Sony XBR70X850B 70-Inch 4K Ultra HD 120Hz 3D Smart LED TV (2014 Model)

There's that big question that goes around with these types of TV's and people want to know if it really is worth it making the jump from 1080p to 4k? Personally I'd say it really depends on your situation, for me I didn't think it was worth jumping to 4k for the price at this current moment because there's not much content available for it... but the biggest issue is you cannot tell a difference unless you are within 5 feet of the TV. Once I moved closer to the TV, the experience became so much more. But you're not going to find much 4k content, and even if you did it takes over 20 gigabytes an hour to stream that and most people have a data cap. Now with such negativity, you're probably wondering why I rated it 4 stars, I'll explain the things I found particularly amazing with this TV.The Good:3-D Conversion: It is the most accurate 3d conversion I have ever seen on any TV. I have seen many 2d to 3d conversions and never really used them because they really didn't work so well unless you had a bright scene with rough edges such as mountains. I am a video gamer myself, and I was very pleased to know that the 3d conversion does work in gaming mode and even in dark games such as The Last of Us it was very impressive at simulating 3-D.Contrast Ratio is Similar to OLED: I have an OLED display, and with the contrast enhancements and black level correction feature combined with Live White and Warm 2 and auto dimming, the display pretty much looks identical to an OLED display except for pure black screens you may notice a little wash out. Under normal usage, it's pretty much identical to an OLED display; I would say the OLED is about 10% better but being the fact that this TV is significantly larger and contains upscaling this wins over.Upscaling: The up-scaling done on the TV exceeds any I have seen before. If you turn off the up-scaling features it will look pretty much the same as any other TV when running 1080p on a 4k screen. The biggest problem I have seen with 4k displays, such as my computer monitor is that there is an excessive amount of blur and color quality loss when up-scaling. When you turn the features of this TV on, it makes it look identical to a native resolution display, but even better. And unlinke most TVS, the upscaling features work even at 4k resolution, so when playing video games you can still increase the details of low resolution textures.Lifespan: The lifespan of this TV is about 50,000 hours. This is assuming you never replace the backlight, if you did replace it instead of buying a new TV it would reach 80,000 hours. If you watch TV 8 hours a day, expect this TV to fail after 16 years of usage, if you're the normal and watch TV 4 hours a day then this TV will last 32 years. LCDS have longer lifespans than OLED displays, in some cases as much as double depending on the display itself.Input Lag: This TV has one of the lowest input lag response rates I have seen for a midrange 4k TV. In gaming mode, the input lag is roughly 40 miliseconds. You're simply not going to find a better TV with a lower input latency at this range, unless you swap to OLED. But most of those TV's turn off the enhanced features such as upscaling. Sony allows you to maintain upscaling even in gaming mode, and 40ms isn't that bad.X Reality Pro+Detail Enhancer: One of the features of the TV is to compare lower resolution textures and replace them with more detailed textures. I will admit it's not as good as the demos show on youtube, but it is very impressive. X reality PRO works exceptionally well in video games, because it removes the blurred effect of up-scaling. However for movies, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference unless you have also enabled detail enhancer. Check the photos in the review for a before and after enabling these features, it makes a 1080p movie look much higher resolution.Color Quality "Live Color": Color quality is always going to be a personal preference, Live Color ultimately gives the same effect as increasing the color saturation, but it handles it much more intelligently and causes far less bleeding. Live color works more by changing the color tones to be moreFast Start Calibration: A cool feature of this TV is it intelligently learns which settings you visit often and optimizes the startup of the TV when you turn it on by turning those features on first. I can boot the TV up in about 10 seconds with this feature enabled; it’s turned off by default as it does consume more power on standby. Some review mention they hated how slow it took to boot and it should provide an option… well it does so I am not sure what they are complaining