Sony KD-65ZD9 TV test: the brightest star in the UHD sky

Blinding with a flawless picture

Test results

Sony KD-65ZD9 test results

Thanks to the expand­ed col­or space, the HDR image is excel­lent, with rich col­ors and out­stand­ing con­trast. In addi­tion, the so-called noise reduc­tion func­tion (Object Based HDR Remas­ter­ing) reduces the blur­ring of the con­tours of objects such as trees or moun­tains.

How­ev­er, the real “high­light” of the new KD-65ZD9 is still the mod­u­lar arrange­ment of LEDs built into the pan­el. While oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers build only a few hun­dred LEDs, Sony uses sev­er­al thou­sand here.

The result is also impres­sive in the test lab: The KD-65ZD9 lit­er­al­ly shines with its max­i­mum bright­ness of an incred­i­ble 1804 cd/m2, thus out­per­form­ing the pre­vi­ous bright­ness leader Sam­sung UE65KS9590 by about 50%.

Added to this are the char­ac­ter­is­tics that one can only dream of: a max­i­mum con­trast ratio of 15,653:1 and a checker­board con­trast ratio of 250:1. Is that the view­ing angles are some­what lim­it­ed on the sides. How­ev­er, even this fact can­not pre­vent Sony from set­ting a new record in the Pic­ture Qual­i­ty test cat­e­go­ry with its cur­rent UHD-TV.

The sound of the Japan­ese turned out, although not the most suc­cess­ful, but both 10 W speak­ers sound clean and clear. Here, in the absence of a sub­woofer, one can­not count on any audio mir­a­cles, but for a sim­ple movie view­ing in the evening, the built-in speak­ers will be quite enough.

Rich equipment and Android TV 6.0

“Nev­er touch a run­ning sys­tem” is prob­a­bly what Sony thought, and there­fore con­tin­ued to use the reli­able Android TV oper­at­ing sys­tem in ver­sion 6.0. Thanks to this, you will have access to all known video-on-demand ser­vices, YouTube and oth­er social media plat­forms. In addi­tion, you can install thou­sands of apps and games on your TV from the inte­grat­ed App­Store. Who­ev­er and all this will not be enough, he can con­nect a hard dri­ve to one of the three USB ports, from which he will view pho­tos and videos, as well as lis­ten to music. With the inte­grat­ed triple tuner, even USB record­ing is pos­si­ble.

All this is com­ple­ment­ed by the pres­ence of four HDMI ports and a Scart con­nec­tor. How­ev­er, such a rich equip­ment and a pro­gres­sive LED-pan­el take up some space. Which is why it’s no sur­prise that the Sony Bravia, at 80mm deep and weigh­ing in at over 30kg, is cur­rent­ly one of the thick­est and heav­i­est UHD TVs out there. For­tu­nate­ly, thanks to the angu­lar design and the bulging plas­tic cov­er on the back, this is almost invis­i­ble.

Superior control, high energy consumption

As with pre­vi­ous mod­els, you too can con­trol the Sony KD-65ZD9 in an inno­v­a­tive way with your smart­phone via an Android or iOS app. Alter­na­tive­ly, Androd TV can be oper­at­ed with the includ­ed remote con­trol with­out any prob­lems. Here, Sony remains true to itself and con­tin­ues to use rub­ber but­tons and a clas­sic d‑pad.

As you would expect with such an extreme­ly high max­i­mum bright­ness, the pow­er con­sump­tion of a 65-inch TV is enor­mous. In nor­mal oper­a­tion, it is at the lev­el of 171 watts, but this can be reduced slight­ly using the eco mode. In stand­by mode, the TV con­sumes about 0.2 W more. With these para­me­ters, the device received the EU ener­gy label “B”.

Alternative options:

Strong middle class:
recommend Sony KD-65XD9305

A sis­ter mod­el from the same man­u­fac­tur­er (Sony KD-65XD9305) demon­strat­ed con­vinc­ing pic­ture qual­i­ty and good sound dur­ing test­ing. Although this 65-inch TV does­n’t come close to the KD-65ZD9 in terms of bright­ness, 480 cd/m2 will be enough for nor­mal use in the liv­ing room. Pos­i­tive side effect: ener­gy con­sump­tion is much low­er. And although this Sony TV, esti­mat­ed at about 260,000 rubles, i.e. almost 100 thou­sand rubles. less than a relat­ed mod­el of the Hi-End class, if you look at the equip­ment, Smart-TV func­tion­al­i­ty and ergonom­ics, there are almost no sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences.

Even weirder:
Panasonic TX-65CZW954 OLED TV

Thanks to OLED tech­nol­o­gy known from smart­phones, the Pana­son­ic TX-65CZW954 achieves per­for­mance com­pa­ra­ble to the Sony mod­el. At the same time, the sta­bil­i­ty of view­ing angles is even bet­ter than that of a com­peti­tor. In addi­tion, there are six 10 W speak­ers, excel­lent equip­ment and many smart-TV func­tions. In terms of ergonom­ics and ener­gy effi­cien­cy, there are prac­ti­cal­ly no dif­fer­ences from the Sony TV. The sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent with the price: as much as 560,000 rubles. worth the OLED mir­a­cle, there­by lim­it­ing its audi­ence to only the most ardent UHD lovers.

Specifications and test results Sony KD-65ZD9

A pho­to: man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies