Sony Bravia KDL-46BX450 LCD TV Review

Introduction

Does the low price excuse poor performance? No, but maybe Sony didn't get that memo. After spending some quality time with the BX450, I walked away disappointed with its lackluster performance results, specifically in the areas of color quality, motion performance, and viewing angle.

Design

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The HX450 is strictly average in terms of design.

If it looks like a TV, then it must be a TV, right? The Sony Bravia KDL-46BX450 has no qualms about its identity: the thick bezels, the black color scheme, and the overall bulky nature indicate a low-end television.

If viewing the BX450 from the back, the connections are located on the right. There isn't much here: two HDMI inputs, a component input, a VGA input, a digital audio output, and a USB port are most of the connections. While there may not be much to choose from, accessing these ports was never a problem.

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Smart TV Features

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Sony provides a pleasant menu interface.

The Sony Bravia BX450 uses a clean and simple menu interface. Pressing the Home Menu button on the remote gives you five options: Favorites, Photo, Music, Video, and Settings. Favorites allows users to add their most-used inputs, and Settings is pretty self-explanatory.

If you have a USB drive plugged into the BX450, then photo, music, and video files can theoretically be played back via the TV's screen and/or speakers. Unfortunately, the BX450 refused to play back most of my files, with the exception of MP3 music files which played back without a problem. The BX450 was able to show only certain JPG files, and MOV or AVI video files did not work at all.

Picture Quality

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When it comes to picture quality, the BX450 starts to show some flaws.

The Sony Bravia BX450 did not perform well in this category. The most obvious flaw was its lackluster range of colors. All HDTVs show a mix of reds, blues, and greens to make up all other colors. The BX450 produced colors that were too vivid, which means content will not look how it was intended. There was also some color temperature error: the darker greys produced on this Sony HDTV had a bluish tint.

The BX450 also exhibited subpar motion performance. There was visible motion artifacting during all of the motion tests, specifically jerkiness and lines becoming jagged. We even saw some slight color trailing, which was most noticeable with red colors.

The total viewing angle of 30° is pretty bad, even for an LCD TV, which typically have narrower viewing angles compared to plasmas. If you view this TV at an angle greater than 15° on either side, the image quality will begin to drastically degrade.

Conclusion

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The BX450 offers nothing extraordinary.

$699 is a lot to ask for a 46-inch, 1080p TV that doesn't have smart features and still uses CCFL backlighting. Nevertheless, the Sony Bravia KDL-46BX450 could very well be a great purchase—if it displayed a great picture that rivaled more expensive TVs.

Unfortunately, that is not the case.

While the basic menu system on the HX450 was decent, we can't recommend a TV based solely on an interface. The BX450's shortcomings are numerous: the motion performance showed some artifacting, the colors were off, and the viewing angle was awful. Consumers could find a better way to spend $699.

Science Introduction

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The color quality on the Sony Bravia KDL-46BX450 was not up to par and neither was the viewing angle. If there was one saving grace on this TV, it would be its decent contrast ratio.

Color

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The colors on the BX450 are more vivid than they should be.

Every point on the BX450's color gamut is oversaturated, meaning that the peak values for red, green, and blue will all appear more vivid than they should. Since all television content is made with a standard gamut of colors in mind, the BX450 will not display content as it was intended to be displayed. More on how we test color performance.

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Viewing Angle

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This is a very narrow viewing angle.

The Sony Bravia KDL-46BX450 had a total viewing angle of 30°. This means that if the BX450 is viewed from an angle greater than 15° on either side the contrast ratio will drop dramatically. This drop will result in a degradation of the picture quality. More on how we test viewing angle.

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Contrast

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The BX450 was able to produce a good contrast ratio.

With a black level of 0.07 cd/m² and a peak brightness of 203.33 cd/m² the BX450 was able to produce a good contrast ratio of 2905:1. The deep black level that this Sony was able to produce is very good for an LCD television. More on how we test contrast.

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Other Tests

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