Sony XBR – 55X900F Review: Brilliant, But Not a Gamer’s Choice

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Sony XBR – 55X900F: At First Glance

Sony has proven countless times that it can make very appealing, but expensive televisions. One of Sony’s masterpieces over the years is the Sony XBR – 55X900F.

The Sony XBR – 55X900F is part of Sony’s flagship XBR – X900F lineup that offers a premium experience and adequate performance. Moreover, the Sony XBR – 55X900F, in particular, is one of the brightest television I have ever reviewed.

Additionally, the Sony XBR – 55X900F has an impressive design and an LCD display that offers excellent picture quality. However, as stated earlier, Sony makes some pretty expensive televisions, and the Sony XBR – 55X900F isn’t left out.

The Sony XBR – 55X900F had a $1,199.99 price tag as of the time of the publication of this review (October 2021). However, considering the television’s great features, potential buyers are going to rush to purchase the television even with this price tag. 

Do you want to know the great features I am talking about? Well, you will have to read on!

Sony XBR – 55X900F: Design, Dimension & Weight

The Sony XBR – 55X900F adapts the company’s (Sony) signature minimalist, angular design, which most Sony lovers are familiar with. The screen of the television is encircled by narrow, brushed black metallic bezels with sharply pointed edges.

The bottom bezel, however, is differentiated by a thin chrome-colored accent strip running through it. Also, an indicator LED light is hidden in the center of the bottom bezel.

Moreover, this indicator LED light sits below a small Sony logo, which is also in the center of the bottom bezel. This Sony logo is the only visual flair on the front of the television.

Moving on, the Sony XBR – 55X900F stands on a pair of rectangular gray metallic legs. These metal legs protrude outwardly from the rear of the television.

Furthermore, the legs are pretty tough and sturdy. Therefore, they should support the Sony XBR – 55X900F well and makes it feel secure.

Interestingly, there’s space at the back of these legs for cable management, which most users will appreciate.

Moving on, the back of the Sony XBR – 55X900F features a plastic panel that has a simple design. Additionally, the back of the television features two sets of ports.

One set of ports is located on the left side and should be easy to reach regardless of where you place the television. The other set, on the other hand, is directly on the back of the television, facing downwards.

Therefore, this set of ports will be difficult to reach if the television is wall-mounted. Speaking of wall-mounting, the Sony XBR – 55X900F is reasonably thick.

As a result, it should only stick out from the wall a little bit if wall-mounted. 

In terms of dimension and weight, the Sony XBR – 55X900F measures 1228 x 69 x 706 mm and weighs 18200 g. When compared with the Samsung Q7f 55, the Sony XBR – 55X900F weighs less.

Specifically, the Samsung Q7f 55 weighs 20,000 g.

Overall, the Sony XBR – 55X900F offers a pleasant design for viewing your preferred movie after a long day. Additionally, the nice appearance of the television will contribute to making your leisure time worthwhile.

As a result, I will rate the Sony XBR – 55X900F a nine in this design review section.

Sony XBR – 55X900F: Display Features

Sony equipped the Sony XBR – 55X900F with an LCD display screen. This LCD display is 55-inch in size and has a 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) resolution.

It is worth mentioning that the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s LCD display is a VA display. VA is an abbreviation for vertical alignment and it is a type of LCD display.

Additionally, among the many types of displays, VA displays are said to have the highest contrast and image depth. Therefore, as a VA LCD display, one would expect the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display to have an impressive contrast ratio.

Thankfully, the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display doesn’t disappoint. The Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display has an excellent contrast ratio of 5,089:1.

But what exactly does contrast ratio imply? It is the ratio between the brightest white and deepest black that a display can generate is the contrast ratio.

Furthermore, a high contrast ratio implies that the display can display deeper blacks, which improves overall picture quality. Thankfully, as I already hinted earlier, the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display has a high contrast ratio.

Therefore, blacks will be very deep and sharp as they should be on the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display. As a result, on the Sony XBR – 55X900F, viewers will enjoy watching movies with plenty of dark or shadowy scenes.

Moreover, the impressive performance of the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display doesn’t stop at the contrast ratio. This display also supports local dimming, which further enhances its picture quality.

