The Sony Bravia KDL-65W5100 is one of Sony’s most innovative offerings for 2009, loaded with the most interactive features yet, good picture quality and a bunch of cool extras. For all these, the price is relatively affordable, too, making it an excellent choice for buyers with a low budget but high expectations.
Design
The Sony Bravia KDL-65W5100 may not be the most eye-catching piece around, but still exudes sophistication and elegance with a sleek, dark gray frame topped with a transparent layer. The invisible
Sony Bravia KDL-65W5100
speakers make it even more attractive while its non-swiveling stand matches the rest of the design.
As for the remote, the one that comes with the KDL-65W5100 is smaller than previous ones, but is more user-friendly with a prominent central cursor and fewer buttons which are easy to distinguish from each other. The only downside is that the remote can only control HDMI-compatible devices and not others via infrared. The interface is similar to that of the Sony PlayStation3, with a horizontal selection of legible, white text against a black background accompanied with comprehensive explanatory text to enlighten you about the function of each one.
Screen/Picture Clarity
Owing to a lower contrast ratio than the smaller sized models in its series – 50,000:1 instead of 100,000:1 – the black levels produced by the KDL-65W5100 may not be as impressive, but still deep enough that the image bursts to life and its details stand out. The rest of the colors are generally accurate, although the dark areas may sometimes appear blue and a trained eye can catch a tinge of yellow on the skin tones.
The video processing of the KDL-65W5100 is quite solid, too, with its 120Hz refresh rate taking care of any blurring. Even with the dejudder turned off, it is capable of processing 1080p sources without any noticeable loss of detail, while deinterlacing 10801/24p sources correctly.
Features
What distinguishes the KDL-65W5100 from other models the most is its interactivity suite, the best Sony has come up with so far. This suite currently includes three Yahoo widgets – News, Weather and Finance – that you can move around the screen pretty much like you arrange the icons on your desktop and streaming video from providers like Amazon Video on Demand, YouTube, Sony Pictures, Sports Illustrated, Epicurious.com and soon, Netflix. It also has four aspect ratio modes and three picture presets, along with additional Game, PC and Sports presets, and a Cinema mode you can instantly activate by pressing the Theater button.
There is also an Eco Menu to help you cut down on energy consumption and the usual four HDMI inputs, although surprisingly, most of them are located on the side panel along with the PC input, the USB port and an AV input instead of the rear panel, where you will find the component-video inputs and Ethernet port, along with the other regular connections.
For a large, interactive TV, the Sony Bravia KDL-65W5100 is certainly one of the top choices to consider. However, for those who are more keen on picture quality, there are other models which will give you sharper and clearer images for the same price.
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