Sony Bravia KDL-55EX620 LED LCD HDTV Review

Audio Quality

The Sony Bravia KDL-55EX620 is packed with settings that allow you to tweak audio performance. As with all the menu settings, though, the interface is extremely confusing. Depending on which Scene mode you put the TV in, the audio settings may vary, and some options may disappear. You'll just have to play around with it until you find the settings you like. The Sony Bravia KDL-55EX620 also offers a 7-channel equalizer and two separate surround sound modes (though only one of them sounds good).

Menu Interface

The menus on the 2011 Sony TVs are abysmal. If professional TV reviewers like us can't figure out how to find all the settings, you're average technology-baffled public doesn't stand a chance. There are so many layers of submenus, and they often produce trickle-down effects onto other submenus that you can't even predict. Read a longer rant here.

Suffice it to say, we don't like them, and Sony has a heavily tarnished reputation to recover in 2012.

Instruction Manual

Most of the 2011 Sony TVs, including the Sony Bravia KDL-55EX620, don't have a standard instruction manual – not in print and not in PDF form. Instead, they have a godawful browser-like manual built into the TV (fat lot of good that does you if the TV's not working properly, as you won't be able to see it). You can find an online version of it here.

Our problem with this sort of layout is that the information is much harder to search and scan. Why is there no keyword search box? Surely their top scientists have cracked that technology by now. If Sony insists on selling you a TV with such a flummoxing menu system, the least they can do is provide a simple road map rather than confounding the problem.