about.Interactive Built in Guide: This TV comes with a handy manual built right into the TV with a table of contents, it explains to you how to customize your TV and what each option does, and it’s not horrible translated from another language either… it’s easy to understand.Center Stand: A problem with larger 4k tvs is they seem to like to use edge stands, but a 65 inch tv isn’t going to fit on my TV console. Thankfully this TV came with a center stand option, and it fits on my console without issue.The BAD:There's always a negative to things, I don't believe in truly perfect products. There's always room for improvement, and I can't blame the TV for some of the negatives I have found. Let's start with the biggest negatives.* Viewing distance is a huge factor in the quality of this TV if you want to display 4k content. If you're not within 5 feet of the TV, you are not getting the full benefit. However, you are still getting benefit at the 8-9 feet ranges, but only at 1440p and not 2160p. This is why a lot of people say 4k tvs look good even at further distances, which is technically true but they're not getting the full 4k benefit, it's just better than 1080p. 4k is meant to be viewed on larger screens, so the larger the screen is the more distance you can move away from it. Unfortunately with the 55 inch and lower models, you'd have to be as close as 4 feet and once you leave the 8 feet range it's virtually identical to a 1080p display but triple the cost. However, keep in mind that since it upscales to 4k you can sit twice as close to your TV and see 1080p content in roughly the same quality but better, so you're effectively increasing your TV size at 1080p because you are sitting twice as close to it.* Calibration from the TV's default settings are off, most people will be satisfied with the default settings. But just to show you how much better you can make the TV by changing the settings I have added 2 photos of Tomb Raider Definitive Edition from my TV. The first image is from Standard - General mode, which is what I consider "default" settings. The cinema mode is more accurate, but it is still off in colors and brightness slightly. When you're comparing the 2 images of Tomb Raider, the colors of the second image is far more accurate. There isn't a blue overtone and despite being darker (about 50% less backlight) you can see much more detail in the dark areas of the game as you couldn't before. You will have to play around with your settings to make sure you’re getting the best. A big problem is a lot of people like to turn the upscaling to max and increase sharpness, this causes a halo effect and distorts colors. You can change the settings manually, but it's highly recomennded you use a claibration disk (for free online or a website) to make sure you're calibrating the display properly.* 3d Viewing Distance remember what I said with you should be about 4 feet within the display to see the full benefit? Well, 3d requires nearly double that distance. A proper 3d distance for a 65 inch TV should be about 8 feet for 1080p content, if you get any closer you will experience cross talk in certain areas of the screen. This is particularly noticeable when you are using 2-3d conversion, the top left hand side of the screen is pretty much not converted at all and it makes it difficult to play video games without being at least 8 feet away if you intend to use the 3d conversion. You have to make a choice on this one, if you're wanting 4k and 3d to be perfect you're going to have to buy 4k TV's in the 100 diagonal size range so don't buy this TV for the 3d alone. Regular 3d doesn't suffer this problem as much though, because it is using Side by side or over and under, the quality is best at further viewing distances but it’s not that bad. So if you're not using the internal conversion feature from 2d to 3d, you won't have to worry about this problem.* 4k at 60hh on PC: This is a 4:2:0 display, if you're using an AMD card you will ony get 4:2:0 color which is terrible for a PC because a lot of things will not render properly, sort of like swapping your color mode to 16 bit. If you have an nvidia card, it is upsampled to 4:2:2 and you will not notice a difference except maybe a few graphical glitches in windows. The big issue though is, 4:2:2 is incompatible with SLI at 60hz; this means if your game does not support 59hz natively you will not be able to use 2 video cards at once to render 4k resolution. This may be a deal breaker for many as it's a lot worse running 4k games on one card. This is not the TV's fault though, it is the video drivers so I can't really remove a star over this. You can do a registry hack to make all games 59hz, but it may cause screen tearing. Keep in mind 4:2:2 at 4k works perfectly fine with one video card. But once you see the 1080p upscaling, you'll probably not play at 4k resolution anymore because it's quite detailed. NVIDIA and AMD both have the same issue, NVIDIA has officially confirmed that they are working on this issue but not ETA as of this moment.