Local dimming is a technique that LCD/LED displays use to improve their contrast ratio in dark scenes by dimming their backlight zones. Because of this, blacks will look darker than they would be without the local dimming feature.

Thus, improving the display’s overall picture quality.

Moving on, the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display supports high dynamic range (HDR) signals in hybrid log gamma (HLG) and HDR10. Additionally, the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display also supports Dolby Vision content streamed via online streaming services.

As previously stated, the Sony XBR – 55X900F is one of the brightest televisions I have ever reviewed. Specifically, the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display has a peak brightness of 894 cd/m².

Moreover, this display might be bright as this probably because it supports HDR. Technically, HDR-compatible displays usually offer great brightness and impressive color accuracy and reproduction.

The Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display has been impressive from the start of this section. I am pretty sure that makes you ponder the question “is the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display perfect?”

Well, no television’s display is exactly perfect, even the most expensive ones. Therefore, the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display should definitely have a flaw.

That’s where the viewing angles come in. The Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display has disappointing viewing angles.

However, this isn’t surprising because VA displays are commonly known for having poor viewing angles. Therefore, viewing the Sony XBR – 55X900F slightly off-center will result to picture quality reducing drastically.

On a positive note, the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display has great reflection handling. The display features a semi-gloss coating that reduces the intensity of reflection.

Furthermore, the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display has an amazing response time of 3.1 milliseconds (ms). Response time is the time it takes a display device to converse from one color to another color.

Additionally, a regular LCD display response time is normally under 10 milliseconds (ms), with some being as fast as 1 millisecond. Therefore, with a 3.1 ms response time, the Sony XBR – 55X900F will be able to view fast motion contents without blurry trails.

As a result, the viewing experience on the Sony XBR – 55X900F will be pleasant. Moreover, examples of fast-motion content are sports, action movies, and video games.

I know you must be assuming that the Sony XBR – 55X900F is suitable for gaming due to its display’s impressive response time. However, that’s is not the case as the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display has a high input lag.

Input lag is an essential factor in determining if a display is suitable for gaming. Specifically, the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display has an input lag of 40.9 ms.

Input lag can be defined as the amount of time it takes for a display to register an input. The less or lower the input lag, the better the gaming experience.

Unfortunately, the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display’s input lag is practically high for gaming. Therefore, if you are a professional gamer, please stay away from this television.

In summary, the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display is adequate when it comes to watching movies or streaming content. However, when it comes to gaming, this display is way out of the league.

Regardless, the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s display is still one of the best displays I have reviewed in a while. Hence, after intense consideration, I believe it is fair to rate the Sony XBR – 55X900F a nine in this section.

Sony XBR – 55X900F: Sound Features

Audio quality on the Sony XBR – 55X900F is pretty decent. Specifically, the Sony XBR – 55X900F features a pair of 10-watts speakers.

Moreover, these speakers can get pretty loud. Additionally, they produce rich-quality sounds.

Furthermore, Sony also equipped the Sony XBR – 55X900F with an inbuilt Bass Reflex Speaker. A bass reflex speaker is a kind of loudspeaker with a vent built into the compartment.

The vent allows sound to be emitted from the rear of the speaker diaphragm, which improves sound quality and efficiency. Furthermore, the Bass Reflex speaker produces a powerful low-end sound that is adequate for sports, movies, and music.

Since the Sony XBR – 55X900F features a Bass Reflex Speaker, one would expect it to produce a lot of bass. Well, it does produce punchy/deep bass, and even does it without compromising the sound detail and clarity.

However, the bass the Sony XBR – 55X900F produces isn’t really deep enough to produce deep rumbles i.e. explosion sound effects. Furthermore, distortion on the Sony XBR – 55X900F is minimal.

However, the Sony XBR – 55X900F produces a lot of distortion at maximum volume. This was evident through the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s speakers’ THD score of 9.787%.

THD, which is also known as Total Harmonic Distortion, is a measurement of a speaker’s capacity to produce distortion. The lower the THD score, the less the distortion a speaker can produce.

