Sony KDL-40W5500 review now online

well who would have thought that a year on we still taking about the same problems with sony. at least now we got whathifi in on it.

come on guys catch up.

Nooooooooooooooooooooo , thats not the review I was expecting!! I am in the process of selling my Infocus IN80 for a new big TV and the Sony was the only one on my list.

Excellent review as always What Hifi. Look forward to the supertest in the next issue.

Its a real shame about the backlighting issues Sony has.

One review - 30 mins later.........

Mass panic!!!... as everyone opens new topics on the tv forum to create 4 threads and confuses poor old me as to where to type on

ÿ

I sincerely hope that last comment was directed at Sony - and its apparent issues with quality control.

Oh, and i've merged a couple of threads for clarity's sake...ÿ

...because we've been debating and discussing these issues on the Forums for ages.

wow , im surprised at that review , after all the commotion regarding the 4500 you would think sony would have sorted the 5500 , fair play whfi you have pulled no punches there , and called it as you seen it , does sony even know about the 150000 views of the 4500 thread ( bleeding ) ?? , seems not , in this age of cyberspace news travels fast ( especially bad news ) , surely sony knows this , and samsungs new model is supposed to be very good , even plays mkv files ( replacement for 656 ) , i have a feeling there will be lots of potential sony buyers that will think twice now , quite amazing .....

What Hifi recognised this on many occasions and even in their last supertest with the Sony 4500TV (i think it was the last issue or the one before ) - the review even mentioned that many people have been having problems with the backlighting issue and advised readers to get it checked first.

I'm one of them. I wonder what Sony Centre in Leeds would say on this issue...

I'l keep the forum posted

We all really appriciate the services whathifi offers and the hard work that all the team put in. with out this site and its information thousand of people (mostly men) would be cracking their heads against brickwalls trying to figure out what tech to get. thats why we appriciate your honesty, in fact I think its at the point that we demand it.

When problems appear like backlight bleed we need to be united to take on sony and force them to accept that is it not ok to charge us £1000 for some that is faulty.

so come guys you still dont admit that backlight bleed is a fault even thought you have rated the w5500 four stars.

I've read a fair bit on forums about the bleeding issue on the 4500 model however What Hi-Fi never encountered this problem with their test sets. Could it not be that the test set they received for the 5500model is just a dodgy one! I'll be purchasing a new set myself next month and was hoping to get this new Sony however maybe im better off trying to get hold of the 4500!

cmf:

so come guys you still dont admit that backlight bleed is a fault even thought you have rated the w5500 four stars.

That's an interesting interpretation of us giving a TV four stars and citing the backlight problem on this set as the reason.

well its clear now why sony refused so many requests for refunds , replacements with the 4500 , they were not faulty , it was just that some of them were rubbish , sold as seen it is then ,,,, buyer beware ....

well if all the Sony 5500 Tvs all have an uneven backlight, its not really a fault - more a flaw with the TV.

I know many people that had fine Sony 4500 versions without any issues as discussed on the forums - that is a fault. 

Also lets not forget now many of these TVs actually sell - maybe only a small percentage of their TVs produced had that fault on the previous range

and quote

That's where the Sony's fifth star has gone. We don't think our
KDL-40W5500 is faulty, we just don't think the backlighting is good
enough.

and yet this is the same situation we were in last year with roles reversed. 

so if you had reviewed one of the w5500 tv's without backlight bleed would you have given it 5 stars. even though hundreds of users on your forum were reporting their w5500 had backlight bleed.

We've seen backlight bleed and uneven backlights on a range of LCD TVs, and always mention it in reviews where we've experienced it, and rated sets accordingly. Just as we've experienced image retention issues on some plasma TVs, and mentioned that, too.