Sony BRAVIA KDL32EX523 32-Inch 1080p LED HDTV with Integrated WiFi, Black Reviews

This is a great TV, May 11, 2011

I spent months researching for a replacement TV in the master bedroom and finally settled on the Sony KDL32EX523. Set up was a snap – and I did it twice as I did not have a DVR in my bedroom – so I originally connected the TV directly to my Comcast cable (no box or DTA) and it was able to grab all my channels (I do not subscribe to premium services like HBO). A few days later, I added the DVR and was channel surfing in no time. (Well – actually had issues with Comcast to get their own DVR to receive their own signals, so a 1 star rating for Comcast – dang near switched to Direct TV during that process.) Adding the Sony to my wireless network was as simple as entering my network password into the TV (this model Sony has built in wireless – no need for external USB device), just like adding a computer – join the network it found, type in the password, and boom – connected. Initializing the TV to work with my Netflix account was just as simple – I logged into my Netflix account with my laptop – input the code from the TV – and boom – the TV blinked and was instantly added to Netflix. This Sony streams Netflix content better than my TIVO DVR in the other room which is right next to my wireless hub. Picture quality is great – no issues with viewing angle, no high pitched power supply sounds. I do not want to sound like a Sony commercial, but for my use, this is one great TV.

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Good and could have been great, March 19, 2011

By 

M. Cohen “Marco1” (NE) –

  

This TV is very good and could have been great if it were not for the crappy internet experience. The form factor itself is quite nice; very thin, light and sturdy, with a small bezel. It sets up very quickly and easily. The picture in HD is stunning: beautiful color, very sharp with very black blacks. However SD pictures are frequently fuzzy and a bit washed out which makes watching SD a drag. My 3 year old 32 inch Sony does SD much better than this one. The viewing angle is just ok. Looking straight on, the TV looks great. As you move to the side the pictures degrades quickly. At first I thought that the sound was below average. After tweaking the settings it now sounds quite good. If you are and audiophile you will however need an amp with separate speakers. I have not had a problem with the 60 hz refresh rate. I suppose it might be somewhat of a problem if I watched more sports. It is the internet interface which is the weakness of this TV. I have the 40EX523 with built in Wi-fi. No need for a separate dongle on this one. Loading times for most of the internet programs are quite slow – much slower than my beloved Roku box. Netflix interface is very poor. You can’t search and it’s even hard to see the titles of many of the movies on the screen because they are so small. The Sony Netflix picture is much worse than Netflix on the Roku box. Colors on the Sony Netflix are a bit washed out and the picture is not crisp. The Sony picture on both Hulu and Amazon seem almost as good as the Roku. Again the interface for both Hulu and Amazon is far worse than that of the Roku. Crackle is not even worth using. It takes forever to load, then has to keep re-loading despite fast internet download speeds. It’s almost impossible to get back to where you left off on a movie. It operates so poorly that I am amazed that Sony includes it in the first place. They should make it work well or get rid of it. I would recommend buying this TV without internet connectivity (40EX520) and don’t bother with the severely overpriced internet dongle. Do yourself a favor and buy a Roku box for $79 and use that for the streaming of TV shows and movies. It is far superior to anything that Sony has to offer on this TV. Sony engineers should study the Roku box and interface and use what they learn to improve this rather pathetic internet offering. Other than the internet, this really is a very good, satisfying TV.

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Loaded with features… with room for improvement, May 13, 2011

By 

Dane A. Kantner (Chicago, IL) –

  

Overall this is a very nice TV. It’s very thin.

One of the bigger draws for me was the built in Internet Apps. I had actually returned a Vizio where nothing was working at all (Pandora literally crashed the TV) and got this. This is much better. I’ve tested a few other Internet App tvs and the speed of this Sony one is probably the fastest I’ve seen as far as menu navigation goes. And the menu is also well laid out. For some people it might almost be too many features.

The Pandora app works well. There’s lots of room for improvement in how it is actually designed (there are color codes on the menu, and they only associate one with a feature–skip–why not have one associated with thumbs up, thumbs down, etc). No good visual effects. But it works for what it needs to–playing music.

The Qriocity video stuff doesn’t work at all. I’ve never seen anything played through it, or even a choice of items to play. I don’t know what the deal is, but my understanding is that Sony has been hacked recently and has completely shut the service down for now. It may as well not be there.

The Amazon streaming on demand works REALLY well and is high quality. If you’re an Amazon Prime member there is a fairly extensive selection of titles that become free when you authenticate with your Prime account. (The entire series of Inspector Gadget!)

Netflix streaming was very high quality, but would constantly stop to buffer. It doesn’t buffer enough of the content. It will “detect” network speed as you start anything up, but obviously this detection isn’t very conservative or it would downgrade my quality in favor of better playback. As it’s set up now, it’s unusable.

You can also download software onto your computer–PC, Mac, Linux, whatever–that will let you stream video, pictures, movies, etc off of the computer and right onto your TV. Google for DLNA software and there are any number of options, many free. Windows 7 has this built into Windows Media Player but there are plenty of other open source and paid apps that may offer more features than what Microsoft’s built-in software does. It’s a pretty cool feature though.

The TV is aesthetically pleasing. I would say Sony has other TVs in the Bravia line that I like more, but I like this one too. And it’s solid, well built.

The form factor is thin. However, it’s so thin that all of the ports come out back at a right angle, there is no bevel where they go in parallel to the back of the TV. Why is this an issue? If you mount the TV on a wall you may find that your cables themselves will prohibit you from using a wall mount that’s slim. I have a new LG LED TV and what they do to get around this issue is use a proprietary dongle for the cables, you hook up a tiny dongle into the port instead, then that hangs down and you hook the cables into said dongle. No issue with mounting it very close to the wall when you have this. With this Sony, you may have to use a tilted wall mount to give you the clearance you need, or a wall mount that leaves a few inches of room between TV and wall. Or I guess you could buy a more expensive 45 degree HDMI cable and then it would probably work with just about any wall mount.

The TV has Skype built in, but you need to buy the Skype camera/mic from Sony for another $130-150 for that to work. Out of curiosity I hooked up a Logitech USB webcam up to the TV to see if it recognized it and you could Skype with that, it didn’t work. Not shocking, but good to know.

I’m glad Sony has finally abandoned forcing their Memory Stick down our throats by integrating it into all of their products–no memory stick port on this TV. There are USB ports you can use a standard USB media reader to use.

The TV does split screen, and does it fairly well. I can watch my HD cable box and HD antenna simultaneously (or HD cable and computer that’s hooked up simultaneously, etc); I occasionally have gotten a “feature not supported” when trying to tune the channel and I can’t figure out what I did out of order. Split screen is a feature that some other manufacturers seem to be removing, the aforementioned LG LED I bought doesn’t have it…so don’t take it for granted!

It only has one component input… so at the moment I have no DVD player hooked up, it’s basically going to force me to upgrade to a Blu-Ray with HDMI. The industry trend seems to be reducing the number of component inputs to 1 and increasing the number of HDMI inputs.

The remote is decent. I used to really dislike Sony remotes, but this one is workable. The buttons are well laid out, well sized. It has buttons for Netflix and Qriocity, but no Pandora and no way to reprogram any buttons. It’s not a “universal” remote, you can’t program your stereo. I think the primary reason for this is the TV itself has built in “synch” capabilities to control…

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