brother of your tv, the 43" model. From what I read the 43" model uses VA panel and yours uses IPS.

How good the contrast at low brightness? And how low the brightness can get?