Like all TV manufacturers Sony is making a big fuss about 4K as the future of television, but 4K TVs are far too expensive and there’s little suitable content to watch anyway. It makes much more sense to buy a 1080p HD TV such as Sony’s 42in KDL-42W705B.
The 42W705B is impressively stylish for a TV at this price. It’s so thin that Sony couldn’t even fit the power supply inside; it uses an external power brick instead. The pencil-thin metal stand looks great when sat on a tabletop, but can also be flipped around and used as a basic wall mount, saving you the cost of an expensive bracket.
There are still plenty of connections on the back despite the thin dimensions, including four HDMI ports, two USB connectors as well as component, SCART, digital optical audio and phono ports. It even has both preview HD and satellite tuners. Disappointingly, the satellite tuner isn’t preset-compatible, but you will receive most of the same channels.
You’ll also want to connect the TV to your home network (using either the Ethernet port or integrated Wi Fi) in order to get the most from Sony’s smarti’V features. Pressing the I Tome key on the remote opens a full screen menu with icons for the Video, Music and Apps screens as well as an EPG. Music and Video contain Sony’s own Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited streaming services, as well as any of your own content from your networked computers or NAS devices. The Apps page contains on-demand and catch-up video services, including Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Demand Five and YouTube. Unlike Samsung smart TVs, it doesn’t have all the terrestrial TV catch-up services, or as many movie-streaming services, but it’s not too far behind.
Regardless of what you watch on it, the 42W705B produces an excellent picture, with accurate colors, plenty of detail and a bright image. Darker scenes appeared slightly grey at the edges of the screen rather than black, but tweaking the picture settings helped reduce this effect.
If you’d rather avoid fiddling with the settings as much as possible then there are plenty of preset picture settings to choose from, including General, Cinema, Sports, Music, Photo, Game and Live Football. The Cinema setting provides the best video quality delivering a faithful picture that doesn’t overwhelm you with over saturated colors unlike some of the other presets.
We weren’t impressed with the LED Motion Mode setting, which inserts extra frames into your videos to give the illusion of a smoother picture. It dims the brightness too much and makes brightly lit scenes flicker, which looks distracting. However, Sony’s Reality Creation feature is a welcome addition; it can both sharpen and smooth out standard-definition content, giving the impression of more detail. It even works some magic on 1080p HD video, making some textures and facial features like hair and skin look more detailed and realistic. The only thing missing is 3D support - you’ll have to pay extra for the 42W805B (549 from wwwsnipca.com/12800) to get a Sony TV that plays 3D video. But if you think 3D is a gimmick, it’s unlikely you’ll miss it.
If you aren't fussed about 3D, then the KDL-42W7058 is a superb—value TV with plenty of features and excellent image quality without you having to make too many changes in the picture settings. Samsung’s TVs, such as the 32in UE32H6200 have more streaming video services, but Sony has the edge in terms of picture quality.
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