Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony KDL-40W3000 - 40'' Widescreen Bravia 1080P Full HD LCD TV - With Freeview

Hi Folks

Just took delivery 3/12 of this TV and as my title say's I am sort of happy! My old 28" JVC gave a stunning picture and great service for 8 years but was being tempremental so it had to go. I have lusted after a 40W2000 for many months, so when I was told it was effectively replaced by this I had to take a look. In store it is jaw droppingly good at home well it takes a lot of work to get what you want out of it and involves setting up different parameters for each input. Not all brands allow this so well done Sony! You can have the right settings to match Off Air FREEVIEW, SKY, DVD, PS3/XBOX/Wii etc.

Mkae no mistake this is a superb panel but there are pros and cons so rather than get technical heres a list which I hope you find useful!

Pros:

Colour is simply stunning
Contrast is awesome, incredible deep blacks and detail held in the shadows
Great Menus with a superb amount of customisation available to those who like to tweak.
Build quality is 1st class sits on its base sure footed and firm nothing is loose or flimsy this is top kit.
Sound is great the virtual attempt at surround sound from two front speakers is amazing and will be fine till I can afford a full set up its that acceptable I may not bother!
Tons of connections 3xHDMI 2xSCART RGB Composite, S Video and PC etc.
Looks the business even when swithched off!
Blue ray is as different to DVD as DVD was to VHS tape honest!
PS3 and Wii look absolutely awesome.
Current production material programmes and movies off Sky + are excellent (once you have adjusted the factory settings)

Cons
Out of the box settings are AAAARRRRGH what have I bought! Several hours of internet searching and then tweaking to get the best picture is worth it but a pain none the less. (The wifes "is that it then? Its not as good as the old set" did not help while I was trying to set up!)

Manual is not very detailed could be better if it was set up "Quick start" then some "reccomended settings for DVD SKY etc" it would be much better.

You need to be at least 8 or 9 feet away from this set you can get a little closer if viewing 1080P full high def material but make no mistake in your average lounge this will dominate the room when set at eye level to mid screen on a three shelf stand.

Old material on sky plus can look WORSE than on your old CRT TV make no mistake this incredible TV will repay you many times over with DVD Blue RAY HDDVD and Sky playing recent material!

I really feel I have to buy Sky HD now :0( £299 and £10 a month apparently sky HD upscales the standard def programmes and gives you an improved picture even on non HD material mmmm we'll see!

In short this is a quality product which can be King or Pauper depending on what source material you feed it. Please do not panic when you first switch on things can only get better. It is capable of so much if you treat it right. if you do that it is SIMPLY STUNNING!

I have deducted one star for the amount of time needed to get the right result and the poor manual! Come on Sony put some custom settings in so you can dial in a number of different combinations till you hit one that works for you.

This will be a non-technical review. The Sony KDL40W3000 is a simply outstanding TV. We are running upscaled DVD's, PS3 Blu Ray, PS 2 games and SD Sky through it.

There is a great deal on the web about settings out of the box for this TV and I would agree that for standard TV or even high quality TV DVD's (eg Sopranos, upscaled) then the 'VIVID' setting that the TV arrives in is not ideal. Colours look OTT and certainly not what you dreamed about when you ordered the TV. There are plenty of sites you can google for that come up with settings for the TV to get the best out of it. This TV has an incredible range of parameters that you can change which is great if you know what you are doing so be prepared for some playing around. If you prefer not to touch them then I would recommend switching from 'VIVID' to 'NORMAL' which at first will make colours look relatively muddy but will, over a few hours, look a lot better as you get used to them.

Sky SD is watchable but clearly not as good as HD would be. Most channels apart from heavily compressed channels are clear enough to view, I would regard quality as watchable. Remember this is the fault of the input source, not the TV. Switching on noise reduction does remove some of the noise in the picture but does so at the expense of sharpness, you can play around in the menu and see the impact on the screen instantly so you can try the options out quite easily. I turned noise reduction off altogether but for Sky SD a bit of reduction does make an improvement.

