Sony BRAVIA KDL40EX523 40-Inch 1080p LED HDTV with Integrated WiFi, Black

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.

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 other Sony devices such as your Sony stereo, etc., so of course if you have a full Sony line you’re good but if not you’ll need another remote. The TV has a feature called “control for HDMI” (which is branded as “Bravia Sync”) which will send a control signal to a device through the HDMI. For the most part this only will function with Sony devices but I don’t think it’s necessarily closed to other devices, they just don’t support it. So for example if you have a Blu-Ray hooked up via HDMI it could pause/start/play/etc your DVD through your TV’s controls. It would be nice if my Comcast cable box was controllable by this, but I have a feeling I’ll be canceling Comcast before they ever support this feature.

The TV has a built in guide that populates over the air station information if you have a digital antenna hooked up. It works. I didn’t have to configure it for my location, it just worked. It identified the stations, and filled in the guide data. It’s nice to have a really functional guide for antenna stations as well as my cable box.

One of the coolest features of this TV is its energy saving mode… The TV has a built in “Presence Sensor” that detects when you’re not in the room for awhile and will then turn off the screen, and when you come back it turns the screen back on. It works well, and is on by default. Will this be the next horizon in American laziness though, never turning off the TV and just relying on this feature? Who knows.

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.

I love this model. I have it in my bedroom and the picture is large, sharp, and easy to see regardless of ambient light conditions from bright sunlight to total darkness. I especially love the internet ready feature since I am a great fan of Netflix. No extra box or plugs needed–just WiFi. I use the handy bright red Netflix button on the TV’s remote which takes me there in one step. The Netflix search function on the screen is not easy to maneuver through categories, however, so I keep it simple by staying in my “instant queue” to find something to watch. I bought the TV from Amazon because it had the best price and I knew the model, but I have to admit I was worried about buying and shipping such an expensive item. All was good–the TV arrived quickly with perfect packaging intact. No worries.

While I am fairly technologically savvy, I am not a technophile. I have a strong bias toward Sony, so take that into consideration. This TV was easily set up, including connecting it to our wireless internet network, and setting up our Netflix account on it. Now we can directly watch movies from our “Instant Queue” on Netflix on the TV, with no wires. The picture is great, the controls intuitive. We are just starting to utilize the other functions, but for a basic viewer who wants to watch movies this is a good solution. I am very happy with the TV and would recommend it.

The picture is pretty good. I am waiting for a HD receiver to arrive to give a final verdict. I’ll update at some point. Tomorrow the wall mount arrives. I like that it is less than 1.5 inches thick. Should look nice on the wall. The BX420 and others from last years Sony line really disappoint there. EX523 is also only 17 pounds on the wall, which makes for a minimal load on the wall mount.

I know it is only 60Hz. That doesn’t matter to me. I did not plan on 3D or HD sports of any importance.

My biggest positives are the volume control, off-axis viewing and color quality.

It is has very fine volume increments at the low end. Great for night time TV in bed. The Off-axis viewing has minimal drop-off. Viewing alternatives in Best Buy led me to give Sony a shot. In there, they seemed to have this down, with earlier models, so I figured this one would work out well.

My kids really like it over the 15 inch standard def LCD it replaced. Now they can read the on-screen Guide.

I didn’t calibrate it. But in that line of thought, I don’t like that it only has three picture modes. Normal, Vivid, and custom. I typically use “Movie” mode on both of my Samsung’s, and it serves me well. I am stuck in Normal for now. Another minor annoyance, I didn’t find any good instructions for how to put the stand together. I figured it out, but some better directions would have been nice.

No idea if the Stereo is working. I cannot tell. But I do like the pair of 10 Watt speakers. They deliver. The 5 watts of my Samsung 22 inch TV is a joke.

No noisy PSU issues, like another reviewer indicated. I really hope he took it back.

It also looks really nice.

I like the internet connectivity. Integrated Wifi made it easy to update firmware. I don’t really need the features, they just came along for the ride. I may try and use the DLNA support with my media server, at some point. It isn’t a priority right now. I chose this TV for the expected picture quality based on looking around Best buy at competitors.

(Updated 17Nov2011 below is all new)

I got the HD cable box about 5 months ago. I am very happy with this TV. The image quality is still very satisfying!

Biggest positive observation for this 6 month update was the sound. Searching through the features, I stumbled upon an audio setting for being wall-mounted. It does something to improve the reflected audio, and it really does help. I can’t explain it, but it does. Stereo is also more noticeable, vice what I said above.

Biggest disappointment for this 6 month update, the sleep feature is really clunky to get to. Every other TV I have owned, “Sleep timer” was a button on the remote. Not on this one. It is like 7 or 8 software clicks to get to it, and 5 more to set it to the 120min that I like. At 32 inches, it is a good bedroom TV candidate, but this feature is really annoying.

