That’s a shame. I’ve had very good experiences with Sony upper mid range/lower high end TVs. Their image processing is second to none IMO, they seem to use more powerful CPUs than a lot of other android TV makers, and their use of AndroidTV means I can trivially customise my TV in a way that I can’t with lots of other brands (strip out ads, basically).
Shit, my oldest daughter moved into a flat with friends when she started uni not long ago, and took my old 2007 42" 1080p Bravia that I bought all those years ago. She hadn’t even been born yet, and it still looks shockingly good.
This is sad news.
The worst thing about ‘smart TVs’ is that they advertise so many ‘cool’ features but most of them have less performant processors and less ram than my 2019 budget galaxy a series phone, and that’s very telling, you can’t even use their dog shit built in web browsers since everything becomes outdated after like a week, and the performance is so bad that the expensive Hisense tv my dad bought back in 2020 can’t even load Google properly.
So Sony is now the new RCA. This is a new low for the company. I can’t believe that they are gone just like that.
Well, their TV brand is gone. Their headphones are still the top tier of consumer stuff and price-performance king for studio headphones
Idk if I used a really bad set of wh1000xm4s but they sucked. Too bassy and muddy. Like more than they should have. I hope their studio headphones are much better in that regard.
Maybe it’s just because I’m an audio engineer so I was able to EQ them to my taste, but I love my WH-1000XM4 cans. But yeah, their studio cans are both top tier and dirt cheap. MDR-7506, they’re like $80 and generally sound like a million bucks because they’re used in basically every single recording studio as reference headphones.
Seems like they’re closer to $110 these days
Makes sense, inflation and tariffs
That’s how I eqed the set I borrowed. I had no eq in Deezer and it was a downloaded flac. It still wasn’t great but better than stock.
I have mine set like this. Clear bass can be adjusted further down, just depends on personal taste. 400Hz is the boomy, buttery part of the range so if there’s too much boxy-ness you can turn that down judiciously. Keep in mind most musical pitch lives there too, though.
My preferences are towards a relatively flat sound so my setting reflects that
I’ll try it again. They’re not mine so I didn’t get too much time with them. But the mids are indeed lacking.
https://www.soundguys.com/monoprice-bt-600anc-review-52955/ Monoprice BT-600ANC review
That’s my current pair if you want to see a frequency response chart.
Being the best doesn’t mean they’re selling well… I assume you’re meaning 7506s? So yeah they’re awesome yet dirt cheap, I highly doubt they will keep Sony floating in the long term.
The over the ear noise cancelling one’s are amazing as well
I remember when Sony was THE brand, not? Meh
Make a dumb tv and I’ll be a buyer
Yeah, a dream: dumb TV with awesome modern panel and range of connectivity ports like HDMI, DP, DP over USB-C, composite, scart
I just want one DP input and I’ll decide how to split my inputs with an outside box. The TV should only decide how to show the picture. I don’t need your YouTube app
Look for “commercial display panels.” They’re 3-4 times the price of a smart TV, but they are just basic TVs. If you find a bank, hospital, clinic, or any other privacy focused business that’s going out of business you can generally pick those used displays up pretty cheap.
However, the image quality of those displays is usually worse compared to home displays. This is from a technical who works with these products.
I went from Sony, Samsung, and LG to now buying TCL. At under $1000 for a 65", they’re the best option.
Anything under $1500 I’d bet on TCL. Keep in mind TCL manufacturers a great chunk of the worlds LCDs that aren’t just for TCL. Pretty sure they bought LGs LCD plants. Maybe Samsung too.
Their TVs have a lot of dimming zones. Sony I don’t think makes LCDs or OLED panels themselves. At least one line of their TVs use TCL panels already. They buy from others
Here’s a review for the model that came out last year. At this point where’s it’s regularly on “sale” for $1000. TVs are MSRP for like half a year and then the discounts always seem to me to be happening
https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/tcl/qm8k
1,680 dimming zones in the 65" model and from what I’ve read, the global models are usually one year behind China. So in 2025 China had TCL TVs with even more dimming zones. 8 years ago sub $1000 65" with array LED backlight zones were like 100-200 zones. OLED were incredibly better and would kill off LCDs when prices came down. The density of dimming zones I think progressed faster than people expected
So TCL has solid image processing while Sony has great image processing but not so much better for me to think it’s worth it. Same with the $1000-2000 mini-led backlit LCDs vs OLED. Yes OLED looks better. Don’t feel like it’s large enough for me to go much higher than a $1000 TV. That’s a reality for home theater brands today. TVs, speakers, receivers/amplifiers, headphones, mics, etc - there’s good stuff at low prices.
Everyone’s competing on value now. There used to always be rumors about a Apple TV (actual TV) and Apple EVs. Never hear about rumors for those anymore. Don’t think the quality difference possibility and profit margins exist to make those appealing anymore for Apple. Sony like Apple is increasingly a services/media company.
