Sony BRAVIA 3 LED 4K HDR Google TV (2024)

We just bought the Bravia 3 (50″) and it’s been very laggy, buggy, and has video and color issues that have required us to to a reboot, several times in the last 3 days, to rectify it.

We bought the Bravia 3 to replace our 50″ X80K (2022 model) and we thought it would be an upgrade.

We were very wrong.

The Bravia is very laggy. Sometimes, pressing the volume on the remove has about a one-second delay before the volume level appears on the bottom of the screen. Wow.

Menu navigation is also laggy, making it a real pain to navigate.

Yesterday, the screen suddenly became overly bright, with over-saturated colors. Nothing we tried (even doing a factor default reset) fixed the problem. The only thing that fixed it was unplugging the TV.

We are returning it to Amazon. Please buy a different model. The Bravia 3 has problems.

Yeesh… not 30 minutes after posting this review, it randomly booted my out of YouTube TV, in the middle of the Mavericks/Thunder playoff game. This is the worst TV we’ve ever bought.

I’ve added photos of some of the horrible problems, juxtaposed to how they should look (when the TV’s screen is not malfunctioning).

**Review of the Sony Bravia 3 50-Inch TV**

The Sony Bravia 3 50-inch TV delivers exceptional performance, offering a perfect balance between quality, features, and price. Right out of the box, the design stands out—sleek, modern, and minimalist, with slim bezels that make it look even more premium than its price suggests. The 50-inch display is ideal for mid-sized rooms, providing an immersive viewing experience without being overwhelming.

**Picture Quality:**
The Bravia 3 shines in terms of picture quality, with vibrant colors and sharp, crisp details. The 4K resolution ensures that movies, sports, and games come to life, while Sony’s proprietary technology, like the HDR support, brings out deep blacks and bright highlights. The display has excellent contrast, and the upscaling technology works impressively for HD content, making older shows and movies look far sharper and more defined.

**Sound Quality:**
The sound quality is solid for a flat-screen TV, with clear dialogue and rich audio. Though not quite as immersive as high-end soundbars or home theater setups, it’s more than adequate for day-to-day viewing. If you’re looking for room-filling sound, a dedicated sound system would enhance the experience, but for most viewers, the built-in speakers get the job done.

**Smart Features:**
Running on Google TV, the Bravia 3 offers seamless integration with popular apps like Netflix, YouTube, and Disney+, as well as voice control via Google Assistant. The interface is responsive and intuitive, and navigating through apps or settings is smooth. Additionally, it supports Google Cast, making it easy to stream content from your phone or tablet to the TV.

**Build and Durability:**
Sony’s build quality is top-notch, with a sturdy frame and solid stand that keeps the TV stable. The TV is not overly heavy, so wall-mounting is an option if preferred. The construction feels robust, and it has a premium look and feel that matches the quality of the display.

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**Shipment and Packaging:**

When the Sony Bravia 3 arrived, I was immediately impressed by how well it was packaged. The shipping box was large and sturdy, with a layer of reinforced padding around the TV to prevent any damage during transit. Inside, the TV was securely cradled in custom foam cutouts that held it in place, ensuring there was no shifting during handling. The box also included clear instructions for unboxing and setup, which made the process easy and straightforward.

The TV itself was wrapped in a protective plastic film to guard against scratches, and there were no dents or signs of mishandling. All of the accessories—remote control, power cables, and stand components—were neatly organized in separate compartments inside the box, making it easy to find everything you need for assembly.

Overall, the packaging exceeded expectations, providing peace of mind that the TV would arrive safely and without issue.

**Conclusion:**
The Sony Bravia 3 50-inch TV offers stunning picture quality, reliable performance, and a solid build, all within a reasonable price range. Paired with its excellent packaging and smooth shipping experience, it’s a standout option for anyone in the market for a new TV. Whether for casual TV watching, gaming, or streaming, it delivers on all fronts and is well worth considering.

I have owned Sony TVs for decades. I continue to like the color and performance very much.

But I took off one star for Google TV. Setup requires Google Home which failed. It requires backdooring the security on your router. Thus, you have to turn off your router security. I refused so it didn’t work.
I installed regular TV instead. I noticed that the network came up fine without Google Home. Then I essentially did a manual install of Google TV. After an hour, it worked. Ordinarily I would not have bothered but you need Google TV to install the apps like Disney+. Now everything works and no Google Home and no security holes.

