Sony Bravia KDL-46X4500 (46-inch LCD)

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By Philip Wong, CNET Asia
Jan 16, 2009

Now into its third run, the 2008 Sony Bravia X4-series is available in two flavors: The regular X450 and the HD digital broadcast-enabled X4500. The latter is the subject of this review as we pit this ultra-high-contrast, LED-backlit LCD against our reference Pioneer Kuro plasma TV. Will this S$10,999 (US$7,919.22) flagship Bravia deliver deep blacks that can rival the king of plasma? We've the answer.

Design

Unique floating streamlined speakers and status LEDs.
(Click for larger image)

The latest Bravia X4 has received a facelift that is quite unlike its predecessors. Gone is the metal bezel which is now substituted by a plastic piece in a sparkling midnight blue finish. Sony has further tweaked the original "floating glass" design. The new chassis sports see-through, albeit flimsy, acrylic sides that give its streamlined speakers and operating status LEDs a unique "in-the-air" effect. As if these are not enough, there's also a lighted Sony logo to liven up the clutter-free front. Furthermore, you can opt for an optional gold, black, brown or red shade on top of the stock silver speaker grilles to customize its appearance.

Another notable addition are its convenient front-facing, touch-sensitive controls. These glow white and can be programmed to fade automatically, seamlessly blending into the 50mm-wide frame. As for the auxiliary A/V inputs, Sony has HDMI, USB, earphone and other legacy jacks lined up on the left behind the speaker. This arrangement is fine for tabletop installation that makes use of its matching swivel stand, but is a potential hassle for wall mount considering the distance from the ports to the speakers. Removing the stand also comes with a caveat: This sacrifices its integrated cable tie which provides basic management for the snaking cords.

A ring within a ring: A little too cluttered around the D-pad.
(Click for larger image)

The remote has been upgraded with radio frequency technology without line-of-sight restrictions, but this comes at the expense of backlit buttons, standard in the old model. It doesn't help that the surrounding function keys are a little close to the directional pad. That said, these shortcuts are extremely handy for impromptu adjustments. For example, Option brings up a submenu of key A/V configs onscreen. What this ergonomic controller truly excels in is video switching. It is able to automatically filter inactive signal inputs to facilitate toggling, with a dedicated key each for selecting analog and digital TV channels.

Those familiar with Sony's PSP and PS3 products should readily recognize the Bravia's new XrossMediaBar user interface. This next-gen icon-based menu offers a more fluid navigation and tighter multimedia playback integration. This is achieved by a drilled-down, left-to-right display of data and well-structured settings. Additionally, plenty of tweaking options are available. These range from basic to advanced configurations covering everything from sharpness to SpyderTV-friendly white balance and 100Hz MotionFlow Pro processing. The only imperfection is a grayed-out Hue option even when the right signal is supplied.

Tags: Light-emitting Diode, Speaker, Sony Corp., multimedia, radio frequency

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