I tried the internet features a couple months ago. I don’t have any accounts with the services offered to provide any good feedback. I tried the free movie service mentioned by another reviewer, it is really that slow to navigate, and it got really annoying, really fast. Resume feature stunk. Video playback was acceptable, when I found one I liked.

Sony provided 4 firmware updates to the TV since it was originally released (when I bought it). No idea if it improved any of the web features, but release notes for all of them mentioned internet features as the main improvement. One of them provided Skype support, if you have the Sony Camera that matches the TV frame. I guess it looks cool since it matches the bezel of the TV, and it is a neat idea for some. I don’t think it will ever be needed in my bedroom, that isn’t my thing. It would probably be great if I put this in my kitchen, as I like to Skype to my family during breakfast when I’m on travel for work. But I do it via a desktop PC for now. If I ever move it to the kitchen, I may reconsider.

The picture is still amazing. I still don’t see the “Significant” light drop-off others claim is there when viewed off axis. I also noticed many others stating saying the USB wi-fi dongle works. What are you talking about!?! The TV’s WiFi antenna is built in 802.11N! I think they are reviewing the wrong Television.

I still haven’t tried the DLNA support. It just isn’t a priority. Maybe one day. I like knowing it is there, and I have quite a collection to stream to it. I have yet to set up my PC as a DLNA server.

Verizon FiOS finally updated their on screen display, it looks amazing on this TV. Widescreen, and easier to read than its SD predecessor, but I credit the TV with providing the 1080p, to make it look crisp!

PSU buzz, well Yes, if I get my ear within 2 inches of the TV, when it is powered down, it does have a slightly audible buzz. I have really good hearing (tested every year for work), and it takes that sort of proximity to notice it. I still think the other reviewer got a bad unit. I happened to notice it on a day when no one else was in the house, otherwise it is always too noisy to hear it during the day, and inaudible from 10 feet away while I’m sleeping.

I’m still very satisfied with my purchase. I do like Sony products, as I have a good track record with them over the last 15 years. Only two minor problems with approximately 25 products of all types. My first Sony TV is still going strong. My second Sony AV receiver burnt out the center channel after 9 years (which was long enough for me). For my third Sony AV receiver I was happy to purchase a top of the line model to replace it. The original one is still working… My Second Sony TV had a bad speaker, that I never noticed until 6 years later, because it was hooked up to my AV receiver the entire time. I’m guessing it was broken when I got it, and would have been under warranty, if I ever noticed it. I have had several Toshiba televisions, and Samsung TVs, I still prefer Sony, but I’m willing to buy any major brand that I like the User interface, and image quality.

This TV has been outstanding. The picture is clear and crisp. Yes, I too was worried about the 60hz engine, however, they’ve figured something out as we have no blur in sports or fast action scenes. The TV does as advertised and boots quickly. The Netflix viewing only the Queue was annoying at first since my PS3 allows me to search. I basically added more to my queue on my laptop which is much faster anyway. Can’t see any problems with this unit and it’s the third 40+” TV I’ve owned. Also, the base is really solid and swivels smoothly.

I was not impressed by the shipping! They called me to reschedule two times. The TV was supposed to be here on a Friday. They called to reschedule for Monday. Monday, they called to reschedule for Tuesday. What was annoying was that the TV was in town on Monday, but they just didn’t deliver it. Not a knock on the TV though and it did deliver in perfect condition.

The picture and sound are pretty good. No complaints there.

Viewing angle is pretty narrow; you don’t have to move far to either side before the picture gets washed out. But I usually watch straight on, so not a big deal.

The integrated WiFi is a nice feature, mainly for watching NetFlix without having to hook up a computer or PS3.

But there are a couple of really disappointing things I can’t overlook.

The worst thing is that the T.V. emits is a high pitched whine or buzzing sound constantly. And when I say “constantly,” I mean EVEN WHEN YOU TURN IT OFF! Actually, I think the reason the noise doesn’t stop is because you can’t really turn the T.V. “off;” when you hit the power button, it just goes into “standby.” So if this is a bedroom T.V. and you want to turn it off and go to sleep, that means you have to get up and go over and pull the plug unless you are hard of hearing or can sleep through the noise it makes all night. If, like me, you have it mounted to the wall and plugged into an outlet hidden behind the T.V. itself, you’re screwed.

Another annoying thing is that the PC video input is on the side of the T.V., but the PC audio input is on the back (so you cannot easily connect your PC with one of those cables that has a 15-pin video and a stereo mini plug in the same cable). To mock you further, the designers did actually put a mini-jack right next to the PC input, but THAT mini-jack is not an input, it’s an output (for headphones).

I wanted to give this T.V. a higher rating, because the picture and sound quality aren’t bad, but I expect better design decisions from Sony, and a T.V. that goes silent when I turn it off.