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I subjected my brand spanking new Sony KDL-52W4000 LCD Full HD TV to a colorimeter and measured its performance. Here are the results.

First, a note to my US readers: this TV has little in common with the KDL-52W4100 released in the USA, despite the model number. W4100 has several features that are absent from the W4000, including MotionFlow and a 120Hz panel. US W4100 seems to be the equivalent of the European X3500 or some forthcoming X-series TV.

W4000 offers practically zero options for calibration, so its out-of-box performance is very important indeed. As usual, my first step was to disable all the so-called image enhancement features, such as noise reduction and contrast enhancer functions. The latter goes by the name of ‘Adv. Contrast Enhancer’ and causes sudden, nasty shifts in black level. My suggestion is to switch it off and never turn it back on. W4000 has easily deep enough blacks without it.

Image #1 shows how well the W4000 tracks grays. It’s not perfect, but it’s not wildly inaccurate either. W4000 has no Gamma settings, but I can live with this performance.

Image #2 shows the gamut with colour space set to ‘Wide’ instead of ‘Standard’. As you can see, the gamut is far larger than Rec.709, resulting in oversaturated and somewhat skewed colours.

Image #3 shows the W4000 at its best. ‘Standard’ colour space is pretty close to Rec.709, though the set could still use a proper calibration. This image shows also the difference of Colour Temperature settings. I was expecting ‘Normal’ to hit closest to D65, but it turned out to be nowhere close. To my surprise, ‘Warm 2′ is the setting to use.

W4000 has a feature called Live Colour. I haven’t bothered to read the manual, so I have no idea what it’s supposed to do, but it can be enabled only with ‘Wide’ colour space. Image #4 shows the effect Live Colour has at Full setting.

For your reference, measurements in image #3 were the result of the following settings:
Picture Mode: Cinema
Backlight: Min
Contrast: 85
Brightness: 50
Colour: 50
Colour Temperature: Warm 2
Sharpness: Min
Noise Reduction: off
MPEG Noise Reduction: off
Advanced Contrast Enhancer: off
Live Colour: off
Colour Space: Standard
Power Saving: Standard Power
Light Sensor: Off
x.v.Colour: Normal
Display Area: Full Pixel

I did a quick contrast measurement with these settings as well. Both on/off and ANSI came to around 2200:1. Low on/off was very likely caused by having the backlight set to minimum. Regardless, I prefer that setting while watching HD movies as it produces very deep blacks. I simply loathe LCD TVs that display gray instead of black, but that’s not a problem with the W4000.