Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I did indicate in the headline that this is an excellent TV. Although, the price is higher than you'll play for many 65" 4K TV's, which can go as low as 700 dollars. There are a number of special technologies in this Sony Model which sets it apart. That said, Sony actually details this as one of three "step-down" models for 2021, as their higher end, and more expensive OLED TV's are being introduced. Now, first of all, it's nice to know what makes a good picture on a large screen TV. Those inexpensive 65" 4K TV's while not bad, do not come close to the picture on this Sony. Honestly, from what I've seen you'd have to be really picky to agree with Sony, that this is the lowest of their 2021 "Step Down Models". Some history about me, and then more about how TV's accomplish a good picture. In 2015 I had nearly no sight in my right eye, and my left just enough detail to be able to drive. Early onset cataracts, starting in my fifties instead of 60's, 70's or 80's. I thought I would never see properly again, so I made a promise that if I got the cataract lens replacement operation, I would buy the best TV I could to celebrate. My "older" TV's at the time were a Sharp 1080P edge lit TV bought in 2012, and a Sony Bravia 720P HD TV, bought for my late mother when she was in a nursing home in 2005, it was backlit with a long lasting florescent lamp of some sort. Anyway, I got the operation in 2016, and other than at my request (to read and do computer work without glasses), I got near perfect vision except for a little nearsightedness so I use glasses to drive, and for distance vision. Since the replacement surgery was a success, I bought an LG OLED TV, for nearly 3000 dollars, and an expensive warranty from a local seller. Because of some issues with the OLED, I got a replacement model of the same type, but upgraded to 2019 technology. Sometimes warranties can be good. This is the type of TV I've had in my living room now for the past 4-5 years. It's pretty awesome, and somewhat more expensive by about a third than this new 2021 Sony. Since they are both 65" I'll be making some contrasting comparisons in my review. Packaging, and setup, advantage to Sony. While considerably heavier than the wafer thin LG OLED TV, I had to struggle with the LG to put on the support base. It had a number of screws to attach, and someone had to support the screen carefully while those were attached. The Sony had more protective material to guard the screen, but when laid flat on a bed, I was easily able to slide, and snap-in the support leg pieces. Screwdriver not required, easy, in a pinch one person might be able to do it, although I had a friend to help. There were four screw in-barrel connectors if you want to attach to a wall mounted bracket over the support legs. Using one connector can double as a tipping hazard protector, but you have to purchase you're own eye loop piece. The TV is nearly twice as heavy as the LG of the same size so make sure the platform you put it on will support 70 pounds of TV, and what other devices (DVD players, streamers and the like you might connect). Directed setup when the TV is powered on also goes to Sony over LG although, to be fair to LG they had more features that needed setting up than this Sony, as their remote controlled a lot of special functions. Both TV's have voice activated inputs, and although the Sony has a very clever use of it's microphone by using it's position to optimize the sound for where you sit. Actually the sound is kind of off the charts better on the Sony 2021 vs the LG 2019 model. Although, actually my LG sound experience is somewhat better, because I employ a 7.1 "Sony" sound bar, with subwoofer, and twin remote connected back speakers. This was a product I reviewed back about 4 years ago for Sony through the VINE as well. This Sony TV is not using any external speakers, but sounds pretty great on it's own, as the speakers are much better than the Native LG speakers. Apps, LG is actually the clear winner here, the set-up comes with many Apps, and you can add many more, plus it has a Web Browser. Thats nice, some services I had that allowed me to watch NFL games needed a web connection to use, and it was nice to put them no the big screen instead of watching on my laptop. LG has native Chromecast as well to project a computer or smartphone on the TV screen. I set up Google play on the Sony, but it was limited compared to the array of things I could do with the LG and it's Magic Remote. Picture, LG is the winner by a nose, the XR contrast booster on the Sony makes it look really good, but LG's OLED pixels win the day. It took a while to figure out. I put some 4K YouTubes on both, watched them at the same distance from each TV, and watched each of three videos with different type of content (landscape bright tropical island, dark movie short, and ultra colorful Japan business district walk through). Each provided something to judge, I watched about five minutes of each, and repeated. Then moved to the other TV, and back again. Very difficult call, but the black levels on the LG still won out, although unlike cheaper older TV's it's hard for most people to tell any difference here. An explanation might be in order here, the inexpensive TV's are whats called edge lit. That basically means that the picture is a color liquid crystal, that emits no light of it's own. While they may call them LED TV's what they really mean is the back light, and edge lit means it's shined from the perimeter inside the