Sharing Bravia 40NX520, Bravia 40EX650, Samsung 40EH5330 picture comparison

haisaikat

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I went with my uncle (one of my very close friend's father) yesterday to assist him in selecting a flat panel for his living room, he would be upgrading from an existing CRT. While he was on lookout for more of a SMART TV mainly but our endeavor for yesterday was to select the best one out of the three in terms of value for money. Here are the models
1. Bravia 40NX520 - Sells for 49,990 (MRP 53900), CCFL LCD, no network capability, older Bravia 3 engine, no motionflow - 50Hz panel
2. Bravia 40EX650 - Sells for around 67K, Edge Lit LED, Full Smart TV with network capability, DLNA certified, Motionflow 100, New X-Reality engine
3. Samsung 40EH5330 - Sells for around 58K (MRP 59K), Edge Lit LED, Full SMart TV, not DLNA certified, Clear motion Rate 100

We first went to shop 1 which was in south city mall which had all the 3 models placed side by side on the same wall. The salesperson demoed us very well explaining evry feature and I managed to keep an expression that I am seeing / hearing all these for the first time. He even said "Plasma-s" have a problem and we can see individual dots in plasma that distorts the experiance, blah bhal :). Nevertheless judging the content ebing played on the TV (Via Tata Sky HD) I was able to make out that colour tone was most natural in the Samsung out of all the 3. And also in terms of overall picture quality (blacks) the Samsung was ahead. To my surprise the salesperson proactively asked us to compare the black levels. Apart from the PQ, on the featureset front the salesperson kept the Samsung ahead since it had support upto 2TB HDD and has a separate USB for connecting large HDDs. But accesories like the Skype Camera are costlier for Samsung. One negative of all the three we noticed was motion judder typically when the camera panned on anything static. I asked whether motionflow was working and to this the sales guy said that it is due to the Tata Sky Signal quality only to be limited at 50Hz and as per him with increasing number of HD channels soon 100Hz will be the standard (I kept showing the dumb look since the sales guy was feeling on top of everything and gave us the utmost attention) We left the shop keeping the samsung at the top of our minds. I did not play any content that I was carrying.

Next went to the adjacent Sony showroom, here (as usual) people are less willing to sell (by pushing, which is in contrary to the previous showroom). Judging by the content being played we could not make any difference between the EX650 and EX550.

Last we went to Sales Emporium Garia, the place from where I had bought my Panasonic Plasma, PS3 and then later on other things which my wife bought for my in-laws. Here I had a bit of rapport and was able to play Dark Night BD the chase scene (Joker chasing Harvey). Did I say that I was also in the verge of purchasing a 22 inch LCD for my mother? The samsung was not part of this and we were watching only the Sony-s. Since I had watched this scene upmteen times in my HT I knew what to look for. The black levels were not so great in the 22BX350 which is expected in a 22 inch set costing 14.9K and also vieweing angle (Side) is not that great. However on the 40EX650 and 40NX520 the blacks had not much noticable difference and PQ wise we could only keep the 40EX650 slightly ahead of the 40NX520. One example beiong that in the same scene there is a place where the Joker is trying to fire a Bazooka at the transport van having HArvey and the camera is being focussed from the top. At this I paused and saw that the wheels of the car were a bit more sharp and detailed in the 40EX650 and which was relatively hazy in the 40NX520 but practically thinking the viewing experiance would not be distorted when watching only one tv at home. So our verdict went in favor of the NX520. We went to the other side of the shop to see the samsung 40EH5330 and could not play any content of my own. But as per the sales guy who seemed to be more of a sony man samsung was not that great :) but he did admit that file format support is higher in samsung but he kept the sony ahead in terms of more number of HDMI, component in, preloaded Skype :) (which otherwise requires to be downloaded in samsung) and not to say the simplicity of switches on the switch (showed us a peculiar example -- how turning off the samsung without a remote is difficult :) ).

Inspite of all these we left the shop keeping the 40NX520 as the best VFM model of the lot. Although it did not have internet features but adding the BDP from Sony for less than 6K would level the internet features all that is present in the EX650 which is around 8K costlier plus add BD playback.

Oh forgot about the 22 inch BX350 that I bought, has FM, better USB support, slightly weak sound, but a balanced VFM package over the samsung counterpart which did not have FM and lesser support of USB and price difference was only 200. But to all those who wants to go for built in video playback capability. I had one mp4 video (Tumhi ho Bandhu from Cocktail) which was downloaded from Youtube @ 1080P. When I play that on my Pana 50 via my HTPC plays superb with not so much noticable grains or any distortion. But when the same video was played on the 22 inch Bravia there were grains in the picture which did not come with the showroom guys USB content though. So this gave me the feeling that built in decoders and their quality will play a heavy role in USB content playback quality and one should properly verify that before deciding a purchase solely on Playback Format support grounds only.

Lastly uncle was willing to check out the BD HT systems from Sony and the BDV290 was on display selling for 19.5K. I played a few songs from Pen Drive and the sound was a bit dull with bass from the sub trying to overhaul the vocals. Do not think someone starting off with this will ever realize but the showroom guys suggested to go for the 490 model which had two tallboy speakers (their version of floorstands :) but did not get to audition that. Both were internet capable though.

Now comes one question, if uncle buys Sony BDP alone then can he upgrade to a surround system better than or equal to the BDV290 but not requiring the BDP to be turned obsolete? If that translates into a speaker package then obviously we need to check the compatibility of connections between BDP, Speaker pack and TV together.
 
Its good to see 303 views. But would have been better if someone could share their opinions in similar price range of related / different models.
 
Saikat good choices...
When I went out for my first tv I decided to go for 40 inch due to distance constraints. Now I didn't go for a 3d tv cause I get severe headache after watching 3d while demo and Imax also...so went with the highest 2d model available...now I did demo of sony,samsung and lg..I discarded lg cause color clarity was not at par with other brands and between sony and samsung color clarity is same but I find samsung image to be a bit overprocessed..may be settings issue..went with sony with extended 1+2 yrs [email protected] a tv with a web browser which I found useful to login to cable network(got a 6mbps cable connection)..cause now a days all cable internet connection got login page..I do see few hd video via youtube app but though 1 time a month..
What u can do is alter few settings to get optimum picture and decide with which u want to go...
 
thanks lake1988, Good to see your views. I did like that idea of utilizing the built in browser for cable internet login (this is by far one practical use of this that I came across). Does it support mouse or all tab / keyboard based?
 
You have to use your remote to browse..no keyboard/mouse support directly..you have to connect your pc to it via network/wifi and install a remote keyboard software in pc to use the pc keyboard and mouse..actually if you are comfortable typing in mobile phone..remote will be good. But you need to type only at the time of searching in youtube..other time not much typing required..and it supports android/iOS based phones for basic remote functionality..
 
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