Ever since Sony announced its new flagship Z-series 4K UHD TVs this summer, there's been a lot of buzz among videophiles asking whether these sets, which feature a new type of backlight technology, would look as good or better than the best TVs on the market.

The big question for Consumer Reports: Would this $6,000 LCD TV beat out the half-dozen LG OLED models that currently top Consumer Reports TV ratings?

After completing our full testing of the 65-inch Sony XBR-65Z9D, we can say that it's among the best TVs we've ever tested. But we did have some serious issues with the process consumers must go through to play 4K content with HDR on this Sony TV.

And no matter how good the technology, that price is going to be a big barrier, even for videophiles who love the picture quality this Sony TV delivers. At $6,000, the 65-inch model costs less than LG's flagship 4K OLED TV for 2016, but it's about $2,000 more than the similarly sized mainstream OLED models that currently rule our ratings.

But great technology tends to come down in price. And, looking ahead, the Z-series models could represent a bold new step into the future of LCD TV technology, addressing one of its key weaknesses: blacks that tend to look gray rather deep black. That's a big deal, because rich, deep blacks do a lot to make a picture look realistic. 

A New Type of LED Backlight

So why all the fuss about this new Sony TV?

All LCD TVs require a separate backlight, which uses LEDs to illuminate the pixels in the screen. And there's always a certain amount of light leaking from the backlight. This can result in uneven brightness across the screen, and black tones that look somewhat gray. 

Many LCD TVs these days try to improve their blacks by offering degrees of local dimming, which can dim or brighten groups of LEDs in the backlight.

Sony's new Backlight Master Drive technology takes this a step further. First, the Z-series models use a full-array backlight, with LEDs arranged across the entire back panel of the TV. That's different from most TVs, which use edge LED backlights, where the LEDs are placed along the sides or across the top and/or bottom of the TV. 

Full-array backlights are also used in some other premium sets, including the Sony X940D-series models, the Samsung flagship KS9800-series sets, and many Vizio models.

What happens next is the unique part. In Sony's Backlight Master Drive, every single one of the LEDs can be controlled separately. Just about every other LCD TV we've ever tested groups a number of LEDs into a zone that can be dimmed or illuminated. Sony says it uses more LEDs than its competitors (it won't reveal how many), and each of the LEDs has a more precise, narrowly focused beam. That allows for brighter images and less light leakage, so there is less "blooming"—the halolike effect you often see around brighter images on TVs that use local dimming.

When it comes to black levels, Sony is trying to compete with OLED TVs, which use a different technology. These TVs have pixels that give off their own light. Each pixel in an OLED TV can be shut off, so you get nearly perfect blacks—a nighttime sky or shadowy corner can look much inkier and more realistic than what you'd see on a typical LCD.

Sony's claim is that its Z-series TVs can get close to OLED-like black levels while retaining the higher brightness of LCD TVs. 

What do you think about Sony's Z-series TVs?

Let us know in the comments section below.

Great Picture Quality

Here's what our testing found.

The 65Z9D's high-definition picture quality, UHD performance, and color accuracy were all excellent. Although its overall score placed it below a dozen or so other TVs in our ratings, it was among the best sets in terms of pure picture quality.

Black levels were excellent, especially for an LCD-based set. With the local dimming feature activated, this Sony TV produces very deep blacks that enhance contrast—the difference between the darkest blacks and brightest whites—in dark scenes, so images have convincing depth and dimension. The black levels weren't quite as deep and consistent as what OLEDs produce, but they were certainly among the best we've seen with an LCD TV. (We did notice some slight nonuniformity that created some brighter cloudy areas, mainly in darker scenes.)

In addition, Sony's Motionflow XR 960 feature did a very good job of reducing motion blur. We were also impressed by the set's great UHD performance with 4K content, though we thought the set's HD-to-UHD up-conversion was just a notch below the best sets, with a bit more jaggies than we'd like to see.

Sony's HDR Problem

Along with the Sony's strengths, we did encounter one big problem with the TV. We found it difficult to get it to properly display HDR (High Dynamic Range) content. If fact, we think the process is seriously flawed.

Televisions with HDR can display a wider range from black to white with HDR content, so you can see more details in the very darkest and brightest areas of the picture. You'll also see "specular highlights," the glints of brightness that appear on illuminated objects such as a car's chrome bumper or a Roman gladiator's breastplate. Without HDR, those highlights wouldn't be any brighter than other bright objects in the scene.

This Sony set has several HDMI inputs, but only numbers 2 and 3 support HDR. If you have a 4K source component with HDR, such as an Ultra HD Blu-ray player, that's where you have to plug it in. But there's no labeling on the TV to let you know that, and we couldn't find any mention of it in the manual.

That's confusing on its own. A bigger problem is that, unlike most 4K TVs with HDR that we've tested, this set doesn't automatically detect HDR material and put the TV into an HDR mode. Instead, you have to go into the TV's menu, find the "HDMI signal format" mode, and set it to "Enhanced." (To be fair, if you make it this far, the TV prompts you to use inputs 2 or 3.)

Even for people who review 250 TVs a year this wasn't intuitive, and it's not explained anywhere in the manual. That leads us to believe that many Z-series owners will never actually see HDR content being properly displayed on the TV.

We contacted Sony about this issue, and were told that the company will be issuing a firmware update in about 60 days that will enable the TV to auto-detect HDR content and put the TV into the proper mode. That update can't come soon enough.

Once we were able to properly set the TV to display HDR we were rewarded with impressive performance. This set is perhaps the brightest TV we've seen, which helped enhance the realism of 4K content that was mastered specifically for HDR. In addition to giving added vibrancy to specular highlights, such as metallic reflections and the glare from the sun, the TV's higher levels of brightness gave colors a greater intensity, with better color detail in the brighter parts of the image.

The Bottom Line

Apart from the HDR issue, we were favorably impressed by Sony's new Z-series 4K TV. In terms of pure picture quality it's among the best TVs you can buy, and it can deliver a truly top-notch HDR experience. That said, the TV still acts like an LCD TV, with some issues—uneven brightness across the screen, a limited viewing angle—that don't really exist with OLED TVs.

We think the bigger issue for Sony is price, since Z-series sets are not less expensive than an OLED TV. So is there a reason to choose a Z-series set over an OLED TV, or even another top LCD-based set?

That's a question we'll be answering in an upcoming article that directly compares this Z-series Sony TV to both the Samsung UN65KS9800 flagship model and the LG E6 OLED TV.