Additionally, if the THD score of a speaker is less than 1%, distortion will not be audible. Sadly, the THD score of the Sony XBR – 55X900F speakers is well over 1%.

In summary, the Sony XBR – 55X900F is rich in sound. Additionally, the television produces deep bass, thanks to its Bass Reflex Speaker.

However, once again, distortion is a problem on another Sony Television.

Hence, I will be rating the Sony XBR – 55X900F an eight in this sound features review section.

Sony XBR – 55X900F: Ports & Connectivity Features

If you can remember, I already explained in the design review section above how and where the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s ports are. Specifically, I said the television’s ports are on its back panel and they are divided into two sets.

I further mentioned that one set of ports is left-facing, while the other is down-facing directly on the television’s back. Does that ring the bell? I guess it should if you have been following this review closely.

A single HDMI port, a 3.5mm jack for headphones/audio out, and two USB 2.0 ports are among the left-facing ports. Also, the left-facing ports include an infrared remote control in/out with the included IR blaster and composite video input.  

The other set of ports, which is down-facing includes three HDMI ports, an Ethernet port, and a USB 3.0 port. Also, you will find an optical audio output, an RF port, and an RS-232C port among the down-facing ports.  

As for wireless connectivity, the Sony XBR – 55X900F has Bluetooth 4.1. Also, the television has an inbuilt 802.11a/b/g/n/ac WIFI.

Moving on, the Sony XBR – 55X900F offers a very large plastic Voice Remote Control that has a matte black finish. Additionally, this remote has a circle-shaped navigation button and menu buttons in the center, and number buttons above it.

Also, the remote features volume and channel rockers and media playback buttons below the circle-shaped navigation button. The only notable feature about this remote is the Google Assistant button that sits at the top.

This Google Assistant button is for activating the built-in microphone that enables you to use the voice command feature. However, you can only input a voice command to the television if the remote is connected to the TV via Bluetooth.

Moreover, the remote control has two dedicated buttons for streaming apps like Google Play Movies & TV and Netflix.

In conclusion, the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s ports and connectivity offering are adequate. Therefore, the Sony XBR – 55X900F gets a nine out of ten rating from me.

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Sony XBR – 55X900F: Smart Features

Sony employs the Android TV operating system for its smart TVs, but other competing brands use the ROKU TV or Fire TV operating systems. Therefore, as a Sony smart television, the Sony XBR – 55X900F also uses the Android TV operating system.

Android TV is still a formidable operating system to be reckoned with, thanks to its extensive feature set and versatility. One of Android TV’s advantages is accessibility to the Google Play Store, which offers more apps than practically any other smart OS.

The Android TV interface, however, isn’t as user-friendly as some other smart operating systems’ interfaces. The home screen of the Android TV, for example, is rather large, necessitating a lot of scrolling to view everything.

Furthermore, the Android TV is inconsistent; it might sometimes open menus swiftly and have nice animations. Some other times, menus may lag for a second or two before coming up, and animations might be annoying.

Moreover, the Android TV home menu takes a long time to open, which is problematic given how frequently it is used. However, I really think this OS has all these issues because it is an old version.

Basically, the Android TV OS on the Sony XBR – 55X900F is the Android TV version 7.0. Probably when you update the OS to the latest version, all these issues will be solved.

On a positive note, the Android TV OS has some of the most popular streaming apps like Netflix and YouTube. Additionally, the OS also features free streaming apps like BBC iPlayer, Pluto TV, Bloomberg TV, and so on.

In conclusion, the Android TV OS is rich in applications. However, navigating the operating system interface is a problem.

Therefore, the Sony XBR – 55X900F deserves nothing more than an eight out of ten rating in the section.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Sony’s XBR – 55X900F is a stylish TV that has an LCD 4K display that is bright and colorful. Additionally, this television has access to lots of apps on the Google Play Store, thanks to Android TV operating system.

The major problem with this television is that it isn’t suitable for gaming because of its display’s high input lag. Also, the interface of the Sony XBR – 55X900F’s Android TV OS is a bit problematic.

However, besides those few flaws, the Sony XBR – 55X900F is a great television everyone would want to get their hands on.

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