Recs.
Updated
The Sony X930E is a great alternative to OLED TVs in this price bracket. Its picture quality can be considered on par with OLEDs, and it does not suffer from image retention issues.
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Excellent picture quality
The X930E’s picture quality is top-notch. Images are wonderfully reproduced with captivating colors and great detail.
The blacks are really deep - it’s about 6000 times darker than the brightest white pixel the screen can produce. This creates a sense of depth as the focus of the picture pops, without any loss in background details.
It gets even better when watching in a dark room. You’ll be able to notice subtle details in the picture, and dark scenes will look stunning as the lack of glare allows you to perceive blacks better.
On top of that, the colors are really vibrant, even in broad daylight, thanks to its really high peak brightness levels of ~900 nits for SDR & ~1.4k nits for HDR. It can get brighter than most smartphone’s screen under the sun without significant loss in picture quality.
Pro Excellent at handling highly dynamic content
The X930E can handle fast-paced or rapidly-moving objects very well.
Objects don't leave any trail behind it, thanks to the panel's quick response time. It only requires ~13ms fully change the pixel's color, which eliminates virtually all motion blur.
The panel also has a native refresh rate of 120Hz that makes images look smoother.
Pro Excellent at handling glare
When set in a bright environment, the X930E's picture quality doesn't suffer from much deterioration.
It has no issues fighting glare thanks to its really high peak brightness levels of ~900 nits for SDR & ~1.4k nits for HDR. The intensity of glare is also further reduced by the panel's semi-gloss finish.
Pro Excellent for HDR content
The X930E shines when it comes to HDR content. HDR pictures look true-to-life with stunning highlights and great black details. This is thanks to the high contrast ratio, local dimming, wide color gamut, and really high peak brightness level.
The local dimming can make parts of the screen darker when neccessary, giving it a boost in contrast ratio from 5744:1 to 6564:1. This gives the image deeper blacks and greater detail, resulting in brighter HDR highlights and better overall picture quality.
Its wide color gamut enables it to reproduce all the colors neccessary for HDR, and the high peak brightness level of ~1.4k nits makes the color really vibrant.
Pro Decent sound quality
The sound quality of X930E’s built-in speakers is decent enough for users that aren't picky about sound details.
Dialogue sounds clear, and details aren't drowned out by too much bass or treble. It can get pretty loud at ~95dB, but there's some distortion at higher volumes.
Cons
Con Poor viewing angles
The X930E is not suitable for group-watching because of its poor viewing angles.
Audience viewing from other angles might not experience the same picture quality as those directly in front of the screen. The picture quality starts deteoriating at just ~10° off the center of the screen with the blacks turning into gray and colors looking dull.
Recommendations
Comments
Flagged Pros + Cons
Pro Good for gaming
Having low input lag and well-handled motion blur, the Sony X930E is an excellent LED gaming TV for those who refrain from buying an OLED TV.
The input lag of the X930E is only 25.7 ms, which allows for fast and responsive gameplay as the TV needs only 25.7 ms to process your actions, like a click of a button, and display a corresponding reaction.
The motion blur of the TV is handled by the highly responsive LED panel of the X930E. The panel’s full pixel response time is only 12.7 milliseconds, which means that each pixel of this TV needs around 1/80th of a second to change its color, so that fast-moving objects might leave only a tiny trail on the screen.
Pro Good for HDR content
This TV has all the bits and pieces needed for watching HDR-enchanted content as it combines wide color gamut support, exceptional peak HDR brightness, and decent contrast ratio.
Pro Ads-free main interface
The main interface of the Sony X930E is free of ads. Moreover, the TV has a setting to opt out of personalized ads even in third-party applications.
Pro Good picture quality
The X930E has outstanding picture quality regardless if the TV is placed in a bright or dark room as the TV has excellent contrast ratio, decent black uniformity, and exceptional SDR peak brightness. It looks much better than all of its LED competitors, including the VIZIO P-series and Samsung Q7C.
The TV has a very high native contrast ratio of 5744:1, which combined with the panel’s good black uniformity allows the TV to reproduce deep and rich dark scenes. In fact, within its price range, only a few OLED TVs can outperform the X930E in picture quality.
The sustained peak brightness of this TV is 1436 nits, which is by far more than any competitor can offer and enables it to fight off glare.
Pro Suitable for console gaming
The Sony X930E is an excellent TV to hook up with any current generation console because of its high native refresh rate at 4K. Furthermore, as the TV’s input lag stays constant regardless if the HDR is on or not, it is also suitable for HDR gaming. In fact, it is expected that the X930E will be compatible with all the next generation gaming consoles since it’s highly unlikely that those consoles will surpass the 4K120 mark soon.
Pro Great for dark rooms
The X930E shines in dark environments — it is great at reproducing dark scenes, making it suitable for enjoying media in a cinema-like setting. It performs extremely well in movies with many black highlights/scenes where this is immediately noticeable even to undiscerning viewers (e.g. Interstellar).
Pro Dark scenes looks great
The X930E can handle dark scenes very well thanks to its high native contrast levels, which clocks in at 5744:1 native, and it can go up to 6564:1 with local dimming enabled. This, along with good black levels and uniformity, gives the TV the ability to achieve great representations of dark scenes beyond most expectations.
Pro Great black levels and uniformity
The black levels of a TV affects the viewer’s perception of other colors next to it. If the black levels are not deep enough and doesn’t remain uniform across the screen, the overall picture quality will look “flat” without much depth. The X930E handles this well with only <1.1% deviation (across the entire screen) from what a pure black screen should be — this results in a significant gain in its native contrast levels, thereby increasing the picture quality.
Pro Great color reproduction
The color gamut of a TV refers to the range of colors the display can reproduce — the wider the color gamut, the more colors it can display, and the better the overall picture quality will be. This is extremely important for HDR content because it requires a much wider color gamut than SDR content. The X930E has no issues with accurately reproducing the colors necessary for true HDR because its color gamut is one of the widest and only bested by some OLEDs.
Con Currently lacks Dolby Vision support
Right now, the Sony X930E is not compatible with the Dolby Vision format.