When comparing Samsung MU7000 Series 40" (UN40MU7000) vs Sony X900E 55" (XBR55X900E), the Slant community recommends Sony X900E 55" (XBR55X900E) for most people. In the question“What are the best TVs?” Sony X900E 55" (XBR55X900E) is ranked 11th while Samsung MU7000 Series 40" (UN40MU7000) is ranked 30th. The most important reason people chose Sony X900E 55" (XBR55X900E) is:
The Sony X900E is an excellent companion for watching sports because of its admirable image quality, decent motion representation, and good color uniformity. Aided by a highly sensitive panel, the Sony X900E handles its motion blur well as the TV needs only around a 100th of a second for its pixels to switch their color entirely. As a result, moving objects leave just a tiny trail on the screen. The X900E’s pixel response time outperforms every competitor in its price range. The TV can also display beautiful and uniform colors, which allows it to reproduce sports pitches correctly. In fact, the Sony X900E is among the best in its range concerning color uniformity.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Great well-rounded option
The MU7000 is a great well-rounded option for watching movies, gaming, and sports. Its picture quality is decent, it has low input lag and low motion blur, and the screen uniformity is great. It can also be used as a PC monitor.
Pro Remote has a voice command feature
The MU7000's remote has a voice command feature that can perform actions as you physically would with the remote, and it can even be used to adjust settings directly.
Pro Intuitive user interface
The MU7000 runs on the Tizen smart platform, known for its simplicity and intuitiveness.
It’s easy to navigate and access all the functions of features of the TV - the whole menu of the Tizen OS is organized around a menu known as the “Smart Hub” which contains everything: apps, settings, input switching, etc.
It also has a section for quick access to frequently used items.
Pro Decent for casual movies/TV watching
The MU7000 is a decent pick if you're a casual viewer. You'll get a great 4K/SDR experience, but the HDR performance might be lacklustre due to the lack of local dimming and low HDR peak brightness.
Pro Decent for gaming
The MU7000 is decent for gaming thanks to the fairly low input lag and barely noticeable motion blur. Its input lag of ~20ms contributes to a responsive gaming experience, and the panel's response time of ~20ms means it can handle motion fairly well - most don't notice any visible trails behind fast-moving objects.
Pro Can be used as a PC monitor
The MU7000 is suitable as a PC monitor because of its relatively small screen size of 40". It can be used up front thanks to the small minimal viewing distance, and it has full 4:4:4 color support that ensures text or shapes with clear, hard edges are not blurry.
Pro Decent picture quality
The MU7000 looks good with really deep black levels and sufficient peak brightness levels for most content.
Dark scenes look amazing thanks to the panel’s contrast ratio of roughly 6300:1, which means it’s capable of producing blacks that are 6300 times darker than the brightest white pixel the screen can produce.
It gets bright enough for SDR content with a peak brightness level of ~350 nits, which is sufficient for making colors pop.
The best viewing experience will be in a dark environment where the panel won’t have to compete with light as the MU7000’s screen can’t get bright enough to perform as well in bright environments.
Pro Excellent for watching sports
The Sony X900E is an excellent companion for watching sports because of its admirable image quality, decent motion representation, and good color uniformity.
Aided by a highly sensitive panel, the Sony X900E handles its motion blur well as the TV needs only around a 100th of a second for its pixels to switch their color entirely. As a result, moving objects leave just a tiny trail on the screen. The X900E’s pixel response time outperforms every competitor in its price range.
The TV can also display beautiful and uniform colors, which allows it to reproduce sports pitches correctly. In fact, the Sony X900E is among the best in its range concerning color uniformity.
Pro Handles reflections well
The Sony X900E is an excellent option for those who need a TV for a bright room since its panel does an outstanding job of handling reflections thanks to the semi-gloss screen finish, which can diffuse around 98.8% of the incoming light.
