Sony X900E 49" (XBR49X900E) vs Samsung NU8500 55" (UN55NU8500)

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.

This TV makes it feel like the panel is actually surrounding you because of its curvature, which makes you experience the content more immersively. Additionally, the TV's curvature improves the overall uniformity of the corners of the NU8500.

The Samsung NU8500 offers decent picture quality in both HDR and SDR modes. The TV performs on par with the best mid-range options available on the market. The NU8500 can reproduce crisp and colorful bright scenes as well as some inky blacks.

Colors pop and look realistic thanks to the TV's high peak brightness, wide color gamut, and decent color accuracy. In the standard mode, the TV's peak brightness reaches 560 nits which makes the colors look live and vivid. Only a couple of TVs present in this price range can achieve such high peak brightness. The colors are accurate. You'll not be able to spot color inaccuracies as the TV's average color inaccuracy dE measures at just 2.5 - which is too small to be seen by a human eye. It's also worth noting that the NU8500 is capable of reproducing the entire standard color gamut.

The Samsung NU8500 does a reasonably good job when it comes to dark scenes thanks to its high native contrast ratio and good black uniformity. The TV's native contrast ratio measures ar 4478:1, which is a good result for a mid-range TV. That allows the NU8500 to display scenes that have both bright highlights and inky shadows that don't look washed-out thanks to the TV's black uniformity of 1.2% .