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Sony KDL-32BX330 (pictures)

The Sony KDL-32BX330 is a budget television that offers decent visuals but is trumped by rivals.

Ty Pendlebury
Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.
Ty Pendlebury
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1 of 8 Sarah Tew/CNET

Overview

Designwise, the Sony KDL-32BX330 is not an attention grabber, but it won't look out of place in any living space. It doesn't have any features to speak of, but if you're looking to use this as an accompaniment to a gaming console, you'll get all the connected features you want right there.

Picture quality was OK for the money, with only the Samsung EH4000 giving a standout performance at this price. Shadow detail and off-axis viewing are the set's best qualities with color and black levels a little bit "off." I wouldn't feel disappointed if I dropped money on this TV, not like I would if I had chosen the LG 32CS460, but the Samsung is definitely the better TV.

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2 of 8 Sarah Tew/CNET

Profile

The Sony offers a slimmish profile, but...just pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! For "curtain," read "bottom half of of the TV."
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3 of 8 Sarah Tew/CNET

Connectivity

The TV offers two HDMI ports, a component input, and a PC input, making it a good contender for a TV/monitor solution.
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Remote

The remote control is quite bare-bones.
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Bezel and stand

Piano black is the key to this story.
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Top bezel

Yep, that's the top.
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Menu system

No XMB here, just white text and black backgrounds.
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8 of 8 Sarah Tew/CNET

Picture quality

For a long time, the TCL L40FHDF12TA was the most popular TV on Amazon, and while it wasn't much in the picture department it was cheap. You want to know what? The Sony is both cheaper and it performs better.

The Sony may not have had the blackest blacks, but shadow detail was reasonable, and certainly head and shoulders above that of the LG 32CS460. Color vibrancy is good, but the colors themselves aren't entirely accurate.

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