Disappointing

Had this for just over a week now. Viewing angle (horizontal) is very poor - I'd say +/- 30 degrees MAX. If you are outside this angle, faces take on a distinctly over-pink hue and significant contrast is lost. After much furniture moving in the lounge, we have a just about acceptable picture, but inconvenient furniture layout! Viewing straight-on the picture is OK on some sources, but rubbish on others viz TV news and most nature progs are fine, but most soaps look terrible (unwatchable to me, just as well I don't like soaps). Severe pixellation of the image is common, and"fuzzy round the edges", which I don't get from a picture on a PC LCD monitor. I think I was happier with our ancient 21" CRT TV - much more natural pictures. Text and subtitles etc look great, as there are no convergeance errors. The same for cartoons (Simpsons). Sound is good, compared to some I have heard, with no buzzing or rattling. Remote has to be pointed directly at the TV sensor, or pointed at the ceiling for any response from the TV. This is tiresome. The EPG is nowhere near as useful or good as my £16 Freeview box, and the channel info etc takes about a third of the TOP of the screen, instead of the bottom. Lots of direct inputs but slow in selection, as you have to scroll down a menu till you get to the right one (remembering you have to be pointing the remote at the correct angle!). Also, they are labelled AV1,2,3 etc instead of Scart 1,2 and HDMI 1,2 etc which would be far more useful. It should have been easy enough to have a system which detected automatically which direct input was active when not in TV mode. Sometimes it would not detect that an HDMI input was connected (and active).

Update: Contacted Amazon about the faults and to their credit they said I could return the TV for a replacement or refund. I chose refund. This was all handled very professionally by Amazon who picked up the TV and refunded within 4 days! I'm going to buy a Panasonic TX32LMD70 instead, which has MUCH better viewing angle.

Sony...speaks for itself!

Cut a long story short...it's a good TV. It's black, its sexy and it's Sony! Brand lives up!

plus 3 HDMI ports! :-)

Nearly spot on !

When I first tuned in after only five minutes assembling tv I was very disappointed but after a few tweaks it was excellent .My only criticisms are that the picture on analogue is one of the worst I have come across , but then again who uses analogue other than to access fast text. The EPG is also very poor and as for that banner that appears at top of screen when you change channel it does my nut in.All in all excellent value for money.I am going over to Virgin cable next month so it should be even better .

Good all round tv

This TV delivers a solid all round performance. The built in freeview offers a fairly good picture quality, although I personally find the picture a little dark - you can obviously increase the brightness and backlight levels, but this can make the black levels a little grey. The contrast settings also have to be set quite high to get the most out of the tv (by default it is set to around 92%)

Plug in a blu-ray or other high-def device via a HDMI cable and you'll really see what this model can do. Blacks are rich, and colours are vibrant and accurate. For the price it's a must have.

Excellent TV from Sony

We bought this TV for the bedroom after squinting at a Sharp Aquos 15" for months (not a bad TV but a little small and no Freeview), we decided to move the little TV to the study and buy this Sony Bravia 20" for the bedroom.

Setup is a breeze (both analogue and freeview are done automatically) with only a little reorganising of the analogue channel order needed, which was also easily done via the channel setup screen.

Connections were easy, the stand is Ok (removable for wall mounting), handset is good.

The picture quality is generally very good for broadcast channels, but not quite as good as the Panasonic 26" we bought for the family/games consoles room, which is quite exceptional. However, the Panasonic was twice the price, so that's an unfair comparison. The Sony's colour balance is spot on, with no hue or tinting as can be observered on other sets. Maybe the colours are slightly too vibrant straight out of the box - just a little adjustment-to-taste is all that's required, which is true of every TV we've ever had.

Overall this has to be the best 20" TV currently out there for anywhere near this price - buy one!

Very Good TV And On Time Delivery.

This TV is amazing. It has many connections on the back for the Xbox 360 and PC etc and the picture is great, analogue and digital. The sound is very good under any mode and the TV gives an overall flawless display no matter what you want to do with it. I was also pleasantly surprised with how well it fits in my bedroom and it looks great at any angle. Also the delivery was before they said it would be but this is better because I can wait for it at home because school has ended for the summer.

Fantastic

Bought the tv to replace my old 14inch crt in the bedroom and the Sony is amazing, picture/sound is a 10/10. I'm using a portable arial and booster and the freeview picture is spot on and rivals the picture in my lounge.

Highly recommended, don't spend time buying cheaper no-brand tvs, the difference is very noticable.

WOW

why would you spend any more money on a 26 inch. This tv is perfect for just watching or even playing your games console. picture quality is excellent and so is the sound. a perfect all-rounder. just like the other guy i also looked on the sony website and found for a little extra i could get this tv instead of the kdl26s3000 which has a slightly worse resolution. brilliant buy now!!

Bravo ! - for Sony Bravia 23"

Isn't it difficult to know what tv to buy these days, especially if you're a non-techy like me ? Anyway I plumped for this Sony - an excellent service from Amazon by the way - and can't praise it too highly. Arrived today, and first thing I noticed was how light it was taking it out of the box. Very easy to set up, went without a hitch, not like the old days. Good to see that you can vary the bass/trebble on the sound (about time this was included) and there is also an option to keep sound 'constant', ie to stop that annoying way in which the volume is increased for advertisements and trailers (an infringement that should be outlawed).
By the way the 'mocha' colour of this model seems to be a shade of grey..
So all in all this seems to be an excellent buy and I would recommend it highly judging by my first impressions.

