Sony X75K TV Review

The Sony X75K has a very basic, dated design. The bezels are thick and stand out compared to more premium TVs. It's mostly made of plastic and looks cheap overall.

This TV isn't part of our 100 TV accelerated longevity test.

The v-shaped feet are thin and support the TV well, allowing for just a bit of wobble forwards and backward. They're close to each end of the TV, so you'll need a wide table if you're not planning on wall-mounting the TV. Combined with the thick bezels, the feet give you about three inches between the table and the first pixels, so pretty much any soundbar will fit in front of it without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 45.4" x 13.2".

The back is very plain, with a thicker section at the bottom that houses the TV's electronics and inputs, and a thinner top half. Most of the inputs face to the side and are easily accessible.

There are clips on the feet that provide very basic cable management.

The Sony KD65X75K has good build quality. It's mainly made of plastic, but there are a few metal panels on the back. There's a bit of flex to the larger panels, but it's not an issue. The side and top bezels have quite a bit more flex to them, and don't feel completely attached to the TV.

This TV has sub-par contrast, so dark areas of the screen look gray and a bit washed out, especially if you're in a completely dark room. Sadly, there's no local dimming feature to improve black levels.

Since this TV lacks a local dimming feature, there's no blooming around bright objects in otherwise dark scenes. Since the entire backlight is always on at the same intensity and it has a low contrast ratio, dark scenes still look washed out.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature; the entire backlight is always on at the same intensity, so there's no distracting flicker or brightness changes as bright highlights move across the screen.

Switching to 'Game' mode doesn't result in any noticeable difference in dark scene performance.

Unfortunately, the Sony X75K has mediocre peak brightness in HDR. There's very little variation in brightness with different scenes, and bright flashes and highlight details don't stand out at all due to the lack of local dimming.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point, with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Custom
• Backlight: Max
• Contrast: 90
• Color Temperature: Expert 1

There's no difference at all in brightness when switching to 'Game' mode.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point, with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Game
• Backlight: Max
• Contrast: 90
• Color Temperature: Expert 1

The Sony 65X75K has excellent PQ EOTF tracking, ensuring that most content is displayed at the brightness intended by the content creator. Like most LCD displays with no local dimming, near-blacks are raised a bit. Midtones are displayed well, and there's a gentle curve close to the TV's peak brightness, so fine details in bright scenes are preserved. There's no difference in EOTF tracking with different mastering levels, ensuring a consistent experience regardless of how the content was created.

This TV gets decently bright in SDR. It's bright enough to overcome a bit of glare in a moderately-lit room and there's no noticeable variation in brightness with different scenes.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Custom
• Backlight: Max
• Contrast: 90
• Color Temperature: Expert 1

This TV has an okay color gamut. It can't display a wide color gamut for HDR content, so overall there's not much difference in color saturation between SDR and HDR. The tone mapping is really bad with content mastered at high brightness levels (75% stimulus), but it looks a lot better with content mastered at more moderate levels (50% stimulus).

Unfortunately, this TV has just passable color volume. Colors are bright and stand out as well as pure whites, but it's limited by its narrow color gamut. It can't display dark, saturated colors either due to its low contrast ratio.

Even out of the box with just a few adjustments, this TV has amazing accuracy in SDR. Saturated reds are a bit off, and bright scenes are a bit too bright, but other than that, there are no noticeable issues. The color temperature is a bit cool, but it's not bad.

The calibration system on this TV is a bit limited, and it wasn't possible to fully correct everything as it lacks a color calibration system and the white balance calibration system is a bit sensitive. It still looks fantastic, though, thanks to its amazing accuracy before calibration.

You can see our full calibration settings here.

The Sony X75K has good gray uniformity. There's relatively little dirty screen effect, which is great for watching sports. The sides of the screen are significantly darker than the center, though, and this is more noticeable with regular content. The uniformity in near-black scenes is a lot better.

Unfortunately, this TV has mediocre black uniformity. The entire screen looks washed out and blue due to the low contrast ratio, and there's no local dimming feature to improve it.

The Sony X75K has a great viewing angle. It's a good choice for a wide seating arrangement or if you like to walk around with the TV on, as the image remains consistent when viewed from the sides. Colors hardly shift, but the image fades a bit at a wide angle.

