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If you are looking for a small TV for your bedroom or game room, you might be tempted to simply buy the cheapest thing you can find, but it's still worth walking around. Although some people will discount Sony's price because it is too expensive, KDL-32R400A shows that the company can make a TV with good performance and reasonable price.

Despite several shortcomings, its image quality, headed by black level and shadow detail, is generally quite good for a small, inexpensive LED LCD. In addition, its sound is one of the best we have heard at this price. This is not the value proposition of a package like Vizio E320i-A0, because it lacks smart TVs and other features. Nevertheless, the benefits of TV outweigh its disadvantages, which makes R400A an ideal choice for small-screen TV users who prioritize performance and design.

Design For a cheap TV, the R400A certainly doesn’t look like a TV—maybe a little old-school. It has a mirror-like touch and piano-black bezel, but it’s not “cheap”. Compared with the thick bezels of last year's Toshiba 32C120U, Sony looks really slim. It looks very similar to the Samsung EH4000, in fact it only adds a mirror panel and a bifurcated bracket at the bottom.

The remote control is compact and highly usable, and even provides a set of dedicated playback controls for the onboard media player.

Due to the lack of smart TV functions, Sony's menu system is rather rudimentary, with a standard black and white appearance. Except for the scene functions that can only be accessed via the "Options" button on the remote control—required for game mode—most functions are available from the main menu.

Features Sony R400A is a 720p TV with few features to speak of. This is completely understandable for models that sell for less than US$300 on the street. 720p resolution is sufficient for a TV of this size; 32 inches is too small to use 1080p.

R400A uses direct-lit LED backlight, but its picture quality is not better than standard LCD. "Directly" refers to the placement of the LED behind the screen, not along the edge. Fewer LEDs are needed, which is one of the reasons that direct spotlights are cheaper than sidelights.

Although the refresh rate is assumed to be 120Hz, the behavior of the R400A is very similar to that of a 60Hz TV. Like the "120Hz" Vizio E01-A1 and Toshiba L2300U, Sony also ignores smoothing/de-jitter processing. You may not like this smoothly induced so-called soap opera effect, but for most other 120Hz TVs, you can choose to turn it on or off. For Sony, it is not available at all.

Since the R400A lacks the smoothness and motion resolution performance we expect from a 120Hz TV, we stick to the 60Hz specification in the table above, despite what Sony says.

R400A includes a USB port for playing MPEG movie files (though not MP4), MP3 audio files and JPEG image files.

Picture settings: You can get the usual standard, vivid and custom picture settings through this TV, and add common scenes, but they are hard to find (you need to click the "Options" button). Although it works well on most other Sony TVs, Cinema actually limits some options here and is not more accurate than General mode. Apart from the standard brightness, contrast, color, etc., there are no other adjustment options.

Connectivity: According to marketing announcements, the KDL-32R400A has "three HD inputs", which actually means that it has two HDMI ports (including an MHL for screen mirroring and charging smartphones) and a component input. In addition, you can also get a composite input, a USB port and a digital optical output.

Image quality For the same size TV, Sony KDL-32R400A has very good black level and shadow details. It does a very good job of providing the same or darker black as last year's best 32-inch Samsung EH4000 and Toshiba 32C120U.

However, where it fell is the color fidelity. Although green and skin tones are natural, images of yellow and cyan are obviously affected. Cyan appears to be blue, and yellow is more like orange.

The worst part is not even the color, but the movement. Although Sony is trying to correct this with the LED motion function, when motion occurs on the screen, whether the function is turned on or off, the TV looks very soft.

The sound quality is a highlight, it is one of the best sound systems I can think of in a 32-inch TV. Of course, it is not a substitute for a dual-channel system, but it is sufficient to meet the expected use of the panel as a bedroom or game room TV.

Click on the image on the right to view the picture settings used in the evaluation and read more about how this TV picture control works during calibration.

