Gadgets

Sony Bravia

The sound is what settled it. We watched an Andre Rieu concert with nothing but the TV, no speakers plugged in anywhere, and it sounded amazing, the whole orchestra filling the room. The sound comes off the screen, as though the picture is doing the talking. Avatar was thumping, every bit of the action landing with real weight. What surprised us most is that it sounded the same wherever you sat, near the screen or off to the side or right at the back, with no hunting for the sweet spot. Dialogue stays crisp too. We put on Noises Off, which is fast and full of overlapping lines, and every word came through clean. Sound magic, done perfectly.

On picture it is lovely in its own right. We put Star Wars on for the blacks and space stayed properly black, deep and clean around the ships. Sound of Music looked gorgeous, all that colour and detail in the hills. In a bright sitting room with the afternoon light coming in it holds up beautifully, and older films and ordinary streaming get tidied up nicely, so you are not left with a soft, mushy picture every time you put on something that was not made in 4K. Something most people never realise: the studios in Hollywood grade their films on Sony’s professional monitors, so what you watch at home sits close to what the director actually signed off.

The smart side runs Google TV. Every app you could want is there and it all works, though the home screen does like to push rows of suggestions and the odd advert at you before it lets you reach your own things. You learn to scroll past it.

For sport it is lovely and smooth, fast movement staying clean with no smearing, and if there is a PlayStation in the house the two get on very well. One thing worth knowing before you buy: only two of the sockets are the fast kind, so a console, a soundbar and a set-top box all wanting the best connection means a bit of juggling behind the set.

The one thing the LG does better is the very deepest black in a dark room, where the Sony sits a hair behind it. The little it gives away there, it wins straight back the moment the sound comes on.

Which leaves the remote. For a TV at this price you expect something a little special in the hand, and what you get is about the most basic clicker in the house. You hold it every evening, so you notice.

Put on a film, and within a minute you have forgotten you are looking at a TV at all.

LG OLED

The blacks are the best we have seen at home. Because every pixel makes its own light and switches fully off, a dark scene sits in the air with no glow around it, the sort of black an ordinary TV simply cannot manage. The panel doing that is LG’s own, and the same panel sits inside a good many other brands’ fancy OLED TVs, so with the LG you are looking at the source. The sound is fantastic in its own right, full and clear with nothing else needed, just that shade behind the Sony. The remote is the odd one out, a point-and-wave wand you flick at the screen like a magician’s stick to move a cursor about, clever once you are used to it though a bit fiddly at first.

Samsung

For picture the Samsung keeps right up with the Sony, which is no small thing, bright and sharp and it loves a room with a lot of daylight coming in. The clever bit hiding inside is quantum dots, specks of crystal only a few nanometres across, and the exact size of each speck sets the colour it gives off, which is how the picture gets so pure and punchy. The sound is superb on its own too, no soundbar or anything else wanted, just that whisker short of the Sony. The remote is a tiny thing with barely a button on it, and it charges itself from the light in the room, so you are not forever buying batteries.