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Sony Bravia KDL-46Z4100/B Review
The Sony Bravia KDL-46Z4100/B
Sony has been in the forefront of the LCD revolution, with the Bravia line being its main weapon. In recent years, the leading advantage of the company had been eclipsed by other manufacturers, though its LCD TVs remain strong contenders in the race for best HDTVs. One such product, the KDL-46Z4100/B certainly is an excellent LCD in many aspects.
Design
The KDL-46Z4100/B sports a thinner glossy black frame around the screen that makes the screen area seems bigger, a narrow see-through window at the bottom and a more compact chassis. The sleeker look along with the stylish but non-swivelling glossy black stand makes this LCD one of the best designed LCDs from Sony. This TV is also available in brushed metal finish (KDL-46Z4100/S).
The blue backlit remote of the KDL-46Z4100/B is different from the other Bravia TVs: it is of the universal type that is a bit bigger and has more buttons which are mostly for external equipment attached to the HDTV. The buttons that are actually for the TV are not logically arranged, with the many buttons around the main cursor control interfering with key-presses. Moreover, the Cross Media Bar (XMB) menu system isn’t too intuitive, and the horizontal and vertical arrangements of the menu items really could stand some improvements.
Screen/picture clarity
Powered by the Sony’s proprietary technologies, the KDL-46Z4100/B excels in video processing and colour accuracy, rendering almost perfect primary and secondary colors, along with greyscale. However, the black levels delivered by KDL-46Z4100/B leaves much to be desired – it is less impressive than other Sony TVs and fluctuates from total darkness to bright displays abruptly. Those factors make this HDTV less than superb in our view.
Sony’s Motionflow 120hz. dejudder makes fast motions smooth and left fewer artefacts than other TVs. The KDL-46Z4100/B also delivers uniform brightness across the screen, and performs better than competing brands in bright light conditions. It also has no problem resolving high-def and standard-def sources, with Sony’s technologically-advanced noise reduction system helping in cleaning out noise from low definition sources.
Features
Being on the high end of the Sony’s line, the full 1080p HD resolution KDL-46Z4100/B is packed with features: four independently-adjustable picture and three color temperature presets; four aspect ratio modes for HD sources; and an excellent surround audio. This LCD has an Ethernet port; onscreen electronic programming guide (EPG); USB and PC ports; four HDMI ports and a suite of connectivity inputs/outputs. The second window in the picture-in-picture mode, though, accepts only TV/antenna input and is thus limited.
This Sony flagship HDTV would have been a great all-around performer were it not for its inconceivably lacklustre showing in the black level aspect. Still, it isn’t a bad deal, considering the full-array of features packed into this LCD, along with its handsome and fresh styling.
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This was a great deal, and great quality. I had been shopping around for tvs for a while. A LOT cheaper than the exact same model that’s at Best Buy. They delivered when they said they were going to. No hassles.
With caution and some reservation, I purchased a “like new” Sony KDL-46Z4100 from Amazon.com Warehouse. Not only was it actually “like new” as advertised, but six months have now passed and it is still priced higher at the discount stores than I paid through Amazon.com Warehouse. I don’t see myself ever buying electronics any other way. They just depreciate way to fast to pay new retail prices, even when on sale.
I originally bought the samsung 46″ LN850 series, which was a great tv. A week later my screen went out, so I returned it and got another one. The same thing happend again after a couple days… I think they just had a bad batch of tvs. So I ended up picking this sony lcd up. I have had it for about 3 months now and am extemely pleased with the overall quality and picture. The sound is great for an flatscreen, especially for apartment living settings where you cant really hook up a legit surround sound system. Black levels are pretty good and the hd picture is great too. What I really enjoy about this tv in comparison to the samsung lines, is that when Im watching tv stations not broadcasted in hd, the full television is still used, without having to change my screen settings to wide(or “zoom” to fill and strech out the picture). I couldnt stand how samsung only used a portion of the screen with black bars filled in on each side… I know there are settings to aviod that, but it never seemed to look good. Overall I think the samsung 850 had a better picture when watchin blu-rays, but I am extremely happy with this tv and I think that my broken Samsung experiences might have been a blessing in disguise.
