Sony ZD9 test: when the best meets the worst

Presented at CES 2016, the Hisy ZD9 is the TV that has everything to please on paper.However, after a few days of testing in various scenarios, it has become difficult to recommend this product.Especially a few days before the supposed announces two new Hisy OLED TVs at a milder price.At 5000 euros, Hisy's ZD9 did not completely convince us.

Features

Top design and finishes

There is something remarkable in the design of this TV.Hisy exhibits its design know-how by integrating its slab into borders ranging from only 1.2 to 1.5 cm.For a TV, it's little!The ZD9 is sober, but the ZD9 is not discreet, which is a quality when you spend as much in an object.Everything is studied to be pleasant to the eye, especially the central foot which is both elegant and not very imposing to hold on a medium -sized piece of furniture.

For the back of the television, Hisy had to make a choice: to take quality materials and expose the entries, or opt for a cache system and a plastic back.The Japanese manufacturer turned to the second option, therefore offering a plastic back.More generally, the back is made up of a hundred small aligned rectangles, molded in a rough plastic which does not particularly inspire solidity.The ZD9 offers a lot of entries, hidden by three different caches.Not to mention yet another cache, much more imposing, which serves to mask the structure necessary for the wall support.

It would have been preferable that the back was up to the front, that is to say composed in noble materials.But Hisy's decision is logical: Android TV allows the ZD9 not to be connected to any equipment, which allows you to have a completely smooth and coherent back, the entries being masked.But still for that it would be necessary to succeed in the Android TV experience, which is, unfortunately, far from being the case.

Android TV: an inexplicable disappointment

What do we expect from a television?The criteria may depend depending on the person interviewed or the time.Some want a TV with a huge diagonal, others want to have the best possible image processing, or even an unbeatable quality/price ratio.There is however a criterion on which everyone should agree: instantaneity.This is even more true as our screens become more and more intelligent.If you want to switch from one service to another, it is not at the cost of an unjustified expectation.Imagine that the change of chains takes almost ten seconds and imagine the frustration that such a slowness can cause.

All this paragraph on the importance of a fluid system is not trivial and serves to denounce the problem of Android TV on the ZD9.Android TV is very slow, or more exactly the SoC which takes care of turning Android TV is not powerful enough.This reproach can also be done in the XD93 that we had already tested during the Hdr file.The latter has a Mediatek MT5890 chip (double heart A17 and GPU Mali T624) and the ZD9 a Mediatek MT5891 chip (Quadruple Coeur A53 and GPU Mali T860).As a reminder, the XD93 and ZD9 are sold between 3,000 and 8,000 euros (the 100 inch version of the latter is sold for 70,000 euros).

In practice, the interface is slow, really too slow.We tried to compare the performance of the Nvidia Shield Android TV, Hisy XD93 and ZD9 and Xiaomi Mi Box 3.

Thus, as we can see on Antutu, there does not seem to be a huge difference between the MT5890 and MT5891.But the performances of the Shield TV are almost 5 times higher than those of the two televisions.

On the T-Rex benchmarx in 720p, the gap is even more important.The half box 3 and the ZD9 are just as bad with 10 images per second, when the shield managed to display 120 images per seconds.

The Android TV experience is not only bad, especially due to a general lack of fluidity, but incomplete because of the laughable performance of the chip.Some will be able to say that we spend several thousand euros in a TV only if we have the means to exploit content which takes full part of it and that an NVIDIA Shield Android TV does not cost so expensive in addition to the TV.

But it is dismaying to see that at 5000 euros, Hisy is ready to make such important compromises, which ruin the user experience.A more powerful chip could have made the difference.

For Android TV games, benchmarks did not lie to us.Real Racing 3 is the most speaking example.The graphic quality is very withdrawn from a recent high -end smartphone and as soon as there are more than 2 vehicles in the field of vision The framework is very visibly decreased, to the point that the pleasure of play is reduced to nothing.Without mentioning that defects that can go unnoticed on 5 inches are difficult to ignore on a diagonal of 164 cm.

Apart from this impression of constant heaviness, Android TV remains Android TV, with all the advantages and disadvantages that this implies.In all cases, the ZD9 must be connected to equipment powerful enough to be able to take advantage of 4K Hdr content in order to highlight its strengths.

A proven interface

There is not much to say on the interface, tested and refined by Hisy over its models.It is rather effective with its wide choice of options and occupies only the upper left of the screen.Once the parameter has been selected, as image, the adjustment options occupy the right half of the screen, with parameters that will satisfy the vast majority of consumers.On the other hand, the profusion of parameters can discourage more than one from venturing into the settings.

