Samsung MU9000 55" (UN55MU9000) vs Sony X930E 55" (XBR55X930E)

The MU9000 can produce really detailed pictures, especially in dark scenes thanks to its really deep black levels. It has a contrast ratio of about 6000:1, which enables it to produce blacks that are 6000 times darker than the brightest white.

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 ~400 nits for SDR & ~450 nits for HDR.

Even in a decently-lit environment, the MU9000's picture quality can still hold up - the panel is excellent at handling reflections thanks to its glossy finish, and it can get bright enough to fight off glare.

On top of its great picture quality, the MU9000 has a high HDR peak brightness level and wide color gamut that makes it good for HDR.

Shadows look pretty good with nice details, and highlights are quite vibrant thanks to the peak brightness level of ~450 nits.

The panel can reproduce the wide range of colors required for true HDR playback because of its wide color gamut, which covers ~60% of the standard colors required for HDR according to the Rec. 2020 color space. This is considered decent enough for reproducing HDR details, and it can display these colors accurately at different brightness levels.

It’s worth noting that while the MU9000 has local dimming that’s supposed to make HDR better, the local dimming is worthless and doesn’t do much. It increases the contrast ratio by a meager amount and does nothing else.

The MU9000's panel has a glossy finish that reduce reflections significantly. This makes it excellent at fighting glare, along with its adequate brightness levels of ~400 nits for SDR & ~450 nits for HDR.

The MU9000 is pretty versatile. On top of its great picture quality, it has features that makes it perform quite well for gaming and sports.

It offers a responsive and fluid gaming experience . Players will have no issues keeping their actions in sync with what’s on the display, and fast-moving objects won’t leave any trails on the screen. That is thanks to the low input lag of ~25ms and the panel’s quick response time of ~15ms, which virtually eliminates motion blur.

It’s also great for watching sports because of the almost non-existent motion blur that makes fast-moving objects look smooth. The panel is also pretty uniform meaning it has no issues with displaying large, same-color objects on screen, like football fields.

The MU9000 comes with a OneConnect box which moves all the hard-to-access rear inputs away from the TV. Thanks to this, you’ll always have full access to all inputs and outputs of the TV even if it’s wall-mounted. The OneConnect box can also be used as a USB charging hub.

The MU9000 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 Tizen OS menus are organized around the “Smart Hub” which contains everything: apps, settings, input switching and others. It also has a section for quick access to frequently used items.

The MU9000'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.

The MU9000 can upscale 480p, 720p, and 1080p content to 4K quite well. The upscaled content has almost no noticeable artifacts, and all the details are preserved.

The MU9000 is great at dealing with 24p content, such as Blu-rays or media sourced from an cable or satellite box. It can detect and eliminate the judder effect present in these content, where images displayed can appear jittery.

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.

Unlike many OLED TVs, the Sony X930E does not suffer from any image retention.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.