Televisions

There's also an impressive consistency and sustained nature to its brightness,. The typically white-grey skies of 1917's 'crossing no-man's land' scene remain joyously luminous. Also striking is how much intensity the 65XH9505 brings to small, bright image highlights.

In the shot of sunrise over Neverland in Pan (4K Blu-ray), it captures subtle qualities in the cloud formations that tend to be flattened away on most displays.

Given that the screen doesn't have a particularly huge number of dimming zones, I expected the 65XH9505 to have to reduce the brightness of stand-out objects to preserve the uniformity of surrounding dark areas in more overtly contrasted content. But even with material like the white-on-black explanatory text at the beginning of Blade Runner 2049 (4K Blu-ray) it retains a startling intensity.

Such sharply contrasted visuals do reveal a slight flaw, however. While the TV can craft a nicely deep black level – and is seemingly less impacted by the contrast-limiting effect of Sony's X-Wide Angle technology than previous sets – quite large blooms of extra light can appear around bright HDR objects held against a dark background. It's typically faint enough not to be a major distraction, but when the blooming escapes into the black bars you get while viewing 2.40:1-ratio (or similar) films, it catches your eye. Even more so if the bright object causing the blooming moves around within the image, which results in the cloud in the black bar moving as well.

Of course, this performance niggle can be countered by having a little ambient light in your room.

The 65XH9505's colours are gorgeous; vibrant and rich when needed, but also packed with nuance in more difficult moments, such as the muted, muddied uniforms in 1917, or the sun-baked skin tones of Mad Max: Fury Road (4K BD). And darker shades hang on to plenty of colour volume because the 65XH9505 doesn't compromise their brightness. This desire to retain a relatively uniform and high level of brightness with all content translates into superb image stability.

4K pictures aren't quite as dazzlingly detailed as they are on one or two rivals, but there's no way you'd call them soft. The Resolution component of Sony's Reality Creation system can also boost texture levels if you feel the need.

Motion handling is one of the TV's strong suits. It maintains detail 'between frames' thanks to the excellent Motionflow processor, which also limits judder without making the picture look distractingly fluid.

HD upscaling is exemplary, adding tangible image density and texture. Effective viewing angles are extreme.

Bases Loaded
Overall, the 65XH9505 comes oh-so-close to being a home cinema home run. The price, all things considered, is tempting, its sound performance is unusually strong, and its imagery is both bright and balanced – an alternative to the less bloomy but more heavily dimmed pictures of some LED competitors. Well worth checking out.

HCC Verdict

Sony KD-65XH9505

Price: £2,000 
www.sony.co.uk

We say: With its bright and colourful but also natural pictures, and grandstanding audio, it's surprisingly easy to forgive the 65XH9505's missing features and moments of LED blooming.

Overall: 4.5/5

Specification

4K: Yes. 3,840 x 2,160
HDR: Yes. HDR10; HLG; Dolby Vision
Tuner: Yes. Freeview HD
Connections: 4 x HDMI inputs (one with eARC); 2 x USB; optical digital audio output; headphone output; composite video input; Ethernet port
Sound (CLAIMED): 2 x 10W plus 2 x 5W
Brightness (CLAIMED): N/A
Contrast ratio (CLAIMED): N/A
Dimensions (off stand): 1,448(w) x 833(h) x 70(d)mm
Weight (off stand): 22.3kg

Features: X1 Ultimate processing engine; Triluminos colour; Reality Creation engine; Android 9 smart system; Netflix Calibrated mode; FALD panel design; Motionflow; X-Wide Angle; Acoustic Multi Audio; IMAX Enhanced; built-in Wi-Fi