We can note a "advance" on this model, compared to competitors: Hdr flow management.On this model, when the flow changes to switch to Hdr, the TV automatically goes into Hdr mode, without having to enter the settings.At Samsung, it is necessary to adjust the HDMI inputs beforehand so that they can manage an Hdr signal. Un très bon point pour Hisy qui restaure donc le côté Plug & Play de nos téléviseurs.

Picture and sound

Image quality

It's time to talk about the image quality of this TV, the most crucial point of this test.This question will be divided into two parts.The first will talk about image quality on everyday content, like Netflix, and the second will focus on Hdr capabilities of the TV.

At the editorial staff, opinions are very shared.Some find the television far too expensive for its image quality, while others are much more enthusiastic about its abilities.Indeed, the former criticize him a high remanence and too saturated colors, when the others are in admiration in front of the deep blacks and the peaks of luminosities at the limit of blindness.One observation was drawn from these shared opinions: to take full advantage of the potential of the ZD9, it takes content capable of taking advantage of it.

In a more technical register, we have found that the brightness is quite uniform except the bottom of the screen, where a hundred nits are lost.In addition, the slab has particularly narrow vision angles.Forget the 178 ° of the IPS, the direct LED treatment forces to look the slab directly from the front.To finish on a positive observation, we did not have to complain about the slightest light of light, nor clouding.

Le Hdr

The ZD9, with its peak characteristics, was designed to show Hdr content in all their beauty.And on this point, as we will see later, the ZD9 is king.For those who ignore what we are talking about, we redirect them on our dossier dedicated to Hdr.

As usual, we passed the 4K Hdr demonstration video and the result was nothing less than perfect.With blacks who give the impression of watching an OLED screen and unrivaled brightness peaks, the image is deeper and alive than ever.

We will now tackle the game in Hdr.We did not have the opportunity to test the Hdr rendering of the Games when writing our file, because they did not yet exist at the time.However, since update 4.05 of the PlayStation 4 Pro from the editorial staff, we are able to play in Hdr on compatible games.To account for the contribution of Hdr in play, we used Uncharted 4, the Hisy console standard holder game.

On Uncharted 4 therefore, the difference between Hdr and SDR is quite subtle, the game being already magnificent even on a classic TV.But the contribution of Hdr is present, although difficult to explain.The most "flagrant" is the way in which light diffuses in dark interiors.The scenes seem more coherent, the sources of less diffuse, more pronounced lights.But Hdr also makes the difference in sunny exteriors.

Hdr

SDR

Pour illustrer comment le Hdr est traité dans le jeu, nous avons pris deux captures d’écran du soleil au début du jeu, le premier en Hdr, le second en SDR.In the first one can correctly see that the sun clearly detaches from the clouds while in the second, the sun blends among these clouds, it is no longer detached from it. Ces captures ne sont pas représentatives de ce que l’on voit à l’écran, mais permettent de mieux saisir comment est géré l’éclairage en jeu, selon que l’on soit en Hdr ou non. Au final, le rendu Hdr est bien plus convaincant sur Uncharted que sur les séries Netflix estampillées Hdr.

Avant de passer à la conclusion, il reste encore un dernier point du ZD9 à couvrir : l’upscal 4K Hdr. Le TV reçoit une source 4K ou non, et essaie de lui apporter à la volée un traitement Hdr. Evidemment, cela n’a pas grand-chose à voir avec du Hdr natif, le ZD9 ne pouvant pas créer des couleurs quand il n’y en a pas.But the result is much more convincing than what we can expect.

En regardant le dernier épisode de The Crown, j’ai bien cru qu’il s’agissait d’une série Hdr, tant les jeux de lumières étaient saisissants de réalisme.The series is already very beautiful to look at independently of the screen on which it is watched.But on the ZD9, each plan is sublimated.

Upscaling algorithm is powerful enough to recognize light sources and improve them without sacrificing the consistency of the plan. Il manque toujours les détails que seule une vidéo Hdr peut restituer, mais l’image gagne indéniablement en qualité, les reflets en particuliers. Quand on désactive l’upscale Hdr, on a l’impression de voir un filtre gris qui recouvre toute l’image.

His

Regarding sound, there is not much to say in the end.The system embedded in the ZD9 clearly lacking in bass and spatialization, it will be necessary to go through a system of its dedicated, like a soundbar or a home cinema.In absolute terms, the sound is rather clear and well defined, but it is not effective enough to offer a sound experience worthy of being mentioned.