Sony Bravia KDL-32W4000 review

The KDL-32W4000 has a rather plain design, with a wide black bezel and a long silver speaker grille under the screen.

Between the screen and the speakers is a clear panel with embedded LEDs, which is a nice touch but a bit too subtle, as we missed it on our first inspection. The remote control has clearly marked buttons and a groove positioned underneath where your finger naturally rests, which improves your grip. The menus use Sony’s PlayStation-style system, which makes them easy to navigate, and changing options or channels had a minimal amount of delay.

In our Blu-ray tests, we found the KDL-32W4000’s default image settings to be balanced, and changes to settings were subtle but effective. Contrast is excellent, although by default the setting is turned up higher than necessary. Blacks are deep, and you can reduce the Backlight setting to enhance them even further. Colours are exceptionally natural, but for those who prefer to be dazzled the Live Colour effect saturates primary colours. However, we found that this effect reduced detail, so we turned it off.

A digital noise-reduction option helps reduce graininess in films, although you may prefer to leave this as it may be what the director intended. We found the preset Cinema mode slightly too warm, and the standard setting had the sharpness setting turned up too far.

DVDs played at 576i suffered slightly from ghosting and aliasing artefacts on sharp edges, but in general the effects of upscaling from this lower resolution were handled well. Plugged into a PC via HDMI, the KDL-32W4000 initially overscanned the image, losing the edges of the picture, but the Full Pixel option allowed us to view the desktop with one-to-one pixel mapping. Images were clear, with smooth fonts and bright colours, although we found reds to be a little saturated.

It’s refreshing to see a Full Pixel option for HDMI, but we were disappointed to find that the KDL-32W4000 doesn’t support its full 1,920×1,080 resolution over a VGA connection. Instead, it displayed only a 1,360×768 desktop, and we had to use the auto-adjust option to align it.

The TV tuner took one minute and 40 seconds to scan the analogue spectrum and just under two minutes to scan for digital channels. The digital noise reduction helped to improve the image when viewing Freeview channels, butsome compression artefacts were still visible. The EPG showed 10 channels clearly, but without a preview of the current channel.

The KDL-32W4000 also has a USB port that allows you to view photographs on a flash drive or phone using a mass storage connection, which is useful.

Sony’s KDL-32W4000 doesn’t have the image-processing options of Philips’ 32PFL9613D, but its basic image quality is superb, especially its handling of colours. You’re paying a premium for this quality, however, and the 720p Sony Bravia KDL-32V4000 is much better value.