Sony has just taken the wraps off two surprisingly voluptuous new additions to its 2014 TV range. For as well as ticking our ‘want’ boxes by sporting huge 65-inch and 75-inch screens with native 4K resolutions, the new S90 TVs embrace what Sony calls ‘the perfect curve’, bending gently back to deliver Sony’s take on sort of concave screen format pioneered by LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics .
Not that the Sony curve is as immediately obvious as it is on rival curved screens. I was given the chance to play with the 65-inch S90, and when I first saw it, from a seating position directly opposite, the degree of its screen curvature was so subtle that I didn’t instantly clock it.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. For while Sony has clearly felt the need to follow the lead of its Korean TV rivals in adding a curved-screen option to its TV range, it’s definitely gone its own way when it comes to the exact way the curve is applied.
Sony's new 'perfect curve' 4K TV in a suitably opulent environment...
In fact, the degree of curvature Sony has settled on was based on research by Japan’s Kyushu University into finding a level of curvature that delivers the extra sense of immersion and focus curved TVs can produce without making straight horizontal lines in images – like the black bars above or below ultra-widescreen content – look as if they’re bending down at the edges. This ‘bending down’ geometry issue is clearly apparent on the more exaggerated bend of LG and Samsung’s curved screens.
Having a less dramatic degree of curvature on the new S90 series also means you can watch them from a wider angle without their images starting to look excessively foreshortened or distorted. And perhaps best of all, reducing the steepness of the curve also means the S90 screens shouldn’t distort on-screen reflections as drastically as more heavily curved TVs.
Sony S90 Series is easier to watch from the side than TVs with more extreme curves
Despite the potential advantages of the S90 models’ headline-grabbing curve, though, it ultimately wasn’t the thing that most stood out during the time I spent with the 65-inch model. That honour belongs to the sets’ sound.
Sony has cleverly integrated a multi-angle speaker array into the S90s’ curved left and right edges that bounces the TV’s sound off your room’s walls to produce what seemed during my demo to be a remarkably convincing ‘pseudo surround sound’ performance. Potentially the most convincing pseudo-surround performance ever produced by a TV’s built-in speakers, in fact – especially if you pump up the bass by adding one of Sony’s new TV-friendly subwoofers.
Sony was at pains to stress towards the end of its S90 presentation that its introduction of a curved screen hasn’t led to any compromises with other aspects of its picture quality engine. You still get the brand’s Triluminos technology for enhancing colours, and its 4K X-Reality Pro processing for enhanced upscaling of non-4K sources. There’s certainly no doubt that in Sony’s bright demo room, at least, the S90s’ picture quality did indeed look excellent.
There is one question hanging over the S90 models, though. Namely whether the curve on Sony’s S90s is so subtle you don’t actually notice it’s there! I certainly felt that the 65-inch S90’s sound made more of an impression on me than the curve. Nonetheless, first impressions of the S90 strongly suggest that it could be a real hit when review samples roll in later in the year.
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