Sony X850E 75" (XBR75X850E) vs TCL S517 65" (65S517)

The X850E has a wide color gamut that allows it to reproduce the colors necessary for true HDR, and it has an average peak brightness level of ~400 nits that allows it to light up these colors properly. Thanks to that, HDR pictures look decent and highlights will look fairly good.

However, the HDR performance can’t get better than that, due to the average peak brightness of ~400 nits which isn’t really enough for details to truly stand out, and it lacks local dimming.

The X850E looks fluid thanks to its excellent color uniformity and decent handling of motion.

It can display large, same-color objects like football fields really well - they will look natural and uniform.

Fast-moving objects, like football, will also look smooth. The panel only requires ~14ms to fully change the pixels color, resulting in fast-moving objects not leaving any trails on the screen, eliminating virtually all motion blur.

The X850E 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.

The X850E looks really good in dark scenes, thanks to its decent contrast ratio of 4500:1 and excellent black uniformity.

It can produce blacks that are 4500 times darker than the brightest white, and the black uniformity is especially good - there’s barely visible flashlighting, where edges of the screen have a light on them when displaying a black image, and the screen is evenly bright. This makes it perform really well in dark scenes.

Colors look vibrant because of the panel’s high peak brightness levels of ~350 nits for SDR & ~400 nits for HDR. With these brightness levels, it can get bright enough to fight glare. Along with its great handling of reflections, pictures will still look good in decently-lit environments without dull colors.

There are no ads on the X850E’s interface.

The X850E can increase the framerate of content to either 60Hz or 120Hz.

It guesses which frames are missing based on the previous and next frame, and inserts the missing frame in between them. This produces a really strong soap opera effect, where images look really smooth.

This might look weird to some people that don't like it, but the X850E can do this really well for those who enjoy it.

The X850 has a relatively low input lag of ~35ms that makes it a decent pick for gaming. Most players will feel in sync, however, it might be a little unresponsive for competitive or demanding gamers.

It’s also acceptable for HDR gaming because the input lag does not increase in HDR mode.

The X850E is an excellent option for those who watch content from an antenna/satellite box, DVD/Blu-ray player or Apple TV. It can detect eliminate jerky playback that is common in content from these sources.

The X850E has the largest screen size at 65” for the cheapest when compared to its direct competitors. Similarly-sized models from its direct competitors cost much more.

In terms of picture quality, the S517 is comparable to high-end TVs. It displays remarkably deep blacks due to its great contrast and reproduces details in color very well due to its good color gradient.

The 6000:1 native contrast ratio allows the TV to reproduce dark scenes particularly well. It is easily one of the best in this price range – it’s often compared to high-end counterparts.

The S517 has superb black uniformity and contrast that create pleasant, deep blacks. They are much better than those of the similarly-priced competitors. The maximum deviation sits at around 1.02% .

The TV is good at capturing small differences in color such as skin tones, green colors in nature, details in shadows, etc. This is because of the color gradient, which is on par with other options of the same price. There is almost no banding and the standard deviation of color doesn't go past 0,11%.

The S517 is a much better fit for HDR content and HDR gaming than its competitors due to the wide color gamut, decent color depth, and high contrast.

The TV can display a lot more colors than its similarly-priced counterparts. The coverage of the Digital Cinema P3 color space is very good - 90%.

The color depth is on par with competing options. The S517 has 10-bit color depth, which means that it can display approximately 1.07 billion colors in total. This is important for HDR content because HDR media takes advantage of 10-bit.

The S517 can display deep blacks in the HDR mode because of its high native contrast ratio of 6000:1, which is easily one of the best in the given price range.

The TV can also play all HDR content because it supports both standard formats of HDR - HDR10 and Dolby Vision. They enhance the viewing experience by editing the metadata, that is, the extra information that tells the TV how to display HDR. The formats differ in the way they deal with it, however - Dolby Vision edits the picture on a per scene basis, whereas HDR10 edits everything at the start of the video.

The TCL S517 is a decent option for pretty much everything, be it gaming, movies, sports, or HDR content. It has noteworthy picture quality, good all-around responsiveness, decent smart features, nice motion handling, and, most importantly, a great price.

The S517 does a reasonably good job with upscaling most content to 4K quality, be it 480p DVDs, HDTV or full HD Blu-rays.

The S517 offers the possibility to represent motion in videos smoother, also known as the "soap opera effect". This is done by making the TV take two frames and try to guess what would a frame in between of those look like, also known as motion interpolation. The frame rate can interpolate up to 60 frames per second.

All of the inputs are conveniently placed on the side of the S517, so you won't have to worry about leaving space between a wall and the TV.

The S517 offers a pleasant PC monitor experience not only due to the good responsiveness but also because of the video signal's compression.

The TV won't make text appear blurry while connected to a PC because the signal has no compression and transports color data and luminance fully. This is also known as chroma 4:4:4, and the “Computer” and “Game” modes display it properly at 60Hz.

The picture quality when you first open the TV up is quite decent. The only settings that could potentially require tweaking are grey inaccuracy and color inaccuracy. Either way, these are things that most people won't even notice.

The S517 is fit for all gamers because it offers a clear, lag-free experience. The TV is very responsive - it has struck a good balance between decent refresh rate, solid input lag, and good response time.

The TV is an ideal choice for console gaming in terms of its native refresh rate. It caps at 60Hz, which is perfect since most games won't benefit from anything higher than this.

The S517 is fast. An action shows on the screen in around 18 milliseconds, which can make the difference between managing to get a frag or waiting for a respawn. The time doesn't substantially increase when gaming in HDR or 4K either - it goes up to roughly 20.5 milliseconds. The only thing to remember is to keep "Game" mode enabled for the lowest possible input lag.

The TCL S517 also handles motion and fast-paced content quite well, it has a good response time. This makes sure you can keep up with fast-moving objects and a lot of action without it all appearing blurry. A full pixel color transition takes only 15.8 milliseconds.

The S517 comes with the Roku TV smart platform, which provides a comfortable interface and a big app selection.

The interface is quite basic and easy to overlook. It’s smooth and simple to swap to your favorite apps.

Roku TV offers a vast app store with all the most popular apps – Netflix, YouTube, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant, HBO Go, Vudu and much more. Some apps are even absent from other TV manufacturers Smart TV platforms and unique to Roku.

The mobile remote app for both iOS or Android can fully and comfortably substitute the real remote – launch apps, input text in apps, control most TV settings, etc.

Also, colors can easily be adjusted close to perfection thanks to the app’s calibration menu.