The Sony XBR55X900F is based on Sony’s all-too-familiar design, highlighted by an angular panel with a screen surrounded by thin, flat metal bezels. It sports similarly pointed corners and additionally gets a similar slim chrome-glazed band on the lower bezel together with an indicator LED below it. There’s a tiny Sony logo in the middle of the bottom bezel and there’s only one flair on the front of the panel.

The screen is supported by a pair of rectangular gray metal legs that peek out from the back of the TV, and they provide good support. All the models in this series share the same aesthetic, no matter which size you choose.

Around the back, you find some connections in the two rectangular recesses on the left side including an HDMI port, two USB 2.0 ports, four 3.5mm connectors for headphone/audio out, composite/component video, and infrared remote control in and out. Included an IR blaster.

The power cable also connects with the TV via a rear-facing port on the rear right side of the screen. The other recess houses additional connections—three more HDMI ports, a USB 3.0 port, an Ethernet port, an optical audio output, an RS-232C port, and an antenna connection.

Android TV Remote

Right now, the Samsung Smart Touch Remote is the best we’ve used and we expect Sony to probably copy the design in the new flagships. Not so fast. In this series, the included remote is the usual blocky-buttoned wand with a black rectangle aesthetic. It has a circular direction pad and menu buttons in the middle, and a number pad on top of it also as playback controls, volume, and channel rockers below it.

The only notable feature here is the Google Assistant button near the top of the remote which activates the built-in microphone which enables you to use the voice assistant on the TV. In addition, between the numbers and the navigation pad are two dedicated service buttons that provide easy access to Google Play Movies & TV and Netflix. It feels tight together, especially when you compare it with what LG and Samsung offer, and Roku-based TVs that offer tons of features without straining through menus.

Smart Android TV

Some rival TVs use the Roku TV or Fire TV version to deliver smart apps, and Sony’s Smart TVs use the Android TV platform for apps, services, streaming media, and interfaces. Android TV remains a powerful platform to beat, backed by a strong feature set and flexibility. Of course, it doesn’t offer the full selection of Android apps you would have on a smartphone or tablet, but the Google Play Store does offer a wider selection of useful apps than all other platforms. On the Android TV platform, you have all the big names including Amazon Video, Google Play Music & TV, Netflix, Sling TV, and YouTube among others.

On the Sony X900F, you can use Google Assistant for voice prompts, accessed via dedicated buttons on the remote, though it doesn’t support handsfree, of which you’ll need a separate hands-on, like the Google Home Mini. A free device may be required. With Google Assistant, you can search for media, navigate to various apps, view weather reports, and even control compatible smart home devices.

It has a whole spectrum of features that can easily be compared to Amazon’s Alexa which is built into Amazon Fire TV devices and TVs. The TV out-of-the-box also supports Google Cast. That said, the X900F’s flexibility is just about limited by the TV’s process hardware that typically gets over-involved by the tons of options available.

Navigating the Android TV interface can sometimes be jarring, compounded by the fact that the remote that connects wirelessly to the TV and microphone still requires an infrared line of vision for the buttons to work. Is. The X900F would have been better to negotiate with, but it’s still good, coming in the background of poor conversations we’ve seen in TVs that cost even more.

HD/SDR Display

The Sony XBR55X900F will mesmerize you with its HD and SDR picture performance. The new series is provided with Sony’s X1 Extreme video processor, which could be a jump from the standard X1 processor utilized in last year’s X900E model. With this component, the new sets are up to 40% more powerful, thanks to a unique twin-database system that works by eliminating noise from sub-4K sources.

This approach breathes life to HD Blu-rays and even DVDs, which look more detailed, like a real 4K source without adding any noise. It’s impressive to see that in less than a year, mainstream TVs have a new technology that can boost HD to 4K, and it just might be Sony’s X1 Extreme processor. Amazingly, it uses a similar approach to convert standard dynamic range (SDR) images to high dynamic range (HDR), resulting in visually unique, consistent, and vibrant images.

Sony is thus assured of this HDR upgrade system that it applies most of the XBR55X900F’S image presets by default. Thus, despite the TV’s mid-range price, it delivers high-end performance, especially when it comes to HD and SDR content, resulting in new cutting-edge technology in HD-to-4K and SDR. – To-HDR upscaling.

4K/HDR Performance

The Sony XBR55X900F supports HDR signals in both HDR10 and Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG). In fact, there’s the latest firmware update, which also supports Dolby Vision content streamed through online services. For the most part, the TV does a decent job with 4K sources, thanks to Sony’s X1 Extreme Processing and Triluminos Color Management, which deliver excellent lighting precision and noise management to make as much of an impact on accurate 4K pictures as possible. combine for.

To deliver even higher 4K clarity, Sony uses the MotionFlow process, a feature that enhances motion reproduction by simply reducing vibrate and blur in LCD TV playback. This has been the approach for a few years now. In the new XBR55X900F, Sony took things a step further with the new X-Motion Clarity technology. It takes advantage of the TV’s direct LED light and local brightness enhancement using local dimming to enable the panel to cast black frames in the picture, an innovative approach that results in a very precise natural motion.

Thanks to new technologies, the TV offers superb contrast numbers and stands mutually of the brightest during this price range. If you want better visuals while maintaining the same slim, sleek styling, you can always look to OLED TVs like the LG OLED55C8PUA (2018 model), or the Sony XBR55A9F (late 2018 model).

For daily content consumption, brightly colored content like BBC’s Life Story looks excellent and detailed. With colors that look natural and balanced, you can easily pick out fine details like fur and leaves in very sharp detail. Only they are not nearly as vivid as the LG OLED C8P series. Still, it’s a very attractive, eye-catching picture with a solid color display.

For gamers, 1080p video games and other advanced, fast-action content come through very well at the screen’s 4K resolution, with the occasional 60 frames-per-second gameplay appearing smooth and fluid. However, that doesn’t mean the X900F is a great choice for video games, giving it decent picture quality, but input lag is a factor that keeps it from getting a high rating.

Input Lag And Power Consumption

Input lag (the time between the display receiving the signal and the updating screen) is where the XBR55X900F fails to impress, with a very high 105.3ms input lag in Cinema Pro mode. In-game picture mode, input is cut by more than half, but even if it has to go up to 41.8ms, that’s still double for a TV we recommend for gaming. Still, you can play other games on this set and like it, but input lag can be disruptive. For gaming, a TV with an input lag of around 20ms or less is more preferable.

As you marvel at the XBR55X900F’s vivid colors, your power is being sipped successively. In normal viewing conditions with the Cinema Pro Mode preset, the TV consumes 207 watts. The TV consumes 158 watts in Power Saving (Low), but you’ll do with a dim screen, however, viewable, while Power Saving (High) drops the consumption to a topless 65 Watts, but uncomfortably dim the picture.