Pro Excellent for HDR media
The Sony X900E has everything needed for displaying high-quality HDR content. First, the X900E supports wide color gamut which is essential for a decent HDR experience as it allows the TV to reproduce deep and vibrant colors. Second, in HDR mode, the Sony X900E can sustain up to 525 nits of brightness, which enables it to fight glare and display vivid colors even in bright environments. In its range, the Sony X900E is the most luminous TV.
Pro Excellent for 60p and 24p signals
The Sony X900E is an excellent TV for those who use cable/satellite boxes, DVD/Blu-ray players, and Apple TV because it can detect and eliminate the ‘2:3’ judder effect. This effect is usually caused by 24p content being transmitted using the 60 Hz signal.
Pro Ads-free UI
The main interface of the Sony X900E does not have advertising.
Pro Large app selection
The Sony X900E runs the Android smart TV platform, which has the widest app selection among all current smart TV platforms. All of the applications are available via the Google Play Store.
Pro Compatible with all current-generation consoles
This 4K120 TV is entirely compatible with all of the current generation gaming consoles, including the Xbox One X, PS4 Pro, and Wii U. Additionally, it’s highly unlikely that within the next couple of years any gaming console will break the 120 Hz barrier; so it is expected that this TV will remain compatible even with the next generation consoles.
Pro Suitable for gaming
The Sony X900E is also suitable for gaming because of the TV’s low input lag. While in ‘Game Mode’, the TV’s input lag remains at 34.2 ms allowing for relatively fast-paced gameplay.
Pro Excellent picture quality
The Sony X900E has the best picture quality in its range as the TV manages to balance high contrast ratio, marvelous SDR and HDR brightness, decent color uniformity, acceptable black uniformity, and good color accuracy.
The TV does an outstanding job with dark scenes as its contrast ratio of 5411:1 is perfectly balanced with its decent black uniformity, allowing the X900E to display deep and immersive dark scenes.
As for bright scenes, the TV’s peak luminosity is 509 nits, which is more than enough for making colorful scenes look really luminous, even if the TV is in a bright room.
Cons
Con Pretty expensive for a 40" TV
Other similarly priced TVs are 49" and above, while this specific model of the MU7000 (UN40MU7000) is only 40".
Con Glare might be an issue
The MU7000 might not be able to handle environments with lots of light, such as sunlight pouring into a living room with no curtains. Its panel is only average at handling reflections, and the brightness levels peak at ~350 nits which isn't really sufficient for fighting glare.
Con Speakers produce distortion at high volumes
The MU7000's speakers produces distortion that starts getting noticeable at around ≥40% of max volume.
Con Not suitable for group watching
The MU7000 has a narrow viewing angle that makes it unsuitable for group watching.
Audience sitting away from the center of the screen will not experience the same picture as those sitting in the center, because the picture quality starts to deteriorate significantly when viewing from just ≥20° away from the screen's center.
Con Might require some color calibration out of the box
The MU7000's colors might look off to some viewers out of the box due to its high white balance. Switching to the "Movie" option in "Picture Mode" should be enough to remedy this for most, but only calibration can fix this for some viewers.
Con Interface has ads
There are ads that can't be removed on the MU7000's interface.
Con Lacks support for Dolby Vision
The MU7000 currently supports the HDR10 format only.
Con HDR performance is lacking
The main drawback of the MU7000 is its HDR performance.
While it has a wide color gamut that allows it to reproduce the wide range of colors necessary for true HDR playback, it can’t get bright enough to take advantage of it. At only ~300 nits of brightness, it's pretty hard for HDR pictures to pop.
It also doesn’t have local dimming, so its black levels can’t be improved further for better HDR performance.
Con Horrible sound quality
The sound quality of the Sony X900E is a total mismatch to the TV’s excellent picture quality. Additionally, the TV is unable to get really loud as it caps off at 90 dB.
Con Minor image retention problems
If you leave an image on the screen for an extended period, you might notice some minor ghosting effect which will disappear within a couple of minutes. This is a very unusual thing for a VA LED TV.
Con Narrow viewing angle
Like most VA panel TVs, the Sony X900E suffers from massive image degradation due to the viewing angle. The maximum viewing angle of this TV is only 17 degrees.