The race for the best 3D televisions is heating up. Samsung and LG have both successfully launched 3D ready HDTVs that sport exciting features. Sony has been successful with their Bravia range of HDTVs and has now launched the Sony KDL-46EX720 from their Bravia line-up, which boasts about some exciting features. With 3D televisions becoming a fairly common feature these days, the price point, too has dropped keeping all the features intact.
Design and Build Quality‘Slim is in’ with all technology, nowadays. Sony, too has followed suit by incorporating this concept in the design of the KDL-46EX720 HDTV. The bezel of the television is slim and has a glossy black finish. While the bezel on the side and top measure in at one inch, the bottom part of the bezel measures at two inches. There is hardly any depth in the television with it measuring a mere inch. Sony has used a minimalistic approach while designing this HDTV. This television is quite light and weighs approximately 17.9kg, not that one has to carry this very often.Sticking with its minimalistic approach, Sony has placed all the input and output connections on the rear of the KDL-46EX720. Being thin in design, Sony has not compromised on the connectivity options of this television and have added four HDMI ports, along with two USB 2.0 ports at the back. To maintain the slim design, Sony has added a bay at the rear where the USB ports, a single HDMI port, VGA and a 3.5mm audio jack are located. These are positioned in such a way that they lie flat against the back panel. The other connectors that include the HDMI, component, composite, Ethernet and various others are found adjacent to the bay. All these connectors face outwards, unlike the ones found in the bay. Sony has managed space well and added two down firing speakers at the bottom sides of the television.
The controls for this HDTV are found at the right of the screen at the side. All the buttons are well built and can be pressed easily. This television has two sensors for the remote control on the front panel, thus making it easy to operate from different angles. The remote control of this 3D television is unique in design. It is concave and the buttons that are spaced out well are located on the concave part. Another unique design of this remote is that it has an on/off button located at the back, as well. The textured design on the glossy black finish adds to the design of the remote. All buttons on the remote are made well. This 3D TV comes bundled up with two pairs of active 3D glasses that look stylish compared to other active 3D glasses. However, they are a tad bit heavy and after wearing it for a few minutes the weight can be felt on the nose.Overall, the Sony KDL-46EX720 is a stylish-looking 3D television and with its minimalistic design, this television is sure to turn a few heads. The build quality too is pretty sturdy and we had no complaints whatsoever.FeaturesThe television comes loaded with interesting features and the main feature of the Sony KDL-46EX720 lies in its 3D capabilities. Not only is the HDTV 3D-capable, but it can also simulate 2D content to be viewed in 3D. This is not an uncommon feature as brands like LG, Samsung and Panasonic have all done it in the past.
Another interesting quality of this HDTV is that it has a feature called X-Reality Picture Engineering. Sony claims that with this feature, the television can analyze each scene to produce suitable colour and contrast, thereby discouraging one to put up with low resolution images on this television. To keep the design of this television slim, Sony has used Edge-LED backlighting. One cannot compare a full-array LED display with an Edge-LED backlit display, as a full-array LED display fares much better on most counts. However, both perform well and keeping in mind the slimness of this television, an Edge-LED is better suited for the style factor which this Sony television possesses.Features (Continued..)The interface is a bit different as opposed to the XMB (X-Cross Media Bar) seen on most Sony Blu-ray players, home theatre systems and their PS3. The interface features various widgets that line up at the bottom of the screen. When one is in an option, the sub-options get loaded upwards (similar to the XMB, but opposite) and a mini screen occupies the rest of the screen displaying what option is selected. The interface is very intuitive and one can get used to it fairly quickly. Being a smart television, KDL-46EX72 has Sony’s Bravia Internet features. The Bravia Internet Video has a fair amount of widgets for different sites where one can watch video content. Apart from this, his HDTV can also be used to access social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter through the designated widgets found in the options.
VoIP service, Skype can also be used with this television to make video calls, however one has to purchase a special video camera separately. Other features include various preset modes for viewing this HDTV such as cinema mode, game mode, graphics mode, etc. The only hang up we had with this television is that when we tried connecting multiple NTFS external HDDs to it, it did not read. However, when we connected a FAT32 USB flash drive to it, it worked. This limits the amount of expandable storage that can be used with this 3D TV.All in all, the features list of the KDL-46EX72 is pretty extensive and this television has fared well thus far. Read on to know about the performance of this HDTV.PerformanceTo test the performance of the Sony KDL-46EX72, we hooked it up to a notebook to run a DisplayMate test, as well as used a USB flash drive and a Blu-ray player. While running the DisplayMate test, we noticed that during the colour intensity test all Greys looked as they should. Greens and Reds looked vibrant as compared to other colours. All other colours appeared accurate. While testing the colour scales we noticed that there was no bleeding across most colours, except for red where a slight amount was noticed. Viewing angles are really good and even with a room full of people, one can enjoy the images without any issues.
These active 3D glasses are stylishly designed
Using the USB flash drive, we were able to playback videos quite well except with some colours being more pronounced than others. Videos rendered very smoothly and no other issues were noticed. We tried the 2D to 3D simulation and it performed decently. Though it was not as good as the LG LW6500, this 2D to 3D rendering fared a lot better than most other 3D televisions. The active glasses that come along with this television did not produce much flickering and overall we were pleased with the 3D performance. With X-Reality technology that’s available in this television, standard definition videos look a lot more refined. This appealed to us a lot.Streaming video content off the net was a breeze and we able to view the preloaded channels without any hiccups. We tested the ‘How To Train Your Dragon’ Blu-ray with this television and the video playback was brilliant. There were no backlighting issues whatsoever, which added to the stellar performances of this TV. The remote control was very responsive and we had no issues. This attributes to there being multiple sensors on the face of the television. Out of the box, the KDL-46EX72 is good to go and tweaking of brightness or contrast levels is not necessary.
VerdictThe Sony KDL-46EX72 sells at a maximum retail price of Rs. 1,03,900. At first sight, this looks like a massive amount for an LED-LCD TV. However, one has to consider the fact that this is one of the cheapest 46-inch 3D televisions with smart TV capabilities available in the market. With stylish looks and an impressive list of features, this television rises above the competition. If one is in the market for a 3D television this one definitely should not be overlooked.
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