When comparing Sony X930E 55" (XBR55X930E) vs TCL S405 65" (65S405), the Slant community recommends Sony X930E 55" (XBR55X930E) for most people. In the question“What are the best TVs?” Sony X930E 55" (XBR55X930E) is ranked 23rd while TCL S405 65" (65S405) is ranked 209th. The most important reason people chose Sony X930E 55" (XBR55X930E) is:
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.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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.
Pro Decent for casual movies/TV watching
The S405 is a decent, affordable pick if you're a casual viewer. You'll get decent picture quality and a good 4K experience, but the HDR performance might be lackluster due to the lack of local dimming, wide color gamut, and low HDR peak brightness.
Pro Excellent value for money
The S405 strikes a nice balance between picture quality, screen size, and input lag, all for an affordable price of below $500. It's a great choice for watching and gaming casually without breaking the bank.
Compared to its direct competitors, it offers decent picture quality that is a tad below them, bigger screen size, and lower input lag.
Content looks decent enough for most casual viewers - the black levels are sufficiently deep, colors are vivid, and it gets bright enough for most types of content in a dark room.
The size difference is pretty huge as options with similar size of 49", or even smaller, cost fairly more than the S405.
Its low input lag of ~15ms contributes to a more responsive gaming experience. It's barely noticeable, and it’s also one of the lowest among 4K TVs, which is an impressive feat in this price bracket.
Pro Works well as a computer monitor
The S405 works well as a computer monitor thanks to its low input lag, barely noticeable motion blur, and full 4:4:4 color support. The 43" model can even be used up close due to its small minimal viewing distance.
The low input lag and low motion blur of ~15ms makes it highly responsive to input and gives it the ability to handle dynamic content well.
It also has full 4:4:4 color support, so text or shapes with hard edges on the screen won't be blurry.
Pro Decent for watching sports
The S405 is a good pick for watching sports thanks to its low motion blur and reasonably consistent color uniformity.
Fast-moving objects, like footballs, won't leave any visible trails on the screen due to the low motion blur of ~15ms. While there are slight uniformity inconsistencies in the edges of the panel when displaying large, same-color objects on the screen, like football fields, the issues generally go unnoticed by most.
Pro Intuitive and smooth user interface
The S405 runs on the Roku TV smart platform, touted for its simple, straightforward, and lag-free UI.
It’s easy for anyone to grasp how navigation works, thanks to its two-column design with the menu on the left and options on the right.
There’s also no noticeable lag during navigation or menu selection.
Pro Excellent for gaming
The S405 is excellent for gaming - the overall experience will be very responsive and fluid, thanks to the really low input lag and barely noticeable motion blur.
It has an input lag of ~15ms that makes the TV highly responsive to user input - gamers will have no issues keeping their actions in sync with what's on the display. The panel can fully change its pixels color in under 15ms, resulting in fast-moving objects not leaving any trails on the screen, eliminating virtually all motion blur.
It's also suitable for HDR gaming because there is no increased input lag for HDR, and it has full 4K support @ 60 FPS, which makes it suitable for all new 4K games.
Pro Main interface has no ads
The S405 has no ads on its main interface, although there can be ads in third-party applications. Third-party ads can't be blocked, but the tracking and personalization can be limited through the TV's settings.
Pro Colors are accurate even without calibration
The S405 is excellent at reproducing colors accurately out of the box.
Even without calibration, the colors are spot-on - they're very close to what the source signal demands and any inaccuracies are generally considered imperceptible to most end users.
The overall average difference between the source signal and the panel's reproduction of the color is measured in Delta-E, where lower means better accuracy. The S405 has a Delta-E of below 2.0, and anything below 3.0 is generally considered accurate for most end users.
Pro Decent picture quality
The S405 looks decent with adequately deep black levels, above-average color accuracy, and sufficient peak brightness levels for most content.
It’s especially great at reproducing dark scenes thanks to the panel’s contrast ratio of about 4000:1, which means blacks can get really dark at about 4000 times darker than the brightest white it can produce.
Colors are spot-on even without calibration, and the panel can get bright enough with a peak brightness level of ~200 nits to make them pop in dark environments.
The best viewing experience will be in a dark environment where the panel won’t have to compete with light. The S405’s screen can’t really get bright enough to perform as well in bright environments.
Pro Well-balanced side inputs
Even when the S405 is mounted on a wall, you'll still have access to all essential inputs and outputs which are situated on the side of the unit.
Pro Highly versatile
The S405 is versatile enough to be used as a general-purpose display.
The picture quality is decent for movies and TV shows, and it checks all the boxes that make a TV suitable for gaming, sports, and as a computer monitor: low input lag, low motion blur, good screen uniformity, and full 4:4:4 color support.
Cons
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.
Con Can't fight glare very well
The S405 can deal with low amounts of light, such as sunlight through curtains, but it won't be able to deal with significantly bright light.
Apart from being unable to get bright enough, its handling of reflections is only average. The panel has a semi-gloss finish which helps in reducing reflections a little, but its peak brightness level of ~200 nits is not enough for fighting glare.
Con HDR support is basic
The S405 can't reproduce HDR pictures very well because it lacks various important features.
HDR won't look much different from SDR due to the lack of wide color gamut and low peak brightness. It can't reproduce the full range of colors necessary for HDR, and the brightness level of only ~200 nits is barely enough for HDR content to stand out.
The black levels are also insufficient for highlights to stand out, and it won't be as dynamic as one would expect for HDR due to the lack of local dimming.
Con Poor sound quality
The speakers on the S405 are too bassy, so distortion becomes a huge problem at high volumes. A relatively cheap speaker system or a soundbar will make a huge difference in sound quality.
Con Remote lacks functionality
The S405 has a basic remote that is only capable of navigation, playback control, and volume control. It doesn't have fancy stuff like voice command found in remotes of other TVs.
Con Lacks support for Dolby Vision
The S405 only supports the HDR10 format for HDR content.
Con Not suitable for group watching
The S405 has a narrow viewing angle that makes it unsuitable for watching with groups.
People 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 ≥30° away from the screen's center.