Sony X900H TV Review

The Sony X900H is a mid-range LED TV that replaces both the Sony X850G from 2019 and the Sony X900F from 2018, and it sits just right below the Sony X950H in the current lineup. It's expected to compete with the Samsung Q70T QLED and the LG NANO90.

The X900H has an outstanding design. It's very minimal, with thin bezels on all sides and a simple metal stand. It looks almost identical to the X950H, but there are some visible screws on the back of the TV, which weren't present on the X950H. Other than that, this TV looks just as good from the front.

The stand consists of two metal feet that are inserted into the TV, no screws required. The feet are placed nearly as wide as the TV itself, so it requires a fairly large table. On the bright side, it provides enough room between the feet for a soundbar. The stand supports the TV well, but it does wobble a bit.

In Europe, there's a variant of this TV that has Sony's 2-way position stand, which allows for a narrower positioning of the feet to accommodate smaller tables.

Footprint of the 55" stand: 41.8" x 13.2"

The back of the TV is fairly plain and similar to the X950H. It has a brushed horizontal texture and the inputs are side-facing, making it easier to access when the TV is wall-mounted. There's not much in terms of cable management, except for two clips to attach the cables to the feet. The clips are included in the box.

The bezels are very thin and unobtrusive.

The X900H is of moderate thickness, but since all the inputs are side-facing, it shouldn't stick out much when wall-mounted.

Build quality is great. There's very little wobble and the TV feels well-built overall, although there's a bit of flex in the back panel.

The X900H has an excellent native contrast ratio. It's higher than that of the X950H, as it doesn't have Sony's 'X-Wide Angle' layer, which has the side effect of lowering the contrast ratio. The local dimming improves the contrast a bit, but not by much. That said, blacks still look deep, making it a great choice for dark room viewing.

The full-array local dimming is good. It looks very similar to the Sony X950H, but with less blooming. There's a bit of dimming, though, and some small details are crushed in darker areas. It's good at making highlights in the background pop without being overly distracting; however, it doesn't handle highlights in the foreground as well as the X950H.

Impressive SDR peak brightness. It's more than enough to fight glare, so you shouldn't have any issues using the TV in a well-lit room. However, the brightness varies a lot depending on the content. The TV dims the 2% and 10% windows, which is a bit unusual for Sony TVs, as the dimming wasn't present in previous models and other 2020 models such as the X950H.

We measured the SDR peak brightness after calibration, using the 'Custom' Picture Mode. Local Dimming and X-tended Dynamic Range were both set to 'High'.

Decent HDR peak brightness. There's a lot of variance in the brightness with different content. It gets bright enough to deliver a pretty good HDR experience, especially if you're in a dark to moderately-lit room; it just won't look as punchy in a bright room setting. Again, like the SDR peak brightness, the TV dims the 2% and 10% windows.

We measured the HDR peak brightness before calibration, using the 'Custom' Picture Mode, 'Expert 2' Color Temperature, and with Local Dimming and X-tended Dynamic Range set to 'High'.

Gray uniformity is great. The corners are slightly darker but shouldn't be distracting in normal content. There's almost no dirty screen effect at all and uniformity is excellent in dark scenes.

Like most VA panels, the X900H has sub-par viewing angles, and unfortunately, it doesn't have Sony's 'X-Wide Angle' layer to improve it. That said, the layer has the side effect of lowering the native contrast ratio, which is why the X950H has lower contrast. The image degrades fairly quickly when moving off-center, so it's not the best option for large rooms or wide seating arrangements.

Excellent black uniformity. Without local dimming, the entire screen looks a bit grayish and there's only some faint clouding around the top and bottom edges of the screen. With local dimming enabled, uniformity is much better throughout the screen, and surprisingly, there's very little blooming around the test cross.

The X900H has decent reflection handling. It struggles mostly with direct reflections, so it's best to avoid placing the TV opposite a bright source of light.

Before calibration, the color accuracy is excellent. There are minor inaccuracies with the colors blue and red, and white balance is only slightly off. The color temperature is very close to our 6500k target, just a tad on the warmer side. Gamma is close to the target, too: most scenes are too dark and bright scenes are over-brightened.

