Sony KDL-40W4000

To be frank, Sony has to date really struggled to deliver the same consistent quality in the flat TV world that it famously enjoyed with its Trinitron CRT TVs. But on the evidence of the KDL-40W4000, that situation could be about to change.

The good news starts as soon as you unbox the 40in 40W4000 and clock its gorgeously robust ‘Midnight Sky’ (AKA black…) bezel, sumptuously offset by both a silver metallic trim and novel see-through strip along its bottom edge.

Also keeping us keen is the provision of three HDMIs, a PC input, and a USB input through which you can play digital images straight onto the screen. To support this USB function, the 40W4000 carries a PhotoTV HD mode that optimises the image settings to suit JPEG stills, as well as a Picture Frame mode that reduces the set’s power usage by 35% while you leave a picture permanently running on the screen.

The 40W4000’s single most important feature, though, is Sony’s new Bravia Engine 2 video processing engine. For this works absolute wonders on both high and especially standard definition pictures, making the 40W4000 easily Sony’s best LCD TV yet, and one of the best we’ve seen from anyone.

Smear-clear

Particularly pleasing is the set’s motion handling, which portrays practically no sign of the smearing problems found on many Sony predecessors. This leaves you free to appreciate the wondrous amounts of detail and sharpness in the 40W4000’s HD pictures, as well as the impressive clarity and noiselessness of its standard definition sources.

Colours, meanwhile, are extremely vivid but always natural, and black levels that have gone from fair to middling on Sony’s previous LCDs to some of the deepest and most detailed around.

We guess motion could look even better if the 40W4000 had 100Hz processing, and we occasionally spotted some gentle shimmering noise over patches of very fine detail. But otherwise, with some robust sonics keeping the mostly sublime pictures company, the 40W4000 is just about as good as LCD TVs get.