I strongly recommend Amazon Fire Cube instead. Much easier and it works with all of your Sony devices including your home stereo equipment. (Old DVD players not so much.)

I still like the TV part very much. The color is great, the 4k scaling is superb. And you can stream 4k to it.
The sound is a question mark. At my age, my hearing is not so good, so I just don’t know. Thought about a soundbar but that may be overkill.

I love Sony for my PS5 and I have an LG tv hooked up to my PS5. My daughter needed a new TV and mind you she is 9 years old so I thought…. why not get her a small Sony TV (she had an older model LG). I set up the TV and everything was great except when trying to connect my phone to mirror screen. The privacy permissions this thing is asking for……. nope. Since the TV is for my daughter, it’s not a deal breaker but never buying a Sony TV for an adult. These companies are getting wayy to noisy. I read somewhere where it says they will have access to go through the device connected …basically whenever they want. SONY stop it, it’s just a TV. I will stick with LG. I can mirror screen and not worry someone is going through my stuff. It’s an invasion of privacy even if they are asking before they do it. Read carefully before you accept their terms and conditions. I gave two stars since the picture quality is great. It’s only when you try to use Airpaly you get the request to give your privacy rights away to Sony, then you have to unplug the TV to get back to the home screen without hitting “accept” button. Only way to bypass it is to unplug the TV and Turn it back on. Sorry for the long review. Have a good day.

great color and easy set up! This TV is all that and some, I love the life like picture on high-def channels and over the air channels. unlike some of the bad reviews i have been reading about this unit, I did not experience any issues, not even had to do an update! straight out the box up and running. added my google account and that was it! I just ordered another one for my man cave!!

*EDIT: I’m using a windows pc and the recommended resolution is what it defaulted to (3840×2160). Running at THAT resolution is what caused the terrible input lag, but setting it to 4096×2160 fixes it and gets rid of the input lag.

4096×2160 is slightly narrower than 16:9 and does lead to thin black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, but that doesn’t bother me too much; I’m just glad I’ve fixed the input lag. I guess this tv just takes issue with 3840×2160. I don’t own a ps5 or xbox so I can’t test it with a regular game console, unfortunately. I don’t know if modern game consoles let you set their resolution, but if they can’t, this might be an issue.

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original review:

I wouldn’t buy this for gaming. The input lag has got to be around half a second (500 milliseconds). It feels horrible after using a computer monitor. That is, of course, after putting in it gaming mode. Without that, the input lag is seriously over a second. It’s comically bad.

The picture quality is good; probably a great option for watching movies and other normal TV stuff, but awful for gaming.

I’ve been a loyal LG customer for over 10 years now. For many years, their TVs have topped the reviews and have some of the deepest black levels among LED and OLED displays. So I haven’t had a Sony display for some time (before the LG displays I had Panasonic plasma) but when this Bravia 3 showed up in my Vine feed, I thought why not give them a try? I wanted to replace my old HD Panasonic plasma in our bedroom anyway. The Panasonic still looks great, but it is a BEAST that takes two people to move and I never liked that it sat on a wall mount just above where our dog sleeps with so much weight behind it. When the Bravia arrived, I decided to compare it to my LG 77″ OLED which is about a year old. This LG is gorgeous with very deep blacks and excellent color and contrast. It’s kind of my bar to judge other displays by. Imagine my surprise, when side by side this (admittedly smaller) Bravia display at 1/5 the price point of the LG held its own! I did not do any complex setup on the Sony as I did with my LG, I just selected the ‘Cinema Professional’ setting. (NEVER set your TV to anything called ‘Vivid’ or ‘High Color’… those settings are designed to be used in a store when the display is among dozens of others to try to catch your eye. They are not advisable at home and look awful… when I used to sell TVs, we referred to this as ‘Torch Mode’) With just this built-in picture setting, the Sony was very comparable to the $3500 LG I spent a lot of time tweaking the settings on. There were subtle differences of course, but the color rendition and contrast were excellent. I am very impressed. Since this is on the low end of Sony’s lineup, the Bravia 3 does lack many of the specs and settings of the higher-end models such as 120Hz refresh rate (the Bravia 3 is only 60Hz which will likely result in some motion judder) It has direct backlight rather than local dimming of higher-end models, but to be honest I don’t see that much difference when compared to my LG. It does support Dolby Vision, HDR10, HLG, and Dolby Atmos, but lacks DTS. Again, not a dealbreaker by any means although the lack of DTS is a little disappointing, but most new productions are Dolby Atmos anyway. I have no idea what ‘Triluminous Pro’ is but the color on this display is very accurate and rich without blooming or chroma aberration. I’m not sure how I like the Google TV aspect yet, this is my first experience with it but it is nice to have the option of accessing my favorite streaming channels without going through my Roku. Granted, my LG displays also offer this feature but LGs interface is more clunky and I just like the Roku anyway. The Sony is incredibly lightweight, I was able to install this on the wall mount by myself which is no small feat for a 50″ display. The attached images are untouched from my cellphone. Not the most precise way to compare displays, but considering the average viewer is not a pixel-peeper I feel it’s a fair enough comparison. Note the similar color gamut, and the deep blacks in both that that result in a perfect contrast. For the price point, this display is a phenomenal buy, my only unknown so far is how much motion judder will appear at that refresh rate. Luckily, I’m one of those people who barely even notice it, but my wife is very sensitive to it so she’ll be my reference when she gets a chance to spend some time with it. But since she even sees it on my LG with 120Hz refresh, I’m not sure that will relate to much.

