Introduction

Front

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The front of the TV does not feature Sony's monolith design, meaning it has a normal glossy black bezel.

Back

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We weren't able to get a shot of the back: typically booth reps don't like you touching their heavy, expensive prototypes.

Sides

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Due to how the display was set up, we were only able to get a shot of the left side, which features a handful of ports. The right side features the on-set controls.

Stand/Mount

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The KDL-55HX729 was one of the few Sony TVs that was actually on display with the standard stand. It looks about the same as last year's offerings.

Aesthetics

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The KDL-55HX729 doesn't break any new ground in terms of design. It features a pretty plain aesthetic with glossy black plastic bezels. The design still looks great—it's certainly better looking than many other manufacturer's offerings—but it's nothing we haven't seen before.

Display Size & Technology

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The Sony KDL-55HX729 is a 55-inch LCD display that uses LED backlighting. The TV will also come in two other sizes, the 65-inch KDL-65HX729 and the 46-inch KDL-46HX729.

Formats & Resolution

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The TV has a native 1080p resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels), which is currently the highest HD format supported. This may soon change, however, as other manufacturers are rolling out 4000 x 2000 panels.

Brightness, Blacks and Contrast Ratio

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On the show floor, the Sony displays looked like they had deep blacks, even when surrounded by brighter tones. The whites seemed decently bright, but they certainly didn't stand out. We'd expect a higher than average contrast ratio out of these TVs, but nothing that will break records.

Color

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Color is always hard to judge on the show floor because we have no control over the TV's calibration. As such, all kinds of processing is typically enabled and the colors suffer the most from this. The displays we saw were running loops of high dynamic range footage that featured oversaturated colors. We'll reserve judgment for when we get this TV into our labs.

Motion & Refresh Rate

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We didn't see any issues with the Sony KDL-55HX729's motion performance. The TV does have a 480Hz mode, which could have contributed to this performance, but we saw the same caliber performance from the 240Hz models. We suspect the number is simply to allow for 240Hz playback in 3D mode.

Viewing Angle

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Viewing angle is very hard to eyeball, but since we can't bring our CS-200 ChromaMeter to the show floor, we gave it a shot. The picture does look noticeably dimmer towards extreme angles, but we'd say this new batch has a wider than average sweet spot. We probably got out to about 50° or 60° before we really noticed a significant drop from dead center viewing.

3D Glasses

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The KDL-55HX729's 3D glasses looked about the same as the Sony 3D glasses we reviewed in 2010. They're active shutter, front-heavy, and bulky. They're not the most uncomfortable glasses we've tried on, but other manufacturers' clearly put more thought into overhauling their 3D glasses.

3D Effect

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The TV's 3D effect seemed to be a bit better than what they offered in 2010. The effect dropped out at times, such as during fast motion, when something was in the immediate foreground, or in high contrast areas, but it was a marked improvement over last year's effort. The effect was also a bit deeper than some of the passive or glasses-free 3D we saw, but had that annoying active shutter flicker.

3D Motion

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As mentioned above, fast motion caused the 3D effect to break down, but it wasn't as bad as we've seen previously. Some of this might be due to the TV's 480Hz refresh rate, which allows 240Hz to each eye. No 3D we saw on the show floor was perfect, however, regardless of the technology used.

Audio & Video Ports

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The Sony KDL-55HX729's ports aren't finalized, but we could sneak a peek at what the prototype offered. The side featured, from top to bottom, two USB ports, two HDMI ports, a 3.5mm audio intput, an optical audio output, a VGA input, and a 3.5mm audio output.

The shot we got of the back seems to feature three more HDMI ports, a set of component video inputs, a composite video in, two analog audio ins, and an ethernet port.

Internet & Other Media

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As mentioned previously, the TV offers two options for connecting to the internet: wired and wireless. The WiFi connection is built in to the device and runs on 802.11n.

Placement

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The ports seem to have a standard arrangement, with a few running down the TV's side and a small cluster on the back. The stand also swivels to allow easier access.

Remote

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The remote wasn't on display, but since every other manufacturer was announcing fancy remotes and Sony didn't, we're betting it isn't too different from their older model.

Controls

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The TV's controls are located on the right side of the TV, towards the bottom. They cover all the basic functionality.

Menu

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The menu system wasn't on display and no one left a remote lying around for us to furtively peek behind the curtain. We'd guess it was the same as the 2010 menu.

Conclusion

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The KDL-55HX729 has all the features of the high end and has very, very similar picture quality. This unit is due out a month after the flagship, so we're guessing it will offer a lower price point than the flagship when it launches. Overall, though, Sony's 2011 line-up confuses us: all the TVs are very, very similar, and there's nothing to jump out and grab consumers.

Series Comparision

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Specs

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