Televisions

This delicious contrast does come with a couple of strings attached. First, the bright entrance to the tunnel looks a little bleached of subtle shading, chiefly when it's at its smallest and peakiest as the sequence starts. Second, as the tunnel entrance grows in size, you can notice large areas of unwanted extra light starting to appear over dark parts of the tunnel as the TV's different dimming zones are triggered into action.

For the most part, the 75XH9005's local dimming controls actually work well given how few zones it has to play with. But it's pretty much scientifically impossible for such a configuration to deliver bright highlights with such panache and not also create any backlight 'blooming' around them. Thankfully, this occurs only rarely, during the most 'extreme' images.

Pump Up The Volume
The TV's high brightness helps it to unlock a much larger volume of colour than you'd expect for its money. No tones end up looking thin or discordant in even the brightest HDR shot, and this is especially apparent if you can take advantage of its Dolby Vision HDR support. The colour control extends into low-lit shots, too; there's no loss of colour subtlety in dark areas. Nor do darker colours feel muted compared to bright ones, thanks to Sony's aggressive backlight.

This 75in screen really shows off the texturing, pixel density, jagged-free diagonals and naturalism a good 4K pixel count delivers. Native sources are conveyed with brilliant detail, and Sony's Motionflow processing also plays its part, dampening excess judder and removing blur without throwing up many nasty side effects. Yet sub-4K sources aren't upscaled as cleanly and sharply by the XH9005's processor as they are on Sony models using the premium X1 Ultimate system.

I couldn't test the 75XH9005's 4K/120Hz gaming capability due to the next-gen consoles not being on sale at the time of writing, and the Nvidia RTX 30 graphics cards being borderline impossible to get hold of. The VRR/ALLM firmware update hasn't happened yet, either. What I can say, though, is that it's a great performer with the current consoles, its brightness, contrast and rich colours perfectly suited to the day-glo worlds of gaming, and in Game mode it suffers only 18ms of input lag.

Sony's Acoustic Multi-Audio system, which combines tweeters built behind the top left and right edges of the screen with new 'X-Balanced' Speaker units under the bottom edge, makes an appearance here, and the numerous involving Dolby Atmos moments in It, particularly the 'projector in the garage' sequence, proved that it works brilliantly. The 75XH9005's soundstage is large, filling your room rather than just sounding like it's tucked away behind the screen somewhere. Those up-top tweeters generate a sense of height when listening to Atmos tracks (which the TV can decode), and bring better placement to specific sound effects. Its fulsome, full-range delivery doesn't suffer at high volumes either.

Sony's Big Bargain
Aside from the occasional backlight distraction, and colour and contrast reducing when the TV is viewed from an angle, the 75XH9005's pictures, sound and size add up to a more cinematic experience than I'd have thought possible considering the set's price and mid-tier status. Its HDMI 2.1 spec (once fully unlocked via firmware) will appeal to gamers, but even for joystick refuseniks this looks like being one of 2020's biggest bargains.

HCC Verdict

Sony KD-75XH9005

Price: £1,800
www.sony.co.uk

We say: Aside from some rare backlight blooming, Sony's 75XH9005 delivers an outstanding all-round AV performance for such an affordable 75in TV.

Overall: 4.5/5

Specifications

4K: Yes. 3,840 x 2,160 HDR: Yes. HDR10; HLG; Dolby Vision TUNER: Yes. Freeview HD; satellite HD CONNECTIONS: 4 x HDMI inputs; RF input; satellite input; 2 x USB; headphone jack; composite video; optical digital audio output SOUND (CLAIMED): 2 x 10W BRIGHTNESS (CLAIMED): N/A CONTRAST RATIO (CLAIMED): N/ADIMENSIONS (OFF STAND): 1674(w) x 961(h) x 71(d)mm WEIGHT (OFF STAND): 34.4kg

Features: Built-in Wi-Fi; USB multimedia playback; X1 4K HDR processing engine; Triluminos colour; Android TV smart system; YouView catchup portal; Acoustic Multi-Audio sound system; Dolby Atmos decoding; direct LED lighting with local dimming; Google Assistant built-in; works with Alexa and Apple AirPlay; 2 x 48Gbps HDMIs for next-gen game support