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The Sony X850E is an excellent option for those who need a massive 65-inch TV for watching sports. The TV has adequate picture quality and decent responsiveness. It’s also a good option for gaming.
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Good for sports
The Sony X850E can make fast sports look fluid and crisp because of its good picture quality, decent motion handling, and excellent color uniformity.
The TV performs well when it comes to color uniformity. This is essential for those who frequently watch sports played on pitches like golf, football, and rugby as it makes the pitches look natural and uniform.
The motion blur handling capabilities of the Sony X850E is almost on par with what the competitors in this range can offer. The TV has a full pixel response time of 13.8 ms, meaning it only takes roughly 1/70th of a second for the pixels to change color entirely, and pretty much eliminate motion blur.
Pro Decent for HDR content
The X850E has a wide color gamut that allows it to reproduce the colors necessary for true HDR, and it has an average peak brightness level of ~400 nits that allows it to light up these colors properly. Thanks to that, HDR pictures look decent and highlights will look fairly good.
However, the HDR performance can’t get better than that, due to the average peak brightness of ~400 nits which isn’t really enough for details to truly stand out, and it lacks local dimming.
Pro Excellent motion interpolation capabilities
The X850E can increase the framerate of content to either 60Hz or 120Hz.
It guesses which frames are missing based on the previous and next frame, and inserts the missing frame in between them. This produces a really strong soap opera effect, where images look really smooth.
This might look weird to some people that doesn't like it, but the X850E can do this really well for those who enjoy it.
Pro Excellent value for money
As the only 65-inch TV available in its range, the Sony X850E offers decent value not only regarding its functionality and picture quality, but also in terms of its size. If the 55-inch options of the Sony X900E or Samsung MU8000 seem too small for you, consider getting this 65-inch TV.
Pro Good picture quality
Thanks to the TV’s decent contrast ratio, excellent black uniformity, and good luminosity, the Sony X850E offers decent picture quality in SDR mode which allows the TV to reproduce both dark and bright scenes beautifully.
When it comes to dark scenes, the TV performs above average because of its exceptional black uniformity that is on par with what OLED TVs can do. That, combined with the native contrast ratio of 4510:1 allows the X850E to display thick, immersive and rich dark scenes.
Furthermore, the X850E can reproduce beautiful bright scenes because of the TV’s high SDR peak brightness of 370 nits, which also allows it to deal with glare quite efficiently.
Cons
Con Terrible viewing angle
The 65-inch version of the Sony X850E comes with a VA panel that has a very narrow viewing angle, making the TV unsuitable for watching with a large group. Drastic color degradation happens when the viewing angle between the panel and a viewer reaches 18 degrees.
Recommendations
Comments
Flagged Pros + Cons
Pro Decent picture quality
The X850E looks really good in dark scenes, thanks to its decent contrast ratio of 4500:1 and excellent black uniformity.
It can produce blacks that are 4500 times darker than the brightest white, and the black uniformity is especially good - there’s barely visible flashlighting, where edges of the screen has light on them when displaying a black image, and the screen is evenly bright. This makes it perform really well in dark scenes.
Colors look vibrant because of the panel’s high peak brightness levels of ~350 nits for SDR & ~400 nits for HDR. With these brightness levels, it can get bright enough to fight glare. Along with its great handling of reflections, pictures will still look good in decently-lit environments without dull colors.
Pro Offers best value for screen size in this price bracket
The X850E has the largest screen size at 65” for the cheapest when compared to its direct competitors. Similarly-sized models from its direct competitors cost much more.
Pro Excellent for 24p content
The X850E is an excellent option for those who watch content from an antenna/satellite box, DVD/Blu-ray player or Apple TV. It can detect eliminate jerky playback that is common in content from these sources.