Sony X900E 49" (XBR49X900E) vs Samsung MU8000 65" (UN65MU8000)

The X900E looks true-to-life with really deep blacks, clear details, and captivating colors.

Pictures look realistic with lots of details. There’s great depth to them and you’ll be able to see everything in the picture stand out.

Dark scenes are excellent with nice shadow details that are not overly dark to the point where some details get drowned out. This is thanks to really deep black levels, enabled by the panel’s contrast ratio of about 5500:1 which means it can produce blacks that are 5500 times darker than the brightest white. This can be pushed even further to over 6500 with local dimming.

The colors are lifelike and accurate even without any calibration by the user. They will look really vibrant even in bright scenes because of the panel’s high peak brightness levels of ~500 nits for SDR & ~550 nits for HDR.

Even in a decently lit environment, the X900E’s picture quality can still hold up as the panel is great at handling reflections and it can get bright enough to fight off glare.

The X900E runs on Android TV that has Google Assistant. It has voice commands that are pretty useful as you can open apps with it, ask for the weather, and even turn the TV off.

The X900E can upscale 480p, 720p, 1080p content to 4K with no issues. All the details are preserved and most won't notice any imperfections.

The X900E's panel has a semi-gloss finish that significantly reduces the intensity of glare.

The X900E runs on Android TV that has access to the Google Play Store. The Play Store has a nice selection of apps, but normal Android apps won't work unless they support Android TV.

There are no ads on the X900E's interface.

The X900E can display fast-paced or rapidly-moving objects very well without any trails behind it. The panel only requires ~11ms to fully change the pixels color, which eliminates virtually all motion blur. It also has a native refresh rate of 120Hz that makes images look smoother.

Apart from being an excellent TV for movies, the X900E is a decent choice for gaming and sports thanks to its decent input lag, low motion blur, great screen uniformity, and a 120 Hz native refresh rate that makes images look smoother.

The input lag of ~35ms is sufficient for most gamers, apart from competitive ones, to stay in sync with what's on the screen. The low motion blur of ~11ms and a refresh rate of 120 Hz ensures that everything will look smooth - fast-moving objects won't leave any trails on the screen.

It’s also viable for watching sports because the panel also has no issues with displaying large, same-color objects on screen, like football fields.

Even in a decently lit room, the X900E's picture quality will remain more or less the same as in a dark room.

The colors will still look vibrant because the panel is bright enough to fight off glare. It has peak brightness levels of ~500 nits for SDR & ~550 nits for HDR, and reflections are also significantly reduced by the panel's semi-gloss finish.

On top of the excellent picture quality, the X900E has everything essential to an immersive HDR experience: decent local dimming, great coverage of HDR colors, and high HDR peak brightness level.

Its excellent black levels are further improved with local dimming, which can make parts of the screen darker when the image calls for it. This results in an increase in overall picture quality with black levels becoming much deeper, so highlights will stand out further.

The panel can reproduce the wide range of colors required for true HDR playback because of its wide color gamut, which covers ~65% of the standard colors required for HDR according to the Rec. 2020 color space. This is considered great for reproducing HDR details, and it can display these colors accurately at different brightness levels.

Along with the the high peak brightness level of ~550 nits, HDR scenes will look stunning and you'll be able to see HDR details really pop.

The Samsung MU8000 is a good option for sports fans because of the TV’s decent color uniformity, well-controlled motion blur, and adequate picture quality.

Good color uniformity is essential for a sports TV since it allows it to reproduce beautiful and even looking sports pitches and arenas. In this aspect, the MU8000 performs as well as its more expensive competitors, like the Sony X850E and Sony X900E.

Also, a good sports TV must have a responsive panel that can eliminate the motion blur effect. Fortunately, the Samsung MU8000’s panel has a full pixel response time of 13.8 ms, which means that each pixel of this TV can fully change its color in about a 70th of a second, preventing fast-moving objects from leaving trails.

The Samsung MU8000’s picture quality is on par with its direct competitors. The TV produces a clear and good-looking picture in both dark and bright environments.

The MU8000 does an excellent job of displaying rich dark scenes because of the TV’s fair uniformity of its blacks and high contrast ratio.

High SDR luminosity allows the Samsung MU8000 to deal with the glare even in relatively bright rooms. The peak brightness of this TV is 380 nits, which is a good result considering that the competitors are only a tiny bit more luminous.

The Samsung MU8000 comes with a mini One Connect box which is used to move all the TV’s inputs away from the rear of the TV so that you can easily access all of the essential inputs even if the TV is mounted on a wall. The One Connect box can also be used as a USB charging hub.

The Samsung MU8000 runs the Tizen smart platform which is well known for its simplicity and intuitiveness. The whole menu of the Tizen OS is organized around the Smart Hub which acts as a gate for accessing all the functionality of the TV. Additionally, the Smart Hub has a row which contains the most-used items.

The Samsung MU8000 can detect and eliminate the judder effect from 24p content even when the content is sourced from a 60 Hz device, like a cable or satellite box, or Apple TV.

This 4K120 TV is an excellent companion to any current generation gaming console, such as the Xbox One X, PS4 Pro, and Wii U. Additionally, the HDR gaming support of the MU8000 will allow you to experience the immersive HDR effects in the latest console games.

Out of the box, the color accuracy of the Samsung MU8000 is very high. It’s unlikely that you’ll need to spend substantial time calibrating this TV.

The Samsung MU8000 is the best gaming TV in its range because of its low input lag and excellent motion-blur handling. The TV’s input lag of 24.2 ms makes it suitable for fast-paced gaming.