The Sony X75K has decent reflection handling. The light semi-gloss coating reduces the intensity of direct reflections, without adding much of a haze to the screen.

Gradients in HDR look decent. The biggest issues are with dark shades of gray, green, or blue. There's noticeable banding in bright greens, too.

Unfortunately, there's no smooth gradation feature on this TV, so low-quality content isn't smoothed out very well. Posterization and macro blocking is very noticeable.

This TV has an RGB subpixel layout, which is better for PC use than BGR panels because it improves the text clarity, which you can read about here.

The Sony X75K has a decent response time for a TV. There's very little overshoot in most transitions, but the total response time is a bit slow, so there's some noticeable blur behind fast-moving objects.

The Sony KD65X75K is completely flicker-free at all backlight levels, which is great as flicker can cause headaches and eye strain.

This TV has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion, to improve the appearance of motion. It can only flicker at 120Hz, though, which causes image duplications with 60 fps content.

This TV has an optional motion interpolation feature to improve the appearance of motion in low frame rate content. It looks good in scenes with slow movement, but it struggles to smooth out faster camera movements and action scenes.

Due to the relatively slow response time there's very little stutter. It's still a bit noticeable with slow panning shots, but it's good overall.

Unfortunately, this TV can't remove judder from any source, including native 24p sources like a Blu-ray player or a streaming device with a 'Match Frame Rate' feature.

Unfortunately, this TV is limited to a fixed 60Hz refresh rate; it doesn't support any variable refresh rate features like FreeSync.

This TV has fantastic low input lag for a responsive gaming experience, but only in the 'Game' Picture Mode. Unfortunately, the only picture mode that also supports chroma 4:4:4 for clear text from a PC also has incredibly high input lag, so mouse movements feel sluggish.

The Sony X75K has decent support for different resolutions. Chroma 4:4:4 is displayed properly with 1080p and 4k signals, but only in the 'Graphics' Picture Mode. Unfortunately, outside of graphics mode the TV can't display certain complicated patterns on the right side of the screen. It's not noticeable in most regular content outside of a desktop PC, and from a PC 'Graphics' mode works properly. You can see a few examples of the pixel inversion issue below.

• Custom
• Game
• Graphics

Unlike higher-end Sony TVs like the Sony X90K/X90CK, the Sony X75K isn't part of Sony's "Perfect for PS5" lineup, and it doesn't support Sony's Auto HDR Tone Mapping or Auto Genre Picture Mode features. This means that you'll have to manually switch to the 'Game' Picture Mode for low input lag when you start gaming.

This TV has very limited gaming features, so it can't take full advantage of the Xbox Series S|X. It doesn't support Auto Low Latency Mode, so you'll have to manually switch to the 'Game' Picture Mode for low input lag when you start gaming.

Unlike most modern TVs, this TV has a full-sized composite input, no adapter required, which is great if you have older devices, including some older game consoles.

Unfortunately, although this TV supports eARC, it doesn't support any DTS formats, which is disappointing as DTS is often used as the main audio track on Blu-ray movies.

The Sony X75K has a decent frequency response. The sound profile is well-balanced, so dialogue is clear and easy to understand. It gets very loud, but there's noticeable compression at max volume, especially in the treble range. Like most TVs there's very little thump or rumble to its bass.

This TV has just okay distortion performance. There's very little distortion in the audible range at normal listening levels, but it increases dramatically at max volume.

The Sony X75K comes with the same Google TV interface as other Sony TVs. Navigating through the menus feels very smooth.

Unfortunately, like the vast majority of TVs on the market there are ads throughout the interface. You can opt-out of personalized ads, but that doesn't change how many ads you'll see, it just changes the type of ads.

The Google Play Store has a ton of apps you can download, so you're sure to find your favorite streaming service.

Sony TVs, including the Sony X75K, still come with a full sized remote, which is rare. The remote is easy to use, and it has a built-in mic for voice control. Voice controls support launching apps, searching for content, and even asking basic questions like the weather or what time it is.

There's a single button underneath the TV that you can use to turn the power on/off, switch inputs, change channels, and adjust the volume.

• Remote
• 2x AAA batteries
• Power cable
• Manuals and user guides