Sony Bravia KDL-32L5000

Audio Quality (4.0)

The audio quality from the Sony Bravia KDL-32L5000's built-in speakers was unimpressive. The audio was clear, conversation was easy to understand for example. Unfortunately the audio was also very flat, when watching our standard movie scene big sounds just didn't have the impact we've seen on other HDTVs. Unlike most televisions the Sony Bravia KDL-32L5000 also lacks a simulated surround sound feature, although these generally don't do a great job so we're not to concerned about the lack. The bottom line is that if you want good audio quality you should go out and purchase even a cheap set of surround sound speakers.

Menu Interface (7.5)

The Sony Bravia KDL-32L5000's menu interface doesn't use the fancy crossbar interface that we see on higher-end Sony HDTVs, for which we can only be thankful. Instead you have a simple tabbed interface, with five top level menus arrayed on the left side, and options for each appearing to the right. The top-level menus are picture, sound, screen, channel, parental lock and setup, which is fairly self-explanatory. Sub menus and adjustments cause the larger menu to dissapear and give you just a small version at the lower right hand corner, which lets you see what the effect of the adjustment is on the picture, a nice touch.

The Sony Bravia KDL-32L5000's main menu is a simple tabbed interface, unlike other Sony televisions we've seen.

The picture menu offers all the basics, including picture, brightness, color temperature and sharpness. There's also and advanced settings menu with options for white balance that allow you to adjust gain and bias for red, green and blue, a nice feature for those who like to fine tune their picture. It lacks the gamma controls that we see on some higher-end HDTVs, however.

Advanced color controls are a nice feature on an entry-level HDTV.

Overall the menu system is simple and easy to navigate. Our biggest complaint is that there is no on-screen explanation for the items you have selected, so you'll need the manual to figure out what some of the esoteric options do. That's a small price to pay for the improved usability over the other Sony HDTV menus we've seen, however.

Manual (8.0)

The Sony Bravia KDL-32L5000's manual does a good job. It's a simple paper booklet with both a table of contents in the front and an index in the back. There are tabs along the edge of the pages to help you quickly flip through and find the section you're looking through, and the section headers are large and easy to find as well. We would have liked to see a bit larger font used, but it's not as small as some manuals we've seen. The diagrams and photos are easy to read, although they too could have been a bit larger.