Another Review : What Hifi

[Joe-Bow]

@Urban+Splash It's not exactly just a £1000 TV as there are three options.  "Tested at £849" plus all the other prices for the different sizes are mentioned, from  £649 to £1049.

You're effectively paying for the TV,  Atmos Soundbar and Sky hardware in one unit, so as far as a total price goes it's a probably pretty reasonable price all things considered at first launch. 

[TimmyBGood]

@Urban+Splash 

"So, now we're all set up, how is the picture performance? In short, it's good, as long as you have got your expectations in check. Pay too much heed to Sky's promotional material and you might start thinking that Sky Glass offers a flagship TV performance – the kind that you would expect from an OLED  or top Samsung QLED . But that's marketing for you, and expectations really ought to be calibrated to the price.

Let's remember that you are essentially getting a TV and a Dolby Atmos soundbar  in one package that, in the case of our 'Medium' review sample, costs just £849. Consider that the cheapest Dolby Atmos soundbar we recommend (the four-star Sony HT-G700 ) is £299 and you are leaving just £550 for the TV. That's not a lot of money for a 55-inch TV of any kind, and a long way short of OLED money.

These are rough figures, of course, and we're not saying that the Sky Glass sound system is necessarily 'worth' £299; but they broadly represent the costs that would be involved in buying a TV and Dolby Atmos soundbar separately, and they help to set expectations."

[Anonymous]

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@Urban+Splash wrote:

It performs well given its limitations

This should say it all. An ambiguous statement. Why should it have limitations? Are customers expecting limitations? 

It's a budget panel for not budget price. Happy to call them out on this 

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That's not ambiguous at all, all TV's are built to a certain price point and Glss complicates this with having the soundbar and Sky built in. They apportion £299 to the soundbar (I'd lower it myself to £199 value) leaving a £550 TV still with Sky built in. That's the level they're comparing it too, so is a fair enough rating. The way you seem to be looking at is that only very expensive TV's would get 5 stars and anything budget would be zero. That's not how their reviews work.

As for testing with software that's not released yet, as long as it will be with customers very shortly then I can't see any issues myself. I did note that Apple TV is on theirs now.

Of more concern given how much sport Sky have and actively promote is the 'smeary motion' comments. As that's mostly down to hardware processing(?), that would raise some serious red flags for sports lovers (not to mention fast paced movies?).

Overall I'd say it's a fair review by all accounts.

[Joe-Bow]

@Anonymous I have noticed that the grass on the sport in particular looks pretty bad on the Sky channels, even in UHD.  Even worse is was the picture for the Spurs v Arsenal women's game on BBC .  I know BBC uses a terrible bitrate and, IMHO, substandard encoders, but even by their low standards the picture was abysmal, but if the source is bad nothing can makeup for that lost detail.