Black level: The black level is definitely Sony's shiny (dark light?) function. For budget TVs, the black depth is pleasant. It is true that it cannot withstand the more expensive and larger models, but none of the other models we have tested in this size.

Directly compared with 32-inch Toshiba and Samsung, Sony always provides better blacks in dark scenes, has a stronger sense of picture, and performs equally well in mining shadow details. In the most challenging scene in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2" (45:55), an army gathers on a hill in almost total darkness. Sony is one of the better performers, with black stripes and enough detail to tell the audience that there are characters on the hill overlooking Hogwarts. At the other end of the spectrum is the 50-inch Toshiba 50L2300U, you have to guess what you are looking at: broccoli? Moldy oranges? The GEICO gecko in the dark?

At the same time, Vizio E420i-A1 outperforms Sony in this regard. Of course, the excellent Panasonic TC-P50S60 plasma can beat them, but its shadow is a bit greenish.

Further evidence of the Sony KDL-32R400A's ability to resolve shadow details appeared at 56 minutes when Neville Longbottom was wearing a finely detailed sweater. On the neighboring Toshiba 50L2300U, any detail is lost in the shadows, while on the Sony, you can recognize some individual threads. In this group, Vizio E420i-A1 performed the best in this test, with the pattern clearly visible.

Color accuracy: The color of this TV is quite problematic, because although it is a well-saturated set, secondary color accuracy is an issue. However, the main colors are very good, with natural flesh colors, blues and greens. The place where the problem lies is cyan, which is evident at the beginning of Chapter 5 of "The Tree of Life" when the mother is sitting on the grass. Although the grass behind her is the same color as most of the TVs in the lineup, and her hair and skin look natural, it looks like she is wearing a blue dress instead of a turquoise dress.

Switching to the gorgeous visual effects of "reincarnation", with gold-inlaid temples, Sony's yellow problem is also revealed. On Vizio and Panasonic TVs, gold actually looks yellow. In contrast, Sony makes these areas look like American cheddar cheese. Gold should be edible, but not so.

Video processing: The TV should be 120Hz, but in most cases it behaves like a 60Hz model. Except for 1080p/24 footage. In the aircraft carrier sequence we used as the "I am Legend" test, the TV correctly showed the rhythm of the movie. On the other hand, it does look smoother than the Sony W900A, which can also perform 24p rhythms correctly.

The motion resolution is the same as the 60Hz setting. Without LED motion settings, Sony can do 300 lines. After turning on the LED motion, I was able to squeeze about 50 additional resolutions from the R400A. Although it reduced some motion blur, the pattern was still very blurry. You can see that the image ghosting of up to 600 lines on the test pattern is very serious, and only 350 lines are clear. In addition, enabling LED motion (backlight scanning) also makes the picture darker.

The softness I see in sports can also be detected in the program material. In "The Tree of Life" (2:09:27), when the mother shook her child at dusk, it was clearly blurred when her arm crossed the screen. This degree of blur is not obvious on any other screen in the lineup.

In the 1080i test, the Sony R400A had a lot of cross-hatch pattern artifacts, but it performed very well in slow-motion shots in stadiums.

Uniformity: The uniformity is mostly good, and there is no large spot that damages the dark area of ​​the picture due to light leakage. There is a small area one quarter the size in the upper right corner, which is a little lighter than the rest, but it is usually undetectable.

Compared with other groups, off-axis performance is good, but the color and contrast are slightly reduced. Last year's Toshiba 32C120U was the best performance among all LCDs.

Bright lighting: The semi-matte screen of the R400A does not show any reflection or contrast issues; it shows great photos in a well-lit room. Only the semi-gloss screens of the S60 and Toshiba 50L2300U without louver filters have problems under these conditions.

Sound quality: For small, inexpensive TVs, Sony’s sound quality is surprisingly good. It performed better than all other TVs in its price (Samsung and Toshiba) in our test series, and has clear voice, explosions that will not crack or compress, and good music playback without distortion.

Sony KDL-32R400A calibration report