Sony Bravia KDL-46EX503 review

There was a time when Sony televisions were things that dreams were made of. The type of product that home entertainment enthusiasts imagined buying, if only they could live without food or water for a month or so. But over the years, the competition started to erode Sony’s brand dominance, and today consumers are as likely to aspire to owning a Samsung TV as they are a Sony. However, if the ludicrous amount of Sony branding surrounding the World Cup has taught us anything, it’s that Sony is very serious about taking its TVs to the top again.

Sony may be crowing about its LED backlit and 3D ready TVs, but the Bravia KDL-46EX503 is more of a bread and butter, mid-range set. In fact on paper the 46EX503 looks like a bit of a bargain – a 46in Sony TV for under £1,000 is nothing to be sniffed at after all. But as always, there’s more to value for money than a price tag – what you’re getting for your money is just as important.

The good news is that Sony hasn’t skimped too much on features to keep the cost down. The most obvious compromise is the backlight. There are no local dimming LED arrays or even edge LEDs, instead the 46EX503 makes do with a good old CCFL light source. Then there’s the 100Hz MotionFlow technology for reducing motion blur, whereas models higher up the Sony range come equipped with the 200Hz version.

But putting those two issues aside, the KDL-46EX503 is a well equipped 46in HDTV for the price. For a start, video input connectivity is well catered for. You get a total of four HDMI ports (two rear facing and two at the side), along with component video, a D-SUB connector for hooking up a PC, two SCARTS and composite video. There’s also an optical digital audio output, so that you can pass through a digital audio signal to an external amplifier or decoder.

It’s also good to see that you get a USB 2.0 port from which you can stream media. While the integrated Ethernet port will let you do the same from any DLNA compliant device that you have on your network. Unfortunately we couldn’t get the 46EX503 to stream DivX or Xvid content and, unsurprisingly, MKV video was also off the menu. It seemed to have no problem streaming MP4 video encoded for an iPod, but it didn’t look too good on a 46in 1,920×1,080 screen!

The Ethernet port isn’t just for streaming video from your home network though, it gives you access to Sony’s Bravia Internet Video service, which, it has to be said, is pretty cool. Fire up the Bravia Internet Video and you can watch stuff like the greatest World Cup moments, or any number of fitness and health videos from LiveStrong.com.

If you’re after more premium content, you can sign up for LoveFilm’s streaming service and take your pick from the latest video releases. LoveFilm also offers an array of movie trailers to watch, which won’t cost you anything. You can even watch the streaming content in high definition, although we experienced a lot of pausing and buffering when streaming HD.

If you own a PlayStation 3 or even a PSP, you’ll instantly recognise the XMB interface that the 46EX503 uses. It’s a ridiculously easy way to navigate all the features of the TV and gives you quick access to the integrated tuners, the Internet video or the selection of AV inputs. You can also access all the TV’s settings and adjustments via the XMB, although there is a traditional settings menu accessible via a button on the remote too.

Talking of the settings menu, there’s a decent amount of picture options, so much so that it took us a good while to find the 1:1 pixel mapping setting – rest assured though, it’s in there. It’s also worth noting that both the Standard and Vivid Picture Mode presets are far from ideal, and you really need to tweak the Custom setting to get the best out of the 46EX503. The good news is that spending a little time setting up the picture on this TV definitely pays dividends.

Watching a high definition source, whether that be the integrated Freeview HD tuner or a Blu-ray, revealed a very sharp image, far sharper than we would have expected given the price and size of this TV in fact. And despite only sporting the 100Hz implementation of MotionFlow, there’s little sign of motion blurring even when the action hots up. Even if you hook up a high definition gaming console, there’s no discernable loss of resolution to most moving images, although steady pans in cut scenes do occasionally judder, but not enough to really annoy.

Unfortunately the black levels, and consequently the colours don’t live up to the sharp and detailed images that the 46EX503 can produce. Of course this isn’t surprising considering that this TV uses a traditional CCFL light source as opposed to the LED backlights that higher end sets use. The result is blacks that never quite look black enough, and colours that just aren’t as vibrant as we would have liked.

