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Sony Bravia KDL-37S5500 37in LCD TV Review

Author	John Archer
Published	20th May 2009
Manufacturer	Sony
Price	£537.39 (Exc VAT)
as reviewed	£618.00 (Inc VAT)
Latest Price	Click here

Design
Features
Image Quality
Sound Quality
Value
Overall

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Now we're in a positive frame of mind, I was also pleased to find action scenes on the 37S5500 suffering less with motion blur and judder than might be expected on a TV with no 100Hz processing. This joins with the Full HD resolution and Sony's always-respectable Bravia Engine 2 system in helping HD pictures look pleasingly - if not spectacularly - sharp.

Colours look more natural with high definition too, making it easier to appreciate how vibrant and well saturated they are for such an affordable TV.

While the 37S5500's picture strengths ultimately make more of an impact for the set's money than its negatives, though, its audio is definitely only average.

Things sound OK when a soundstage mix is simple, with just a couple of elements in it. But as soon as you push the TV with a dense soundtrack, featuring lots of orchestral score or action movie staples like explosions and gunfire, the speakers start to sound overloaded, compressing too much sound information into too small a section of the audio spectrum. This leads to occasionally buzzy moments of distortion, particularly with deep male voices, and leaves action scenes sounding rather flat and far from engaging.

Verdict

To some extent, the 37S5500 is another successful Sony LCD TV. While it's certainly got its fair share of performance flaws, it's still better than the entry-level efforts of many rival brands.

That said, while I appreciate that hard currency isn't exactly very easy to come by these days, I really would urge you to try and save up for Sony's step-up V5500 model. For this delivers a much larger step-up in performance and features than you've any right to expect for its extra £100 or so asking price.

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Ahlan said on 21st May 2009

My friend was looking for a new TV, so i went with him, we looked at only those new entry-level TV's, like Sony KDL-37S5500, Samsung 32B460 and the LG 37LH2000

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ffrankmccaffery said on 22nd May 2009

i saw this tv recently at my local sony store and i agree with the above poster concerning the outward appearance of it. Its very elegantly styled, closely resembling a picture fra... more

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