Sony KDL-40S5500 LCD HDTV Review

We take a look at Sony’s budget 1080p LCD HDTV in our latest in-depth review. Phil Hinton checks to see if the KDL-S5500 can produce quality images at a restricted price point.

Sony certainly produce some solid performers in the LCD market but this budget model just lacks in absolute picture quality terms. Much of this is down to poor picture processing which struggles with interlaced material and scaling. Add to this an inconsistent backlight and lack of absolute dynamic range and you start to see where corners have been cut. In terms of colour and greyscale accuracy the S5500 performs well but a lack of menu control hampers any calibration to absolute accuracy of the image.

So overall, the S5500 is a very mixed bag and with strong competition from rivals LG and Samsung, it fails to impress in every department. Add to this the problems with inconstant backlighting and it becomes a lucky dip with some panels looking good and others suffering from an obvious clouding issue. If you are going to demo the S5500 we suggest you look out for these issues we have found with our review sample (which was sourced from a retailer and not Sony direct).

Read the full review at AVForums.com/reviews