Disappointed at first but now happy

At first I was very disappointed with the picture and almost sent the set back, but eventually after setting the picture controls, mainly lowering backlight & turning live colour off,colour space to standard I got a very good picture to my liking both on SD & HD, SD does vary in quality depending on the signal but usually very good.

Excellent balance between top range and mid range Sony Models

What a great TV. Not the best in the Sony range but it comes in with not as many ports as the V model and with slight lower spec in the bravia engine but supports 1080p. Connected to PS3 with GT 5 prologue playing is a sight to believe. Absolutely incredible. Standard TV can look grainy but this is down to the low resolution of the standard digital signal. Any HD output to the TV is outstanding. I noticed no damaged pixels on delivery and starting it up first time. Amount of connections is more than enough for most. For me it was just right.
Menu setup and installation was the easiest I've ever experienced with a TV. Even getting it out of the box has easy with a well thought out catch release system so the box parts around the TV allowing easy extraction. Delivery was prompt within 5 working days and the company keeping me up to date.
Only problem I found was not with the TV. The registration PC CD disk provided with the TV doesn't work. The site reports database error when using the disk to register. I manually went to the sony site and registered the TV to get around this.
I'd suggest this TV to anyone who'll be using HD content a lot. If your getting this for digital TV only then go for a HD Ready model instead (Sony S range are good value). The grain on standard digital (non HD) may put you off. For me it wasn't an issue. You have to be close to the TV to notice it to any real extent anyway.

Brilliant and at an excellent price

We had originally ordered a Samsung from Dixons for my son to use with his XBox because I couldnt get it on Amazon - which wasnt in stock although they took my cash and waited 10 days before telling me and giving me my refund. Still that meant we went looking again and found this little beauty. Amazon's service was awsome - ordered on 12 Jan in the evening and was in the house by 1pm on the 14 Jan - and that wasnt with the superfast delivery. The telly is wonderful - the picture is very clear and with fab colours even on the appalling interal arial we are using at the moment and the colours are so clear. My son is using on the games and is very impressed. The sound isnt tinny in any way at all - its so much better than our other TVs but I will say that these are all over 5 years old and I am not a HiFi freak - but its miles better than any other TV I have used. We are thinking of getting another this one is so good. As for getting it for a £5 like the review below - there is a very useful site called gimme4free which explains what these referral sites are all about. Put very simply, its a form of advertising where you have to get friends, family and others to sign up to an offer and get this as a reward when you have so many signed up. I havent tried it and I havent signed up but thought you might be interested.

A nice little TV!

I have been looking for a 26" flat screen for the bedroom for some time, lingering over a Toshiba, a Panasonic and this one. I quickly discounted the Panasonic (though if I had the money I would have gone for it but couldn't justify the expense on the basis that you wouldn't be able to clearly tell the difference on a 26" TV!). However, having had some good sony stuff in the past, I went for Sony. And I am pleased I did.
Easy to use, easy to unpack, excellent delivery (normal free delivery), easy controls, fantastic picture too.
Quite a neat a little package for a small TV!!
Sound is ok, bearing in mind that it's a small flat TV - copes well with the virtual dolby too.
Lots of output slots means you can always find an excuse to plug something into the TV to show something off on it!!!

Fanatastic

What a great TV at a great price.
The wife didnt want black and not many other manaufacturers did another colour.So i went for this dark silver model which looks very nice on the silver stand.Picture is superb and the sound lacks a bit of bass but I am getting used to it after a few days.
Will need to save up for a HD DVD player but currently using an upscaling DVD player and looks great,colours are rich and picture crisp.
Put my trust in a SONY and it paid off.
Reccomended.

Fabulous picture quality and design

After looking to buy a 40" LCD for 18 months, I saw this in the local sony shop. The picture quality is superb both on HD and SD from sky and freeview. It is a much better than the Sony X series that was next to it in the shop. It is also a major step forward in design easily beating other sonys and samsungs and together with a more competitive price for this quality screen and an introductory offer meant I had to buy it. Highly recommend everyone to see this LCD before buying any other

sony bravia 26s

This review combines my feelings as regards Amazon's service and also the Sony wide screen LCD Tele'.

Amazon I can not fault, three days from order to delivery for both the stand and television coming from different suppliers, keep this up Amazon!!.

I know we as customers pay a little more for Sony because of the name, but in my wife's and my opinion, this is justified because of the visual and audio quality simply screems out from the set, with small adjustments to the colour temperature and contrast, the result is truly fantastic, far far better than any CRT I have ever seen.

Panned movement in films is also much more natural even at 50Khz timing, and the contrast adjustment through the menu system is so easy, I have my Tele. set to contrast 'vivid', and colour temperature 'cool', even with old B/W and colour films.

The Best

Two of the best companys'. I bought a Sony & it has been fab. Colour, sound, pic quality, ease of set up, infact everything is so good.
Amazon give confidence because they care about customer service are fast and efficient. You will not be disappointed with Sony or Amazon.

TOP QUALITY TV

I have had this TV for just over a week and I highly reccomend it!

- The picture is so bright thanks to 33,000:1 dynamic contrast
- SD TV looks very good. Much better than on my old 24" CRT
- HD content through a PS3 is amazing

Best LCD TV ever

Have owned this tv 10 weeks now - having previously owned a Panasonic 32" Viera, decided to upgrade to a 40" Tv. Researched several makes, read comments about fan noise. Went to Sony shop and listened for said noise, had to be very close to tv with sound turned off to hear the fans. Bought the tv, had it delivered and set up. My panasonic was excellent but this telly beats it hands down - picture and sound.