Sony Bravia KDL-55HX925 Review

3D

A pair of 3D glasses comes bundled with the TV. The 3D glasses are active and require to be charged. In the time that we used it, we didn’t have to charge the batteries. We suppose the battery life should easily last you for a few full-length 3D movies. The glasses are a little bulky, though, and they are certainly not of the best kind available in the market today. The TV supports built-in 2D-to-3D conversion, and while it does work, in our opinion it only has gimmick value. 

The 55HX925 - the best there is, from Sony

Remote

The remote is large and has a curvature in it where the buttons are placed. The remote can be used as an all-in-one remote with other devices. In our case, we were able to use it with a Philips Blu-ray player, but not without problems. Every time we tried switching back to the TV’s interface, the Blu-Ray player’s interface would take control - it simply wouldn’t let go. This was one of the most frustrating menu mix-ups we’ve seen, and thankfully it did not occur with any of the other Blu-Ray players. Our temporary fix was to choose the Input source menu and quickly switch to home, which was the only way for the TV’s menu to come back on. 

Browser, Social Networking

There are Twitter and Facebook widgets as well as a dedicated web browser built into the TV. The browser renders pages fine. You could quickly look up something if you wanted to, but it’s not the best experience. Typing also is slow as users have to use the remote control’s number keys to type or use the directional keys on the on-screen keyboard. We would’ve liked it if the remote keypad came with the alphabets imprinted on it. You can imagine yourself looking at the screen and then looking for numbers that match the alphabets on the screen, not an experience you’d like to have on a TV this expensive.

Miscellaneous

There are some other nifty little features as well. A small camera at the front of the TV detects presence of people in the room and this can be used to lower power consumption when the TV is not being viewed. Similarly, there are presence sensors that alert if children are too close to the television. Another feature is Position control that optimizes audio and video output based on the location of the viewers. The TV actually scans for faces in the same way that cameras do with face detection, it then maps people on a pattern.