Sony Bravia KDL-40E4000 review

Of course, Sony has managed to work some significant magic with the still image processing on this TV. Generally this is an afterthought, but because this TV is designed to do a good job with such material, the TV really shines with it. The included artwork is really quite remarkable and looks stunning on this TV. If you're interested in having a TV that acts as a very large photo frame when you aren't watching TV, this could be the screen for you.

So, how does it cope with more traditional moving images? Actually, the Freeview picture isn't too bad at all. The E4000 does an excellent job with the colour and brightness, without going over the top. Sometimes there wasn't enough fine detail in a picture, but this is more likely to be down to the low bitrate broadcast than anything the Sony is doing wrong.

Upscaled DVDs looked good too. Our X-Men disc had lots of detail, although there were times when we noticed some nasty blocking and general picture distortion in dark areas. Still, not a bad performance overall.

The star of the show is always going to be Blu-ray, so we lobbed in Casino Royale and settled back to see how the TV coped. Happily, it did a brilliant job. The opening black and white scene looked as gritty and grainy as it is supposed to, there is a truly awe-inspiring amount of detail in the picture and the TV handles the mix of muted office and brighter bathroom shots incredibly well. The transition to the highly coloured and totally noise-free opening titles is superb, and the TV once again does a grand job presenting a bold and likeable picture.

We also have to applaud the sound on the Sony. Its front-mounted, front-firing speaker makes listening to dialogue a pleasure, and although it's a little bright at the top end, there is enough bass to manage a movie without too much disappointment.

Overall, black levels are quite good. We noticed that sitting dead-on to the TV gave the best results -- we'd expect this, since all LCDs are best viewed in this way -- but if we moved to the side we noticed the picture became washed out and blacks looked blue. We also noticed that from the side, the backlight doesn't look evenly diffused across the whole display. We'll leave it to you to decide if you can deal with the shallow viewing angle, as it's unlikely to bother most people.

Conclusion
Because the white styling of this TV won't appeal to everyone, you could opt for the KDL-40W4000, which is essentially the same TV in a more subdued case. Movie fans might want to consider a plasma, which won't do the still photo display as well but can handle contrast in a way LCDs can only dream of.

If you do go down the plasma route, we'd suggest either the Panasonic TH-46PZ81 or the Pioneer LX-5090. If you must have an LCD, the Samsung series 8 range looks amazing, and has plenty of cool toys to keep you interested, as well as doing photos, video and music from memory stick. 

Edited by Marian Smith