Samsung - Tizen sucks. I don’t recall how LG and WebOS looks, but to me Tizen is leagues above Android and Roku in making your TV into a loud billboard. At least Android you can install a different launcher.
Sony’s modern OLEDs are sick. There are a few between my family, and they have the best processing I’ve seen, they decode massive bluray rips no problem, and native options for a clean ad-free UI.
Why TF aren’t people buying them?
Probably because they’re quite expensive
TV
2026
Honestly, don’t remember the last time I watched TV
Do you think the only thing TVs are used for is watching traditional terrestrial TV? Lol
I only watch extraterrestrial TV.
It’s the main purpose of them, yes. Define TV to me. I don’t see the point of paying for decoders, smart TV and bunch of other things I’ll never use, much smarter decision is to buy a monitor which focuses on image quality and performance, far more suitable for consoles, Roku, etc.
Commenter above low-key described that OLED as a monitor more than a TV
is your cell phone battery mostly consumed supporting phone calls
I used to have a TCL soundbar.
In addition to being extremely mediocre, it promised to integrate with my WiFi so that music could be airplayed through it. After adding it to my WiFi, it still broadcast the open ‘setup’ WiFi network.
If you joined the setup network, you could SSH into the soundbar as root without a password and dump the dhcp.conf file, which would give anyone access to my home WiFi network. Other TCL models also allowed for root via SSH, but used 12345678 as the password. A skilled hacker could just bot these via wardriving and turn them into network listeners.
It may have still broadcast the setup network because I blocked the device from accessing the internet. I only ever went poking around on it because I noticed that the setup network kept getting set to the same channels as my home network and it was causing interference. I eventually just factory reset the device so it had no information on it at all.
After the umpteenth time of not being found by my TV, a hard reset killed it. Just got stuck booting and never recovered.Anyway - crap brand. Sad day for Sony TV fans.
The verge is a garbage paywall site now
Its funny because all these grand Japanese OEMs like Sony and Panasonic got undercut by Korean rivals like LG and Samsung in the 2000s, which forced Sony to move further into exclusively high priced devices and for many other OEMs to leave the US or global market.
Now TCL and HiSense are undercutting the grand Korean OEMs, which is slowly forcing them out of the low-middle end market.
I upgraded from a 20+ year old Phillips LCD to TCL’s QM8K, and the display technology for being a QLED panel is astounding. It looks 95% like a high quality OLED for a fraction of the cost.
Only downside is Google TV (Junk Android that you have to debloat a bit) and for some reason the TV can’t passthrough Dolby Atmos from app players like Kodi, even though it can do DTS-X just fine. I’m pretty sure the second issue is just a software bug, but TCL has been taking ages to respond. Pass through from an external source works perfectly fine though.
If you’re in the market, I highly recommend seeing it in person at a hardware/electronics store. The side by side comparison is insane.
Absolutly nothing Sony, TCL or any of that garbage will ever be in my home. Or any of the advertising supported TV’s. Nope.
What brand do you use of you don’t mind sharing?
Not OP but I bought a 45" LG UltraGear gaming “monitor” a while back that’s basically just a TV, no smart anything etc. Right now the only ones I see after a quick search are curved though, mine is flat.
Right? That leaves no TVs. I can’t really think of any TVs that are ad-free, or are guaranteed to be ad free in future.
Personally I’ve been getting android TV boxes and installing a custom (and free) launcher on it, and using SmartTube for ad-free YouTube.
Not your traditional TVs but look and see if you can get some TVs aimed at venues / advertising. I can see an LG IPS display, 98 inch for sub 10k AUD including shipping (98UM5J-B).
Phillips, LG, Samsung and others offer commercial panels without the rubbish that consumer panels are infected with these days.
Crazy. I have a Sony XBR 46” lcd that’s almost 20 years old. It still looks great for what it is (1080p and all). It was a top of the line tv back in the day that’s held its own for a very long time. It’s sad to see great companies/products fail.
I had a TCL phone for a bit about 10 years ago and it was the hottest piece of garbage I had ever touched in my life
They’ve really worked to turn that around with their TVs. They’re entry level still sure, but for the price it’s hard to beat and their quality control on them has taken a big step up.
Their tvs are cheap because of all the ad and Spyware.
You mean the stuff every TV has these days? I also never hook mine to the internet so not really a problem. I haven’t seen a single ad in the year I’ve had mine
You can still get dumb tvs.
Edit: Yall. They are not hard to find. Please do a search of them. They can even be delivered right to your doorstep.
Yes they are hard to find. They are few and far between and cost over twice the price.
It’s like when IBM left its PC manufacturing to Lenovo. And, probably a ton of other examples I’ve never paid any attention to.
It’s starting to feel like only old people look at a screen bigger than six inches. That, combined with displays becoming a commodity item, leads to the manufacturing being abandoned to commodity manufacturers. If Sony could bring anything of value that would justify the cost of holding on to this, they would. Sony’s name hasn’t been synonymous with quality for decades now, that’s partly their own doing through poor choices, but also the quality of cheap displays is perfectly adequate for most people.