TV, and likely reflected on the entire screen. This is why you need a much thicker back, and a heavier TV. You can't make it wafer thin like an OLED screen. OLED stand for Organic Light Emitting Diode, and it provides it's own light at the pixel, it does not use a backlight. Now this Sony uses a back light system, but it's much better, and much more sophisticated than edge lit LED TVs. It's whats called full array LED lighting. Instead of just controlling an edge lights brightness to shine through a liquid crystal matrix, you have the entire back populated with LED's behind the liquid crystal matrix, and a complicated algorithm (software program design) determines the incoming picture frames. It then adjusts the intensity of part of the LED lights to correspond to the pictures light and darker areas. It helps with the contrast, and black levels by keeping the light areas lit, and the dark areas dark. It is slightly less effective than OLED because there you get a true black level by controlling the intensity of individual pixels. Sony is actually going OLED on their higher end models, but unless you have money to burn, the difference in what I see here, and even the real world resolution seems negligible to me. I'm sure those high end models will have some marvelous features, but you can be sure you're gonna pay for them. While expensive to an extent, you will not be unsatisfied with this fantastic new model, "Step Down" or not, it seems to be all relative. Going away from the LG comparison for a bit, I liked the initial set up guide for this Sony. It had me select the language and connect to the Internet almost immediately. It then updated the software, and had me connect to some native apps. I went to my other computer, and activated Prime Video from Amazon, and I loved the fact that I could get the Crunchyroll Anime app on this in the All Apps section I just added it an logged it in. My only disappointment came with not finding a Web browser. I did a search and it made some suggestions to look for it in the extended all apps section, but I did not find a browser there. I connected Google TV up to see if that had something like a version of Chrome, but didn't find anything new. I'm thinking since their help tells where to go, maybe the memory, and such required to support a Web browser is too limited, and they only put it on more expensive models. Not sure, I may still find a way to add one later. Another nice feature is the USB input, Sony seems to be up to date on the latest video file formats, and has the codex for those in it's native media player. It played some of my downloaded video files in a number of formats, and different resolutions quite well. I did have a little issue with having to set the subtitles on the remote each time for every file. Maybe I've not found it, but I'd like to leave subtitles or closed captions on when viewing non-English content. I did not like that there was only one coax input, I like to keep my LG (which has 2) connected to both the Cable box, and a powered antenna, for when the cable goes down, which is all too frequent. There are ample HDMI inputs (4) on the Sony. Although I'm not using a sound bar with this TV at present, I guess since it has the feature I should talk about eARC and ARC. ARC was the abbreviation for Audio Return Channel. On the Sony Sound bar I use for my LG, there is an ARC input, and an ARC output from the LG as I have connected. This allows me to connect high res sound without using a separate optical cable or analog set of RC jack connection cables to facilitate this. This new Sony 2021 model TV as something called eARC, it stands for Extended Audio Return Channel, and the difference is sound bandwidth and data transfer. It can transfer for instance to a sound bar or other audio system uncompressed 5.1 or 7.1 sound data. While the previous ARC was roughly 37 times slower, and it at best could work with compressed 5.1 data. For ARC you needed a decent high spec HDMI cable, and for eARC you need one that is HDMI, and Ethernet support spec'd. I'm not testing that for this TV unless I see Sony puts a newer high spec sound bar system on the VINE, I might test it if that happens in the future. For now, like I said the sound on this TV from the native speaker is exceptionally good. Overall this is a really nice TV with a sound system good enough not to need an expensive outside sound system. A picture that exceeds most all of the medium to lower priced sets. Connections to Apps, and streaming services for same. Relatively easy to set up than some of the more complex, feature heavy TV's from LG, and high end newly released Sony OLED versions. For most this is all you will need. Recommended. UPDATE: 4-22-21 I mentioned in the review I'd keep looking to find out how to add a Web Browser. Some online videos showed how to add Chrome using an outside download. I was able to add a Browser that said it was made for Sony TV using the microphone. I found a lot of uses with that to quickly access features navigate between apps, connected USB drives, connected 4K DVD players, and Broadcast TV via an attached antenna. TV capable of one area search or several apps at a time to find movies and shows. Nice. As useful or more so than the Cable TV remote I use on my other TV. The addition of the Browser, I can now access news, and the websites of other services, online shopping etc. Only complaint I have over something like Chrome is if I didn't spell out the entire URL, it wouldn't append the ".com" or finish the URL, it just wouldn't find the site.