With Blu Ray however the detail and colours are mindblowing. There are enough reviews on Blu Ray and the PS3 so I will not add to them here other than to continue to be amazed at the picture quality. Upscaled DVD's do not have the same impact but are certainly good enough to not require a major upgrade of DVDs to Blu Ray discs. I suspect that at larger screens than 40" this may be a different story.

The sound quality is 'very good' rather than excellent and I would probably disagree with statements that claim a separate sound system is not necesary. We run this with a reasonable quality 2.1 sound system that is without question superior to the speakers on the TV. Bass and channel separation are clearly going to be better with a separate system.

Blacks appear to be very good, not in the range of a high end Pioneer Plasma (twice the price) but simply outstanding for an LCD TV. Significant improvement on the KDL40W2000 previous model to this one. There is a backlight control that reduces the backlight in the TV when the screen is dark, this is fine until you get to end credits on a movie which are generally scrolling words on a black screen. This confuses the backlight control which then darkens, lightens and darkens the screen depending on how many lines of text (and I guess therefore average brightness of the image) are there. If you bother with end credits this may trouble you but I would not make it a deciding factor for the TV.

Another point - the Playstation 3 is an amazing piece of kit whcih will show the best on this TV, however at 40" this TV also allows you to play multiplayer (split screen) Playstation 2 games with ease. The TV is not so big that PS2 screens are blurred but it is big enough to ensure that on a split screen (Socom Navy Seals, Colin McCrae Rally or Killzone) you can actually see what you are doing when in multiplayer split screen mode.

Last point on the Amazon 'White Glove Delivery Service' which you have to pay for with Amazon. I paid an additional £29.99 for the 'white glove delivery service' which I understood meant that the item would be delivered, checked and unpacked with all packing materials removed. 'White glove delivery' also implies something about the level of care that would be taken too.

The TV did arrive on time (and after a phone call from the courier to confirm delivery within a 2 hour slot which is good), however when it arrived the delivery guy had it balanced on his shoulder which he then asked me to sign for. He was not expecting to unpack the item and, when asked about this, said 'I don't know anything about that and no one else asks about it'. I am sure if pressed he would have done it but clearly it was not in his expectations. On this basis I signed for the TV as 'unopened'.

I have no complaint about the delivery guy but I am not happy that I had to pay Amazon an additional £29.99 for a 'white glove delivery service' when in the end, what I got was a normal 'drop off' delivery just like any other from Amazon. Ran a Google search on this subject and I have since found out I am not alone.

5 stars for the TV but not entirely happy with Amazon for the delivery charge.

I had been researching LCD panel TVs for a while before finally deciding that i should get this one. As a rule of thumb, i never leave any stone unturned.

It's predecessor the W2000 seemed to get brilliant reviews everywhere i looked, with an average rating of 9/10 in each magazine or online reviews. But as it was being discontinued, i initially thought that the picture and quality could not get better as it was simply stunning. But i went to a sony style store to compare the W2000 with the W3000 and it was truly breath-taking. There was a distinct improvement in sharpness and contrast, and there was no motion judder which you could get on the W2000 (I read and witnessed motion judder on the W2000 with a Blue Ray disc)

Sony have only improved. The W3000 you can get from other online stores with a free 5yr warranty included up until the 31st January 08.

Playstation 3 just looks amazing on the TV. With newer games now coming through with the 1080p resolution, I am now starting to see the benefits of this TV. Most games at the moment are 720p (HD Ready) and not 1080p (Full HD) but there is certainly a difference.

I also compared the screen side by side with Toshiba, Samsung and Philips. Philips is the closest match to the Sony in terms of quality build and picture quality, but they are expensive. That's not to say that Sony isn't, you are just getting more for your money with the Sony. Samsung pictures were vivid, but the only drawback is the tedious reflective screen. LG and Toshiba(which i have owned for years) in terms of picture quality were no match in terms of sharpness or picture quality.

For the extra £150-£200 you will pay for this sony, it is a worthy investment and you will NOT be disappointed.

And a free 5 yr warranty, surely it costs about £300 by itself.

I now understand what they mean by Colour Like No Other.