*Menu options are horribly placed: This TV isn’t very user friendly, like most Sony TV’s for whatever reason they put the picture settings on two separate menus. You have the basic settings on the option button, and then the more detailed settings on the HOME button. I just wish they put it on the same spot, there’s no reason to put two menus in the TV to do the same task… all it does it cause confusion!Conclusion: It’s up to you on how you want to use this TV, you can buy it alone just for the 1080p up-scaling which is quite visible at further viewing distances but you're going to need to move in closer to the TV to take full benefit. Effectively you can make a 55 inch TV, be equivalent to a 70 inch screen (in peripheral vision) just by sitting at recommended distance as 1080p loses no quality when upscaled. Because of this, I personally do not use the 3-d mode on my tv as it requires me to be 9 feet away (for conversion only, true 3-d is fine).When I bought this TV, I was expecting to play video games at 4k resolution with SLI. Sadly I found out I can't, so it's an expensive investment that in the end didn't do what I wanted. But the other features of the TV, such as the upscaling and contrast surpassed me running 4k natively that I actually enjoy the upscaled 1080p, especially being much closer to the TV games feel more immersive.

I've had the 65-inch version of this TV for about 4 months, and wanted to really put it through its paces before submitting a review. Overall, I highly recommend this TV. With the tons of reviews already listed here, I'll focus on the on a few points of emphasis from the last few months.AS A WORK PC MONITOR:Work, believe it or not, was the initial reason I got this TV. I work at home occasionally (software industry), and my old 46" Samsung hi-def was previously the 'monitor' for my home PC. The Samsung was starting to get a bit old at the 7-8 year point (dead pixels), plus I was tiring of the limitations of 1080p resolution with a PC. You can't open a whole lot of windows with an appreciable amount of content on one 1080p screen (and getting a bigger 1080p TV simply results in bigger, uglier limited-content windows). I loved the idea of having a 65-inch screen in 4K, where I could tile Chrome, Firefox, a Firebug window, FTP, and email all at once. And actually SEE an appreciable amount of content in each window.I went with the 65" version of this TV, upgraded my PC with the eVGA nVidia 970 GTX card (HDMI 2.0 capable, and enough horsepower to move the pixels in 4K), and am running Windows 7 at 4k/60p. In terms of creating a nice, large workspace, I got everything I hoped for. Some applications do have some scaling issues at 4K, but the blame for that falls on Windows 7 and the applications. I'm hoping Windows 10, along with better app development will cure a lot of this. The TV renders everything like a champ, and I can multitask much better than I did on my old Samsung, where I constantly had to alt-tab between windows.PC GAMING:I also do Steam gaming on my PC. The GTX 970 was a good pairing with the TV without breaking the bank, as it can run some games decently at full 4K, and pretty much anything just fine at 2560x1600p. I often opt for the latter even when full 4K plays smoothly, as most games I play will have some miscellaneous problem at 4K like menus so small you have to walk right up to the TV to read them. I'm not as picky on things like latency as some hardcore FPS/racing gamers would be, but I've had outstanding performance on this TV with games that I play. Playing Skyrim, Civ V, Assassin's Creed, and Burnout at 65" inches is a total blast.3-D BLURAYS:Outside of a PC monitor, my second most common use of this TV is with blu-rays, which I play with a Sony 3-d capable blu-ray player. This TV uses passive 3-d, so you don't have to spring for those expensive, battery-powered glasses. Most of what I've heard about home 3-d was basically "meh". As a result, I wasn't factoring 3-d capability in very much when I purchased this set. But thanks to this set, I've now become a big fan of 3-d.The main variables when using 3d with this set are:1) The movie itself. Some producers do 3-d better than others. Avatar was a jaw-dropping experience, as if there was a portal to an alternate universe in my living room. i-Robot, on the other hand, merely left me with a slight headache.2) Distance