Sony Bravia XBR-52HX909

3D Effect & Experience

We thought the XBR-52HX909’s 3D effect was a mixed bag. In fact, in our test movie, there were back-to-back scenes where the viewer alternately tsk-ed the poor 3D effect and praised it. There seem to be two main problem areas here. The first is the absurd level of crosstalk present. On our tests, we found almost every combination of colors resulted in both being dramatically changed. Therefore, whenever there were high contrast edges—such as a dark building against a bright blue sky—the dark figure would be flanked with faint overlapping images of itself. The second problem is there seems to be a noticeable strobe effect from the glasses. We noticed it even when we weren’t looking at the TV. We saw this effect in other TVs too, but not this noticeably.

3D Black & White

Employing a TV’s 3D mode is usually bad news for picture quality. The area that suffers the most from 3D formatting is contrast. When it was just displaying 2D content, the Sony XBR-52HX909 had a black level of 0.07 candelas per square meter (cd/m²) and a peak brightness of 311.36 cd/m², which yielded an impressive contrast ratio of 4446:1. Once 3D was switched on, the black brightened two-fold to 0.14 cd/m², and the peak brightness dropped to 44.22 cd/m².

Compare this performance to Sony’s lower-end KDL-52LX900, or the flagship 3D models by Panasonic and Samsung.

3D Color

The XBR-52HX909’s color temperature was very noticeably cool. For the most part the color shift was uniform, but the odd spikes and dips make some shades look either more blue or more red than they should.

The Sony’s RGB graph didn’t suffer much from the transition to 3D either. The lines are slightly bumpy, but there weren’t any noticeable peaks or divots.

Lastly, you can see that the color gamut really didn’t shift much from 2D. The 3D green point is almost exactly where the 2D point was, the blue only got very slightly overemphasized. The red point changed the most, by shifting towards magenta a bit, but overall we weren’t too disappointed in the TV’s performance.

3D Crosstalk

Current 3D technology depends on the TV flickering between images intended for your left eye and images intended for your right. The 3D glasses flicker in sync with the TV, so your right eye doesn’t see the image intended for the left and vice versa. Crosstalk is when the TV can’t quite keep the left and right separate.

The Sony XBR-52HX909 had some serious issues with crosstalk, to the point where it really breaks down the 3D effect. The TV really had a problem separating out dark colors. Any time a dark object was in a bright area, it would be flanked on either side by half-shadows of itself. This effect caused specific areas of a 3D object to suddenly lose their 3D effect, which really exacerbated eyestrain.

3D Glasses

Sony’s 3D glasses are big and heavy. They’ll fit over prescription lenses, but if you’re not wearing them, they might strike you as strangely gargantuan. They also cling a bit tightly to the sides of your head. They’re definitely not what we would call ‘comfortable,’ but, to be fair, no 3D glasses are.

NOTE: Our 3D HDTV testing is under development, which is why these sections have no scores. You caught us mid-rubric. We can collect data and share it with you, but the results in this section have no bearing on the overall score of the television. For more about how we score, read our How We Test article.

Other Models in the XBR-xxHX909 Series
For more information on other models in this series, check our Series Comparison Page.
Sony Bravia XBR-46HX909 46 in.