This was a great deal, and great quality. I had been shopping around for tvs for a while. A LOT cheaper than the exact same model that’s at Best Buy. They delivered when they said they were going to. No hassles.
My tv has been hooked up to a Comcast hd dvr (hdmi cable) for 5 months without any problems. The picture is excellent and I no longer have any glare issues. However, at first I wasn’t thrilled with the picture.
Here are my Setting suggestions:
Picture/Motion Enhancer: Off, Screen/Auto Wide: Off, General Setup/Light Sensor: Off, General Setup/Logo Illumination: Off
You have four separate Setting choices for Picture. I use Standard for watching tv during the day and Custom for at night.
Standard Settings (daytime viewing) – Backlight 6, Picture 80, Brightness 50 Color 55, Hue 0, Color Temp: Warm 1, Sharpness 15, Noise Reduction: Low, MPEG Noise Reduc.: Low. I don’t believe I changed any of the Advanced Settings, but here are the values: Black Corrector: Low, Advanced CE: Medium, Gama: Low, Clear White: Off, Color Space: Wide, Live Color: Low.
Custom Settings (nighttime viewing) – All of the Standard Settings including the Advanced Settings were used except for these three: Backlight: Min, Picture 94, Brightness 53.
I hope my suggestions are helpful.
I’ve been using this TV for about 4 months now. It’s a great TV with a great picture. I won’t bother repeating all of the technical stats since you can see them above, but suffice it to say that this TV has all the technical bells and whistles you’d want in terms of contrast ratio, refresh rate, etc.
In general Sony makes good products (although you do sometimes have to pay a little more for them). The Z series is their mid-range series – it’s better than the S, V, and some others, but doesn’t have all the features of the XBR series. This TV is the 4100 series, which unfortunately makes it just one model short of being able to do a lot of cool internet enabled things. For example, the 5100 model (and everything above that, including the XBR series) can stream netflix movies. I’ve also tried streaming video from a DLNA server and found it somewhat limited, While JPG images can display easily and you can play MP3s, (I got that working in just a few minutes), Sony doesn’t guarantee support for anything other than basic mpeg2 video format (and I’ve had little luck even getting that to work). Since most internet video is distributed in other formats, this means you’re going to have to get another device (HTPC, Bravia internet link, Roku box, Xbox, PS3, etc.), in order to get internet video. Depending on your plans for other home theater devices and budget, you may want to upgrade to the 5100 series or XBR for the additional internet based features, however if you’re like me and getting a HTPC anyway, then it doesn’t make sense to spend additional money for features you’ll have through other devices.
I purchased this TV February 2009, and it has since been shipped from S. Korea all the way to Portugal. been probably mishandled all the way around the world as well.
The Picture is amazing, i have read some minor complaints about some “greying” on the sides, i have none of that. I love this Television.
TV speakers are TV Speakers, what do you expect, better than nothing. i am not gentle with things i own, and turn it off and on repeatedly, or leave it on for extended amounts of time. i put TV’s through what Automakers put their cars through in the desert… and this TV has lived up to the challenge
i dont really know what else to say, superior quality and reliability, for me anyways
I have owned this TV (KDL-46Z4100, silver) for 1.5 years and though I will not be able to give many technical details but for rest of the people in plain english, you cannot go wrong with this TV. Ours is hooked with our old zenith home theater system so we don’t use TV audio but our surround system. In addition TV is also connected with sony blue-ray player (that we got in a combined deal while buying TV) and samsung dvd player (for international disc formats). Earlier we had cable TV with HD-DVR and our TV always looked superior to our friend’s samsung class TV (don’t know the model no. but its top line 52 inch thing) but we and our other friends thought its because they have dish network and no HD signals are coming but then they subscribed to HD signal and the difference was still there. And now from past one month we also have dish network and we have concluded that this is just better TV. And also the samsung dvd player that we have….our friends also have it and they have bose surround system that they use with TV and same dvd on different TV gives better result in ours.
I still remember that setting the TV was not breeze but mainly because we were trying to get sound from our old zenith system and it did not have newer option available but rest was easy we just got HDMI cables to connect everything else. I like electronics but TVs were exception but after this TV….things have changed.