Dafuq are you on about, Sony’s image processing and colour reproduction is one of if not the best in the entire display industry.
They were getting squeezed by Samsung and LG display for their OLED products so they just decided to engage in a joint venture with TCL that results in less costly manufacturing while leveraging the brand recognition and existing distribution channels. Basically TCL becomes an OEM. It’s not ideal but if this was to be avoided, we should have detached from the US based order in the 80s when it became obvious the US doesn’t like to compete and sniped the entire Japanese economy.
Makes sense, bc idk anybody with a Sony TV anymore. Even loyalist fans friends of mine from the CRT days switched.
Ive got a Bravia. They’re good like upper midrange TVs, like the top end before you really start spending crazy cash
Every friend or acquaintance that has asked me “What TV should I get if I want a really nice LCD TV?” was always told Sony, so I know lots of people with them. I guess I have no good answer for these people now, every brand other than Sony had become enshittified.
I honestly don’t mind TCL, they’ve really come a long way, especially for the price! I have the 2022 TCL 85R655 that was rated extremely well, and supported all the Series X features (ALLM, VRR, 4K/120, HDR10 +DV gaming, etc for $1800) and that only replaced my 2016 LG 65UH8500 because, well, way better specs (minus no 3D anymore lol).
I had an issue with the PCB 12 months into warranty (literal days left) and I got a full refund because they had already replaced that model with the next Gen and didn’t have the proper parts available or something to fix.
The picture quality, when calibrated, is pretty damn good despite not being OLED.
The higher end TCL have very good specs, but my issue is only with the software. At this point I’ve been leaning towards “dumb” TVs. My most recent TV is not a smart TV and can’t be retroactively ruined with ads or additional spyware. I just wish there were high end models available for when my larger living TV bites the dust.
Ah, see, ok, that makes sense. I forget most everyone else in the real world isn’t obsessed with ad-blocking like me. So, this one is Roku but I have others that are Fire TV and Android (all TCL). None are connected online, and honestly it’s creepy as FUCK that the fire TV has never been connected to the Internet, yet still somehow has its own ads for shows update every so often. IDK if they’re cross-communication like a mesh network of TVs so if one is offline it can still get some sort of content refresh, or what, but I don’t like that it knows to update/refresh with no network.
Amazon does have a patent specifically for that sort of mesh-like communication, so it is possible. The TCLs I have/had were Roku based, but kept getting worse and worse until I gave one away and reset and disconnected the other. I also refuse to see ads, but that wasn’t really an issue because I didn’t use any services that showed ads. Then the TVs themselves started to and I was done. I think many of the manufacturers are getting wise to the “never connecting” trend and making it more and more obnoxious. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if most TVs started becoming unbearably naggy until you connect it to an internet connection. A friend of mine also recently got another TCL TV, this one being Amazon Fire based. Apparently, it was so bad he just gave it away within the first couple of months (it was a really cheap TV).
Probably the F35 series. I grabbed a 55" for outside for $219 lol. It’s just for hanging out in the hot tub or grilling out.
Edit: wonder if that Amazon shit can be blocked
His was a 42" he got for around $100, ludicrously cheap, but after using it he saw why.
I own a sony TV. The hdtvtest guy is my goto for staying updated on TV tech and sony regularly comes out as his best of the year. Yes, they’re pricey but you’re getting something for that premium.
This is a sad day in my books now that TCL will be able to enshittify the Sony brand.
When 4k/120 TVs came out, their Bravia was the best midrange you could get. Price doubled to get anything better.
Sony TVs are absolute garbage devices designed by actual morons, with the worst customer support in the industry.
Back when the PS5 came out, they advertised their Bravia TVs specifically for its support for the PS5 and its feature set. I spent something like $1,200 for a Bravia x900H which at the time was very highly reviewed. When the PS5 released shortly after, we had to wait months for Sony to actually release drivers to support the PS5 features promised like VRR and 4k/120hz, and when they finally did the monkeys paw finger curled. If you turn VRR on, it disables local dimming. This is important because those panels look like dogshit without local dimming. So right off the bat you have to choose between a smooth picture, and a good looking picture.
As for 4k/120, they cheaped out on the MediaTek processor so it can’t actually do native 4k/120. Turning it on halves the horizontal resolution to 1080, and then it crudely upscales it back up causing a now infamous blurry mess to the picture.
Those are just the problems that affect everyone due to design flaws and false advertising. But on a more luck-of-the-draw level, when I bought mine brand new, it had significant backlight bleed. I was upgrading from a $150 Costco LCD and I swear to you the picture on the Sony was actually worse. 25% of the screen was permanently tinted blue the bleed was so bad. No problem I thought, I just bought the thing brand new, these things happen with LED panels from time to time, I’ll call Sony and RMA the thing. But after a week of arguing with Sony’s outsourced support, they refused to honor the warranty. According to them backlight bleed is expected and no matter how bad it is, they don’t cover it under warranty. So whether or not your Sony TV is even functional as a TV is simply luck of the draw.