matters. Good 3-d movies look great when I sit between 6-10 feet away. When you get too close to the screen, you start getting a double-vision effect in the peripheral areas of the screen.3) Angle matters. I mounted my TV fairly high on the wall, and was initially having trouble getting the downward tilt on my mount to work. This left us looking up at the TV about 15 degrees off-center, and the 3-d was hit-and-miss, especially higher up on the screen. Once I was able to tilt the set downward so we were looking perpendicular into the screen, the 3d was as good as the movie allowed for.Anyway, the biggest curse this TV brought into my life was the breaking of my vow to never buy optical disks again. Thanks to streaming and Redbox, I hadn't bought a disk of anything in years, and was happy to have shed that expense. But now I find myself budgeting for decent 3-d movies (which stay expensive a lot longer than their non-3d counterparts). Just make sure and google the reviews on 3-d movies before buying, as some movies sell the medium better than others.STREAMINGI'm a Netflix and Prime addict as well. I often do this while in PC mode (with a small window tucked into a corner while I do other work), and didn't see myself using the TVs apps much for this. However, the TVs native apps can do Netflix and Prime in 4K. I've upgraded my Netflix account to allow for 4K streaming, and watched some Breaking Bad and Blacklist in 4K so far. Very nice picture. There still needs to be some more 4K content put out there, but there's still enough to keep you busy for awhile. For myself, I think the extra 4 bucks a month to Netflix was worth it, even with the limited content at the moment. Prime seems to want you to pay dearly for most of their 4K content (there wasn't much in the free-streaming category, though plenty that you could buy), so I haven't done much prime in 4K.There's a pretty heavy selection of streaming apps besides Netflix and Prime ("channels" of various sorts), but even after 4 months with this TV, I can't comment too much on anything but those two. Those work great. I don't care much for any of the others.MEDIA CENTERThis TV has several USB ports, and one potential use of them is hooking up a USB drive with digital media on it. Because I already have a PC hooked up to this TV, I didn't see much use for this at first. However, I went ahead and dumped a few hundred gigs of movies, music, and pics to a Western Digital 3TB My Book, and was somewhat sold on the result.Upside: I think the TVs app does a better job rendering the movies in hi-res than my PC does, particularly when it comes to upscaling. A lot of my movies are DVD rips, which don't supply nearly enough pixels for optimal effect on a 4K screen. A lot of them manage to look pretty good in the media center app even full screen, where on my PC, they look pretty bad unless I shrink the window down.Downsides:1) A lot of my rips were in wmv format. The media center app doesn't like them. Don't know if it's the WMV format or the WMA audio I used with them, but it doesn't recognize a single one of those. Lucky for me, a couple of years ago I started ripping to mp4 and mkv containers, along with AAC passthru on the sound, and the app plays those nicely. But WMV on my early rips proved to be a bad choice here. I'll have to dig my DVDs out of storage and start a massive re-ripping project if I want to truly take advantage of this.2) Browsing a media library isn't the greatest experience at this point. It's a combination of waiting and nearly wearing out your remote buttons. When picking a movie to watch, it takes a minute or two for the app to even give me a good idea what's on the disk. When you start browsing, there's quite a lag as the media center app renders the titles and thumbnails. And long titles are a bit hard to read due to character cut-off. Also, even if your movies are spread out into different folders, the app just lists them all on one screen. One very...big...long....screen. Good thing the remote is pretty serviceable.The end result: I don't use this much right now for my pics/music/videos. It's much easier to flip to my PC input and view them there. Some improvements to the app could change this.Overall: I like what Sony has done with this set. As a final thought: GO BIG! I got the 65-inch, which seemed absurdly large coming from a 46-inch Samsung. Yet I'm already wishing I got the 70-inch. You can really put those pixels to work with large real-estate. I briefly thought about the 50 or 55 inch models due to much lower cost, but am glad I went higher. The overall experience relative to standard HD would only have been marginal at lower sizes.If you're on the fence, buy this TV.