Sony KDL-47W805 review

Usability

There's good news and bad news to report here. Kicking off the good news, Sony's new main TV menu design is a big improvement over the tedious, inscrutable double axis system found on last year's Sony models. It makes good use of high-res graphics, and is much better organised.

Also a great idea is the Fast Zapp feature that enables you to quickly scour both the digital TV EPG and some of the supported streaming services without having to interrupt your current viewing.

The television's support for NFC linkage to NFC-compatible secondary devices is well implemented too, and the simplicity with which you can mirror the screen of portable devices on the TV screen is a great touch.

The control/content sharing app Sony provides for iOS and Android devices is one of the best looking such apps we've seen too, even if its functionality isn't quite as extensive as we'd like.

The Sony 47W805's interface does falter a bit when it comes to handling SEN content, though. It presents all the content as a simple list of icons, with no means of organising them by genre or type, or organising them into an order that suits your own personal needs. This means you could potentially have to scroll down row after row of app icons before you get to a specific one you want to access.

Sound quality

As with its pictures, the Sony 47W805's sound is a bigger step down from Sony's W9 series than we'd hoped it would be. The excellent long-duct speaker design of the W9 TVs has gone, and taken with it the impressively potent bass levels and open mid-range sound we liked so much.

The result is that while the Sony 47W805 sounds absolutely fine with relatively undemanding news or daytime TV fodder, it can start to sound a bit thin and harsh when the audio going gets tough.

It's not entirely fair to compare the Sony 47W805's audio with that of the equivalent W905 model, though, given the fairly large price gap between the two.

And actually, compared with many similarly priced rivals the Sony 47W805 sounds decent enough. It's not outstanding, but certainly more than acceptable.

Value

This is a hard one to call. The Sony 47W805 scores well on features for its money, with its 3D, smart TV and expansive online video support. It also looks like a premium model aesthetically.

Its performance sparkles with bright, colourful content too. But if you're prone to dimming the lights and closing the curtains from time to time for a spot of serious film viewing, you might well feel as if you wanted to be getting a bit more dark-scene consistency for your £1,300 (around US$2,030 / AU$2,135).