Best non-4K, non-Sony 50" TV right now?

TheVoice

TheVoice

TheVoice

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Long story short, I have a Sony Bravia KDL-50W805C and it's going back. What's the next best thing? Annoyingly it seems a lot of manufacturers are favouring 48" over 50" now so it's making finding an alternative a bit difficult as I'd rather not end up with a smaller TV than I started with.

Thanks for any recommendations.
 
harry5522 said:
Just out of interest. Why is it going back?
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Terrible backlight bleed/clouding coupled with a pile of software issues that make Windows Vista look like a successful product. Android TV is massively underwhelming and Sony's approach of "Advertise features now, add said features later" is reprehensible really and it's clear they're rushing to get stuff out the door because the stuff doesn't work properly. The latest YouView update disabled USB HDD recording and the YouView guide performance is what I'd expect a TV from five years ago to deliver, not a modern one running a full OS.

Unfortunately, having had a look around it seems anything equivalent or better is going to end up costing me another £200 (e.g. the Panasonic above) so I've agreed to a replacement from Amazon for now. If it sucks I'll return it too and see what my options are from there.

Kind of wish I'd just kept my old 40" Bravia now, it was great.
 
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Thanks, as of last night I'm using the settings from AV Forum's review so I'll see what that does, but I think a lot of the issues are with the panel; there's a lot of white clouding in dark scenes towards the middle-bottom of the screen. Hopefully the replacement is better.
 
Any dark/black scenes in general really, I'll see if I can get a decent photo of it later. If you haven't noticed it you've probably got a good one because it's quite obvious on mine. :(
 
Got the replacement on Tuesday night, seems better than the previous one. Much less backlight bleed/clouding (though still more than I'd expect of a TV of this price/quality) and the OS actually seems a reasonable bit quicker and more responsive.

Will spend some time this weekend to get the settings right and give it a proper test but I think I'm fairly happy with this one.
 
No it was from Amazon, the guy wanted me to deal with Sony at first but I said it was up to them to replace it after only two months, not the manufacturer.

Still, it's tarnished the Sony brand for me which is a shame as I usually like their stuff. Doubt I'd buy another Sony TV now, even with the better panel there are clearly corners that were cut to save money here and there. Not entirely surprising when TVs are now more complicated than ever before, but it's still not quite what I'd expect for the money.
 
harry5522 said:
One problem i had with the screen was with spending £600 on a screen i kind of was expecting £6000 oled quality. You won't find a screen better than this for the same price. And for that matter quite a bit more expensive. If you want me to send over my settings to try out that was properly calibrated you welcome to have them to test :).
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Yes please mate, that'd be great. :)

Wish there was a way to just copy picture settings across all inputs or just set them once globally, so annoying having them change for different inputs, apps etc. Very bizarre implementation Sony have used.
 
Thanks a lot, will give those a go in a bit. :)

This one definitely seems better than the last one, watched the last two Hunger Games films the last couple of nights in preparation for seeing the new one this week, and there's very little noticeable backlight bleed/clouding in dark scenes with it compared to the one I returned. Still looks poor when viewed from an angle but I'm sitting head-on so that's not an issue.
 
Two months later and now this one is faulty too. Spoke to Sony, they said they'd escalate my case and call me back tonight. They haven't, so I've asked Amazon to provide a refund and they've agreed.

So, is the Panasonic TX-50CX680B above still my best bet as a replacement? I'll take a trip to John Lewis this weekend to hopefully see a few in action and get a feel for what they're like to use. Annoyingly I'm going to end up losing out both financially (the Sony was a good price if nothing else) and on features but if it means I instead have a TV that isn't plagued with bugs and issues so be it. One of the nice things about the Sony was the low input lag for gaming so ideally the replacement needs to be as good in that respect.
 
I have no interest in sport whatsoever but that doesn't sound good regardless!

Eugh, such a crappy time to be buying a TV; OLED still far too expensive for me to consider, LCD quality seemingly a complete lottery and smart functionality just doesn't seem particularly well-implemented by any of the manufacturers. I have this horrible feeling that even with upping my budget, I'm going to end up disappointed somehow.
 
kona786 said:
The Samsung H6400 has been praised about a million times on this forum. For the sake of 2 inches, you could check it out?

Edit - can you fit in a 55"?
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Thanks, I'll give that one a look. No 50" will be the max I can go.

Scrutinize said:
I had the Samsung ue48h6400 for the last year and it has been great. Clouding/bleed was only just visible on test screens but never in use.

I have just changed it for the 55 inch h6400 version.

For your budget and if you are determined to avoid 4k I don't think you will find a better set, new, especially as you get the 6 year richersounds warranty.

Whilst it is a budget set now due to the price, it is still a quality tv.
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I'm not dead against 4K, I just don't want to end up spending more just for the sake of having it when I won't have any 4K sources and have no intention of upgrading to 4K Blu-ray, 4K Sky etc.
 
Sounds promising! How's the 'smart' side of it? Both in terms of apps, and the look, feel and responsiveness of the interface? I'll probably end up having to buy a Chromecast at some point, I don't use the cast feature of my current Sony one much but it's nice to have when I do want it. Probably the only thing I'll miss about it though!
 
Went to both Currys and John Lewis today. Saw some nice TVs but still not much closer to settling on one. The Samsung's seem nice, and I was quite impressed with the UE50JU6800 but the guy in Currys showed me a Full HD video file on it and the upscaling was utterly atrocious; jagged edges, poor colour reproduction, really couldn't believe it looked so bad. Whether that's down to the TV itself or just the built-in USB media player I don't know, but it wasn't very nice.

LG's Web OS is great, really smooth and quick to navigate, but Samsungs have Spotify which is swaying me somewhat. Firefox OS on the Panasonics seems okay, but a lot of the on-screen banners, menus etc are still old clunkly-looking designs which suggests they're doing the same as Sony in just having the OS running on top of their existing TV platform.

More thinking to do then!
 
Sod it, gone for that Samsung 48" everyone's banging on about. Annoyed I'm having to go for a 2014 model and it's 2" smaller, but the market is crap right now for full HD TVs and 4K is either compromised or too expensive.

What a waste of a weekend.
 
Ha yep, that's the one. Disappointed to be going for an older model when the entire point of me upgrading was to go for a new one with the latest and greatest smart features, but it seems like they're all compromised in some way. LG's WebOS is by far the nicest to use but the input lag seems quite bad across their model range which isn't ideal for gaming.
 
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