Sony Bravia 65″ (KD-65x9000f) TV

The panel is UltraHD in resolution and uses LED backlights. The TV enhances blacks with something called “X-tended Dynamic Range PRO”, which Sony says delivers “up to six times the contrast of conventional LED TVs”. Sony has not gone for a super skinny panel. It’s 69mm thick for most of its area. Sony calls the backlight “Direct LED”. I’m hoping that this is Sony-speak for some kind of array of LED backlights.

The Sony KD-65X9000F TV, of course, supports HDR10 (ten-bit high dynamic range) and HLG (hybrid log gamma). There’s no mention of Dolby Vision or HDR+, so I figure it does not handle them. (Content encoded with these will typically be delivered instead as standard HDR.) It does not support 3D. UPDATE: I don’t know how I missed it before, but there’s a clear “Dolby Vision” logo flashed up when you play Dolby Vision content. Googling around, I see that a recent firmware update added that functionality.)

On the audio side, there are twenty watts of total power for the built-in speakers. Apparently, they use some form of bass reflex enclosure. There are indeed two holes on the bottom. When I had the TV upside down for attaching its legs, I assumed that these were just another mounting option. But, no, bass reflex ports. The speakers fire downwards.

Sony lists a bunch of special image processing functions with very exciting sounding names, but in the absence of clear technical explanations of what they are, there isn’t much point repeating them.

The TV has a 3.5-star energy rating and an annual energy consumption of 600kWh per year.

Networking

In case you’re wondering about the “hope” I expressed earlier, I’m writing this bit before using the TV in any kind of analytical way. Indeed, as I’m writing, it’s gradually downloading a firmware update (30% and counting). Because, of course, this is a computer as well as a TV. It runs Android (Version 7.0, if it matters) to manage its smart functions. And that means there’s a host of apps available for it. The Android is covered over with a Sony interface, so it won’t look like your phone screen.

The Sony KD-65X9000F TV is highly connectible with 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi, Ethernet (only 100Mbps, rather than gigabit), Chromecast and Miracast, Bluetooth, four UltraHD supporting HDMI, three USB sockets, optical audio out and headphone out. Oddly, according to the specifications you can’t record live TV to USB storage. That’s a bit out of step with many premium smart TVs.

There is wide support for playback of media, including high-resolution audio and just about all video formats available.

There’s no fancy pointer remote, but you can use the Android TV app on an Android phone to act as a fairly effective remote. If you want to do heavy-duty web surfing, then plug in a mouse/keyboard combo and the TV becomes a very large browser. It has 8GB of storage, with 6.7GB available for use.

Setup

A smart TV means having an account with someone. An Android TV means having an account with Google. The Sony KD-65X9000F Smart TV is an Android TV. If you’re already an Android phone user, you might as well make life easy for yourself during the setup wizard and use your phone to transfer your Google account details to the TV. That cuts out most of the setup work. It was even easier because I used an Ethernet cable, so I didn’t have to connect the TV to Wi-Fi. (The Wi-Fi supports up to dual-band 802.11ac standards.

If you don’t do that, it takes a little longer, but the process is clear as the TV describes what to do at each point. The slowest bit is when the TV tunes in all the stations.