Sony Bravia KDL-19S5700

Product Survey: 29'' and smaller TVs

The Sony is a small, backup, 19-inch TV designed for rooms with limited space. For the rest, features are rather limited. Resolution is of course 1360x768 pixels: it won't always be practical for use as a PC monitor then, unless you're not too demanding. In spite of its low-end positioning, connectivity does stand up with 2 HDMI sockets, 2 scarts and a USB for viewing photos or listing to MP3s. The on-screen menus are clear and easy to use. It's a shame that you can't go round from the last option to the first directly, without having to go back up the whole menu the other way. Settings are memorised for each source, a rare feature for this size of TV. There's a small panel on the front on which the time is displayed when the TV is on standby. This rating isn't included in the overall rating As so often the default image is poor with dynamic contrast too marked and colours false. It's also too hard and with artefacts. Thankfully things improve when you switch to Cinema mode, push the backlighting to a max and disactivate all the filters (NR noise reduction, MPEG and so on). Note that even when set to max the backlighting struggles to give a sufficiently bright image.