After calibration, color accuracy is outstanding. White balance, gamma, and color temperature are nearly perfect. However, there are still some inaccuracies with reds and blues. Unfortunately, unlike the X950H, this TV doesn't have color calibration to fix these inaccuracies.

You can see our recommended settings here.

The X900H upscales 480p content such as DVDs well and there are no upscaling artifacts.

Upscaling of 720p content like cable TV is good.

1080p content like Blu-rays looks great and there are no issues with the upscaling.

Native 4k content is displayed perfectly.

The X900H can't display an 8k signal.

The X900H has a BGR subpixel layout. This doesn't really affect picture quality, but it does affect text rendering when using the TV as a PC monitor, which you can read about here.

Good HDR color gamut. It has excellent coverage of the DCI P3 color gamut used in most HDR content, but coverage of the wider Rec 2020 is just okay. The EOTF follows the target almost perfectly until the roll-off, and the 'Game' mode EOTF is nearly identical, which you can see here. If you find HDR content still too dim, you can make it brighter by using the 'Vivid' Picture Mode, with Local Dimming, X-tended Dynamic Range, and Advanced Contrast Enhancer all set to 'High'. These settings will result in a much brighter image, as you can see in this EOTF.

Decent color volume. It displays dark colors well due to its high contrast ratio, but like most LED TVs, it has trouble displaying bright blues.

Outstanding gradient handling. There's only a little bit of banding in the darker shades of each color.

The X900H doesn't exhibit any signs of temporary image retention.

We don't expect VA panels to experience permanent image retention, as the VA panel in our long-term test appears immune.

The X900H's response time is great, resulting in very little motion blur in fast-moving scenes. There's a lot of overshoot in the 0-20% transition, though, causing some motion artifacts in dark scenes.

The X900H uses PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation) to dim the backlight, but because of its high flicker frequency, it's not really noticeable for most people.

This TV has an optional black frame insertion (BFI) feature to help reduce motion blur. Unfortunately, the backlight's minimum flicker frequency is 120Hz even when playing 60Hz content, which results in some duplication of the image.

To enable BFI, set Motionflow to 'Custom' and adjust the Clearness slider to your preference.

To activate Sony's X-Motion Clarity Plus feature, which helps to make the image look clearer and brighter in fast-moving scenes, set Motionflow to 'Custom' and adjust the Clearness slider to '1', and the Smoothness slider to '2'.

The X900H can interpolate lower frame rate content up to 120fps to make motion look smoother, also known as the 'Soap Opera Effect'. Motion looks good when enabled and we didn't notice any issues.

If you want to use motion interpolation on native 60fps content, Motionflow must be set to 'Custom', with the Smoothness slider set to'Max' and the Clearness slider set to 'Min'. For native 30fps content, Cinemotion must also be set to 'Auto'.

Due to the TV's fast response time, there's a bit of stutter when watching lower frame rate content. It's not that bad with 60fps content, but it's more noticeable with 24fps content since each frame is held on for longer.

The X900H can remove judder from all sources. For 24p content, it does so automatically, so there's no need to change any settings. To remove judder from 60p, 60i, and content from native apps, Cinemotion must be set to 'Auto', Motionflow set to 'Custom', and the Smoothness and Clearness sliders set to minimum.

The X900H is advertised to have support for variable refresh rate technology. However, it isn't available yet and will be implemented in a future firmware update. As for 4k @ 120Hz, it likely requires an HDMI 2.1 source, of which there are none at this time. Once it's available, we'll retest it and provide an update.

Excellent low input lag. It's low as long as you're in 'Game' mode. PC users can be in either 'Game' or 'Graphics' mode to get the lowest latency. Input lag remains low even when playing at 4k @ 60Hz + 10-bit HDR, but it increases significantly if motion interpolation is enabled, so it isn't recommended. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait until Sony releases the firmware update that enables VRR to test the input lag with VRR enabled, and the 'Auto Low Latency Mode' should also be enabled in the same update.