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First unveiled at this January’s CES, Sony has officially confirmed the 4K TV lineup it’ll be bringing to South East Asia, including Singapore, yesterday. And we’re looking at three series here: the flatscreen Bravia X9300D and X8500D, and the curved S8500D.
Design-wise, the new 4K TVs incorporate a “Slice of Living” design concept, which is Sony’s fanciful way of saying it took inspirations from typical living room objects. How’s that different from previous years' "Wedge" and "Floating Style” designs? Well, besides clean lines, everything is trying to be as flat as possible, including the parts that make up the metal stand (Sony is keen to stress its warm silver tone), as well as the rear cover that hides some of the ports and cable paths. For those who prefer to mount the new X9300D on the wall, the distance between them is now shortened to 36.7mm, which is as flush against the wall as you can get these days.
You'll also notice that, unlike last year's X9300C, the 2016 X9300D has lost the front-firing speakers on the two sides.
Notice the warm silver tone of the metal stand?
Two panels (one on the rear of the TV, one as part of the stand) let you hide the unsightly cables.
Picture-quality-wise, all three series are 4K TVs, capable of HDR. Interestingly, Sony won’t be using the new Ultra HD Premium logo introduced by the UHD Alliance; instead choosing to use its own 4K HDR label. This logo will also appear on other Sony products, including image capturing devices and disc players. While I can understand Sony’s intention here (to strengthen its ‘4K HDR’ ecosystem branding), it could lead to confusion for consumers. For instance, while its flagship models, like the X9300D, meet the UHD Premium requirements of a 10-bit panel, 90% DCI-P3 colors, at least 1,000 nits peak brightness and 0.05 nits black level, other models below it that also carry this proprietary label may not.
Moving on, all three series also use Sony’s 4K Processor X1 chip, which enables technologies like 4K X-Reality Pro picture processing, and Triluminos Display tech for a wider color gamut.
Some features are found only on the flagship X9300D though. One of them is X-tended Dynamic Range Pro, which enables deeper blacks and brighter peaks through intelligent varying of brightness; the other two series use Dynamic Contrast Enhancer, which optimizes frame-by-frame contrast levels.
And while all these series are LED edge-lit 4K TVs, only the X9300D sports a ‘Slim Backlight Drive’ to allow more precise local dimming. In a nutshell, more rows of LED modules are used at the sides, with more plates to guide the light to wherever it’s most needed on the screen.
And oh, only the X9300D supports 3D.
Pretty deep blacks on the X9300D, too.
Like the 2015 range, these 4K TVs will run Android TV, which means the ability to choose from the thousands of apps on Google Play, the ability to do voice searches (the remote has a new Voice Search button), and the ability to use Google Cast to cast movies, videos, games, and photos from your Android or iOS device to the TV.
The flagship Sony Bravia X9300D is available in 55 and 65 inches, and will be available in Q1 2016. The X8500D is also available in Q1, and comes in 55, 65, and 75-inch screen sizes. The curved S8500D is coming in Q2, and is available in 55 and 65 inches. Pricing details will be announced at a later date.
All the 4K TVs run Android TV.
The new remote control has a Voice Search button. And notice the Google Play and Netflix keys.
The S8500D is a curved TV, but as you can see, the curvature isn't too dramatic.
This article first appeared on Hardwarezone