Sony Bravia KDL-40W4000 review

Performance
Setup is simple with the 40W4000, and throughout our time with it we were impressed by the quality of the menu system, which is well designed and incredibly responsive.

Despite its ludicrous name, the XMB is actually quite helpful. It's context-sensitive, so it offers you options relevant to the sort of material you're watching. It's also graphically rich, and the sort of thing we've been hoping for on modern TVs for some time now.

In terms of picture quality, we have to say we were impressed. There was something we didn't like about Sony's X3500, but the W4000 seems to be far more competent. Movies such as Rollerball on Blu-ray contained a truly staggering amount of detail, and the colours were bold, without overdoing it.

Upscaled DVDs, including our trusty Jurassic Park test disc, looked very impressive indeed. You certainly wouldn't dread falling back to standard definition even if you're a Blu-ray nut, because the TV does an excellent job with most movies. Of course, films look best when they're encoded at high bit rates, so the source material is critical here.

Freeview too managed to look pretty decent. We watched a worrying amount of Jeremy Kyle, and the over-done lipstick on the hapless losers, sorry, participants looked exactly as it would if you bumped into them in the dole queue. We never felt the TV was giving it anything less than 100 per cent, and that makes all the difference with Freeview.

We want to specifically mention the sound system too. We pushed it to the top end on 4Music, and were impressed to hear no distortion or unpleasant rattling at any time, even when there was bass-heavy dance music playing. Indeed, we were even able to knock the bass up a couple of notches, with no ill effects.

If we had to criticise the 40W4000 for anything it would have to be the backlight. We've said before that Sony seems to have its minimum brightness setting much higher than anyone else's. We'd like to see the minimum setting a little bit darker, because there were times when it was just too high, even though we had it set to zero.

Conclusion
A good all-round set. We aren't crazy about the design, but it's not offensive in any way, and the picture and sound quality both make up for it anyway. Generally, this is a strong performer when it comes to HD material, and using it is pretty pleasant too, with special mention to the XMB menu bar.

For competition, take a look at Toshiba's picture-frame Regza 40ZF355D or the excellent Panasonic Viera TH-46PZ85, both of which offer amazing 1080p performance, with the Panasonic offering superb blacks and the Toshiba specialising in very natural motion.

Edited by Nick Hide