Sony BRAVIA V-Series KDL-40V5100 40-Inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV Review
October 5th, 2009
Sony BRAVIA V-Series KDL-40V5100 40-Inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV Review from Robert Kaplinsky. Overall a great TV, Update: You can now download the firmware update for this TV at the link below. It will fix the auto-dimming problem. I would now give it 5 stars: [...]
With this fix being made, I would now say that the TV deserves five stars.
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I have owned this TV for about two weeks now and think it is great. The picture is very sharp. The colors are great. The blacks and whites look fabulous. The stand it comes with is very sturdy and there are more than enough inputs for my needs. The TV itself also looks very elegant.
I was going to buy this 2009 TV or the 2008 Sony KDL-40Z4100 (a higher end model from the previous year), whichever came down in price first. The two TVs are very comparable in features. The main difference for me was price but also important were the contrast ratios. This TV has a contrast ratio of 50:000 to 1 while the KDL-40Z4100 has a contrast ratio of 30:000 to 1. As a further comparison, the 2008 version of this TV, the KDL-40V4100, has a 25:000 to 1 contrast ratio. That big jump in contrast ratio pushed me towards this TV over last year’s Z series.
I have read the reviews describing the auto-dimming but honestly I don’t think it is that big of a deal. We watch mostly TV (Lost, 24, The Office, sports, etc.) as opposed to movies and after two weeks of use, today was the very first day I noticed the auto-dimming. It happened for about 2 seconds and was a strange dimming. My wife still has not noticed it even though we have both been on the lookout for it to see how bad it is.
While I agree that I cannot see how this is a feature Sony would want to include without being able to turn off, to me, it was pretty minor and I would still happily buy the same TV again. I suppose that there are shows or movies where this happens more frequently but after two weeks, I still don’t see it often. I took off a half star for this.
The other half star taken off comes from what seems like a long time for the TV to start. Once you turn it on it seems like it takes around 20 seconds to get started and display a picture. It isn’t a huge deal and once the TV is on it doesn’t affect anything. However, compared to my old CRT which turned on in a couple of seconds it seems long.
My hope is that Sony comes out with some sort of firmware update that allows you to turn this auto-dimming “feature” off as many customers are unhappy with it. That is pure speculation though as I haven’t heard any hints of this happening.
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