We are switching from an LG tv that the color is going bad and is a few years older.

Setup wasn’t difficult. Especially when connecting a Google account.

This tv is noticeably crisper image. And has a good, quick computer that changes the channels and streaming services easily.

Also, our Blue-Ray player from 10 years ago is sony and the TV remote works with the player!

My husband discovered he can play his PlayStation wirelessly from a different room by connecting a Sony controller to the TV. So tally that in the positive or negative category as you please 😅.

For a TV bought off the internet I was worried I was going to regret the investment. It has exceeded my expectations. Easy to set up, the picture quality is great and I was shocked by how loud and clear the built in speakers are. The only complaints I’ve had are twice it’s not wanted to respond to the remote but unplugging and re plugging the power cable fixed the issue

This tv was on par with our older TCL in terms of price when we bought it new, so that is mostly what I will be comparing it to.

Despite being the same size, this tv feels smaller because it is both thinner, and has slimmer bezels. Unboxing and setting the tv up is easy and straightforward. The included feet for the tv just snap into place without the need for any tools. Once powered up it will ask you to connect it to your wifi and run through some system updates which is pretty standard for any smart tv nowadays. It will also ask you to connect a google account, which is optional. It will go ahead and start to add it to your google home and you can go through that process if you do add an account.

Sony will ask you which applications you would like to download so you can stream shows. This is pretty standard now as well, but I appreciate being given this option rather than a bunch of random streaming apps just automatically being installed that I may not use. Sony will also prompt you to make an account for their personal streaming service. They give you some free credits for movies when you sign up which is nice, but you can just ignore this if you don’t want to make another account or just don’t care.

Out of the box, I found the picture quality to be really good. I didn’t measure it, so I can’t give exact numbers, but no one in the house complained or commented on the color, saturation, sharpness, or anything else. We were able to jump right into movies and tv shows without needing to adjust anything. Of course, though, picture and color control are there if you want to adjust them.

The sound was one of the biggest differences I noticed. Despite them being built-in tv speakers, they were both louder and clearer than our previous LG. They still aren’t movie theatre quality or going to sound as good as a soundbar or dedicated speakers, but they are far better than our previous tv’s.

The last and biggest difference for us has been the smart tv part. This tv runs on Google TV. We have traditionally been a Roku house, but all of our Roku devices (including our TCL with Roku built in) have started to become glitchy and slow. We’ve only had this Sony a month now so time will tell, but so far it has been so much snappier and responsive when browsing apps and menus. We no longer randomly get sent back to the tv’s home screen because whatever streaming app decided to crash. Additionally, and this is just personal preference, Google TV’s layout and appearance just look so much better.

All in all, I am extremely pleased with this tv. Sony has always made premium televisions and even though this is a budget option, it still has that premium Sony feel to it.