We threw the gritty and unashamedly dark action thriller Taken into the Blu-ray player and selected the 1080p 24Hz mode to see how the 46EX503 coped. Sure enough the relentlessly dark (both in terms of lighting and subject matter) scenes took on a slightly misty grey look, albeit a very dark grey, but grey nonetheless. And although the film is shot with a slightly grainy look to it intentionally, it seemed ever so slightly dirty on this Sony. To be fair, the grain effect was probably highlighted by 46EX503’s excellent sharpness.

Interestingly the equally dark Coraline looked pristine. OK, so the colours weren’t as vivid as they are on a nineth generation Pioneer Kuro, and the black levels still leave much to be desired, but the overall picture can only be described as lovely. Clearly the crisp and clean animation benefits from the sharp and detailed pictures that the 46EX503 produces, and the fact that the colours are so oversaturated in the first place, means that they appear very pleasing to the eye regardless of the set’s limitations.

On the whole it’s hard to complain too much about the high definition performance of the 46EX503. For a 46in Sony TV that costs less than a grand, it put in a truly sterling performance. Unfortunately, when it comes to standard definition content, things don’t look quite so peachy.

Now we’re the first to admit that the vast majority of the standard definition Freeview channels employ such low bit rates that any TV will struggle to make them look good. However, even BBC1 looked pretty ropey on the 46EX503, and that’s about as good as standard definition Freeview gets. And if you’re thinking that you won’t be watching SD content because this TV has a Freeview HD tuner, think again – there’s very little native high definition content on Freeview HD right now, and that’s unlikely to change for a good while.

The problems with standard definition content are numerous, but suffice to say that the picture looks, well, messy. There’s a distinct lack of sharpness and detail, which is completely at odds with the 46EX503’s high definition performance, along with significant compression noise that couldn’t be dealt with no matter what level of MPEG noise reduction was employed.

Audio quality was another surprise, with the 46EX503 producing reasonable sound from its internal speakers. Even the pseudo-surround setting produced a noticeably wider soundstage that added to the immersion, especially when watching a movie. Obviously there’s not much going on in the bass department, and much of the impact of a high octane action movie will be lost, but the same could be said of the integrated speakers in any LCD TV.

Another string to the 46EX503’s bow is that it plays nicely with PCs. So if you’re looking to hook your PC up to a big screen TV for a bit of gaming action, the 46EX503 should fit the bill. Whether you’re using HDMI or the analogue D-SUB connection, the 46EX503 locks onto a full resolution 1,920×1,080 signal instantly and it looks pretty good too.

The EPG is both easy to navigate and good looking, and there’s a preview window so you can keep watching the current channel while you’re looking to see what else is on. That said, we did find the EPG to be quite sluggish in use, which is in stark contrast to the slick XMB interface. It’s not glacial levels of lag by any stretch of the imagination, but we did find ourselves wondering if we had pressed the button or not a couple of times.

Much of Sony’s desirable reputation was borne out of its stylish design, but it has to be said that the 46EX503 looks a bit, well, plain. It’s in no way an ugly TV, far from it, but it doesn’t ooze style like Sony products have in the past. To be fair though, this is not a high end, high price model, and the glossy black bezel, coupled with the brushed metal fascia look do have a certain minimalist appeal.

Finally there’s that price that we keep mentioning, and we’ll say it again, a 46in Sony TV for under £1,000 does look like good value. In fact, a bit of snooping around the web revealed that the KDL-46EX503 can be had for as little as £890, which makes it easier to forget some of its shortcomings.

If you were to limit your viewing to high definition sources such as Blu-ray, PS3 or even HD Freeview channels, the 46EX503 could be something of a bargain. Frankly though, if you’ve got around £900 to spend, you’re better off buying Panasonic’s Viera TX-P42G20B even though it’s 4in smaller.