I awoke one morning after the recent birth of our son and thought, "we need a treat and it's time for a big TV". Like many others I suspect, I hadn't a clue where to start other than knowing that I wanted a 40" flat screen, probably LCD rather than plasma and that was it. A friend of ours bought a 46" 40W2000 last year and I knew he would have done exhaustive research so I asked him for his opinion - which was one of absolute contentment (although he did hint that if he had his time again he might go for one of the new Samsungs - still haven't found out why but when I questioned him more and said I really couldn't be bothered with doing research myself so should I go for the Sony or not - he said YES).

The question was then which one to buy - the 40w3000, 40w2000 which is last year's model and can still be found for £899 at Comet, or upgrade totally to the 40x3500. I decided on the 40w3000 for the following simple reasons:

- For us spending £1k on a tv is enough - I really couldn't justify another £1k for the X series even if I could have understood what the main differences were
- the 40w2000 is meant to be an outstanding TV (and I've seen the 46" in action - it's top notch), but for an extra £100 I was getting a newer version so it was a no brainer
- I read so many online reviews from tech sites, to lads mags and national press reviews and all concurred that I couldn't go far wrong with 40w3000 (or any of the others)
- I've always liked the idea of having a Sony Bravia - sold on the advertising I guess, but after years with Philips I also fancied a change of brand
- and last but not least, it was an easy choice because of the great price on Amazon

So, I read the reviews on here and decided to purchase. Two days ago it was delivered (more on that later) and since then it's been TV FRENZY!!! It's an absolute stunner. If you know loads about TVs then you might find fault with blackscreen or backlights or somethingo or other, but I'm just comparing it to what we had before and it's brilliant. We've got a regular DVD player and VHS and they both work fine - the quality of DVDs is superb - our first movie was Bladerunner and it was awesome; and watching Disney films with the family is a whole new experience - especially when the picture quality is turned to Vivid.

The sound is really good and better that I expected given I haven't got a surround sound system (but I think it will be coming my way soon). Menus are easy to navigate and the auto set-up meant I was watching TV within 30 mins of opening the box. I know others have found it difficult and I may well need assitance once I have more gadgets and wires to plug in, but I didn't find setting it up a problem - very easy indeed if you're used to fitting plugs into a basic pc and tv and the remote is very easy to navigate as well.

So far, no problems whatsoever - an absolute dream of a purchase and would heartily recommend it to anyone.

As for Amazon - great service, stunning price and I trust them. I would say though that it was disappointing to order their 'great price' stand only to find out they couldn't find one - end result is I've bought a stand from another retailer - John Lewis - and it's not being delivered until 5 days after the TV. A pain but not life threatening.

The courier service was also fairly random - the courier didn't call to arrange a delivery time - luckily I called them to check they had the right numbers otherwise I would never have known it was coming a day earlier than estimated. They then couldn't deliver so had to come back the next day and still not tell me a time. As I said to Amazon, if I've just spent £1k on a TV I'd be willing to spend a bit more to get a guaranteed delivery, with a courier firm which called me, and more quickly (please).

When all is said and done - there might be better TVs out there and if I'd spent a few days researching this and that I might have gone for something else - but right now, I'm really pleased I didn't. Right, got to go, I'm off to watch Band of Brothers box set. Yippee.

I must say that having spent the best part of a month searching the net and reading all the magazine artilces I could I am more than pleased with my final choice of the Sony.

Yes the other 40" contenders from Toshiba, LG and Samsung are good but all have one or two small niggles the Sony doesn't, although I appreciate its around £200 more expensive.
I don't have Cable or Sky but connect through inbuilt Freeview a Panasonic HDMI HDD Recorder and a PS3, and the picture is tons better than my old (5 years) 32" 100Hz pixel plus Philips CRT which is still better than many other CRT models.
Yes setting up the picture can be a trial but no more than my mother and mother-in-law's Samsung and LG 32" LCD TV's they recently purchased.
The build quality is typically Sony and visibly better than the 2 above mentioned sets.
To sum up, its a bit more expensive than some of the competition but does provide one of the best SD and HD pictures around, 3 HDMI ports and all this tied up in an attractive sleek quality built surround with decent sound options.
Go along to John Lewis and see all the main contenders together and make your own comparison as I did, in the end I purchased mine from Sound and Vision with just a 3 year guarantee and saved around £120, if you want 5 year cover then John Lewis is as cheap as anyone online.