When comparing Sony X900E 49" (XBR49X900E) vs Sony X930E 55" (XBR55X930E), the Slant community recommends Sony X900E 49" (XBR49X900E) for most people. In the question“What are the best TVs?” Sony X900E 49" (XBR49X900E) is ranked 6th while Sony X930E 55" (XBR55X930E) is ranked 23rd. The most important reason people chose Sony X900E 49" (XBR49X900E) is:
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.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Excellent picture quality
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.
Pro Google Assistant is available
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.
Pro Excellent at upscaling low-res content
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.
Pro Virtually no reflections
The X900E's panel has a semi-gloss finish that significantly reduces the intensity of glare.
Pro Great ecosystem of third-party apps
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.
Pro Interface is ads-free
There are no ads on the X900E's interface.
Pro Excellent at handling highly dynamic content
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.
Pro Great versatility
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.
Pro Great at handling glare
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.
Pro Excellent for HDR content
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.
Pro Decent for watching sports
Excellent picture quality, well-handled motion blur, and decent color uniformity make the Sony X930E a solid option for sports fans.
First, the Sony X930E manages to keep its motion blur low due to its fast panel that needs around 12.7 milliseconds to make its pixels change their color completely. This rapid pixel response time ensures that you will not see artificial trails on fast-moving objects on your screen.
Regarding the color uniformity, the Sony X930E performs better than its main competitors, including the VIZIO P-series. Color uniformity is important because it reflects how well the TV can display large objects of uniform color, like football or hockey fields.
Pro Does not suffer from image retention
Unlike many OLED TVs, the Sony X930E does not suffer from any image retention.
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 aren’t interested in an OLED TV.
The input lag of the X930E is only 25.7 ms, which allows for fast and responsive gameplay as the TV will only need that much time to generate an image from an input signal from a computer or a gaming console.
The X930E handles motion blur because of its highly responsive LED panel. The panel’s full pixel response time is only 12.7 milliseconds, which almost eliminates motion blur since all the pixels of this TV need roughly an 80th of a second to change their color.
Pro Good for HDR content
This TV has all the bits and pieces needed for watching HDR-enchanted content because of the TV’s wide color gamut support, exceptional peak HDR brightness, and the panel’s 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 a dark room. The X930E outperforms all of its LED competitors because of the TV’s excellent contrast ratio, black uniformity, and exceptional SDR peak brightness.
The TV has the 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. Within its price range, few OLED TVs can outperform the X930E in picture quality.
It’s also worth mentioning that this TV does a fantastic job when situated in bright rooms. The sustained peak brightness of this TV is 1436 nits, which is far more than any competitor can offer.
Pro Suitable for console gaming
The Sony X930E is an excellent TV to hook up with any current generation console because of the TV’s high native refresh rate at 4K. Furthermore, as the TV’s input lag stays constant regardless if HDR is on or not, it's also suitable for HDR gaming. 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 4K120 in the near future.
Cons
Con Bad sound quality
The sound quality of X900E's built-in speakers is bad. It can't produce much bass and sounds rather flat. There is also noticeable distortion at high volumes.
Con Lacks support for Dolby Vision
The X900E currently only supports the HDR10 format for HDR content.
Con Not suitable for group watching
The X900E has a narrow viewing angle that makes it unsuitable for group watching.
Its picture quality gets worse when viewed from off-center angles. At ≥20° away from the center, the blacks start degrading into greys and colors will start looking dull. Brightness levels start decreasing at ≥50° away from the center.
Con Poor viewing angles
The narrow viewing angle is the most obvious limiting factor of this TV. Its VA panel is prone to color degradation once the angle between the panel and a viewer reaches 19 degrees. Still, this is a widespread issue for VA panels and is not specific to this TV alone.
Con Currently lacks Dolby Vision support
Right now, Sony X930E is not compatible with the Dolby Vision format.