Sony Bravia 40NX500 LCD TV

Performance
We plugged the TV in via HDMI, and slid in the calibration patterns. First, we check grayscale or “how good the blacks and whites are”. In this case we have a deep black level, but it’s a little too dense, as exposed by Displaymate low grey bars, which merge a bit. The brightness of the backlight is healthy though, and at highest levels we did not see any ugly blooming or clipping of whites. This is a good thing.

The next and equally important step is Colors, and for this we loaded the color pluges, to find out that overall colors are bit oversat, and need to be adjusted down to about 50 in the menu. Absolute neutrality wise the grey bars did not show any coloration, this again is an attractive point.
After tests we got down to brass tacks, and slid in our brand new Blu-ray of Final Fantasy Advent Children. The colors were vibrant and almost dazzling. The reflectivity of the screen is the issue here, it does pose an issue in dark scenes. Thus here is the case of compromise in performance for design attributes. Motion wise we gauged the TV to be quite good, in our Crysis Warhead gameplay.

There was very little motion blur artifacts. In standard def DivX movies there was obviously a little more of moiring and edge distortion, but that is not something that’s easily avoidable, in any TV model. Static detail wise the TV excelled. I wrote this review and browsed on it, using it as a monitor to our HTPC. Fonts were clear and images were clearer. The sharpness needs to be reduced a bit in the menu, to get rid of a little halo around edges that come in factory mode.

Conclusion
The price of Rs. 68,900 is slightly above the average these days but since it's a new model there is some premium warranted. Of course it is backed by a good performance. The looks of this TV are splendid and very sleek. The panel has good contrast, mainly due to a powerful backlight, and also colors are quite awesome. Detail is again almost flawless. The one and only thing is that the panel reflectivity is one major downer, but prolonged usage may make the user get used to it. It’s a new model by Sony with very less frills, just good looks and a respectable performance.