How is the Android TV experience? Is the TV buggy or does it make for a great set?
How is the Android TV experience? Is the TV buggy or does it make for a great set?
I have the 50W850C, and while I don't have any other AndroidTV experience to compare it to, I think it's a decent experience overall.
The UI can be a bit laggy at times, especially when it's trying to pull "recommendations". I mostly use it for Plex, Netflix, and Amazon Prime.
I have not encountered any huge bugs or crashes, everything just seems to work the way I want it to.
I bought a Sony XBR49X830C two weeks ago and have been pretty impressed with the responsiveness of Android TV. Before the last update I had it reboot on me twice when using the MLB.TV Premium app which is occassionally spotty on any Android platform.
Playing games on mine has been limited. Shark Evolution, Asphalt 8 and Sky Force. Even with the Sony Dualshock 4 controller, lag from it is noticeable in the latter two games, but somewhat playable.
I do wish there was a native Watch ESPN or HBO GO app for Android TV, but I'm very happy with it otherwise.
I got the XBR49X830C a month ago. It was frustratingly laggy and buggy until an update yesterday. I had to deal with random freezes, wifi drops, video playing but no sound across all apps, and a few times I had to literally unplug it to reset it.
Since yesterday, it seems smoother and I haven't seen any of the bugs...yet.
The picture quality on some 4k stuff I streamed off my laptop has been amazing.
It's a pretty good set and the Android TV implementation isn't bad at all. The processing doesn't seem as quick as the x850c or higher 4k models, but it seems to handle everything ok.
If you are considering getting one, make sure the first thing you do after connecting to your LAN is updating to the latest firmware. I work at Best Buy and we have had 2 of the 75w850c's brick because of the older firmware. The Sony rep came in with the newest firmware on a flash drive and tried to force it that way and it didn't work. Both had to be sent directly back to Sony and new one's provided as replacements. The one we have on display now was updated immediately to the latest firmware and has had 0 issues whatsoever. From my understanding, the firmware that shipped with the early sets had a problem with Android TV and that caused bootloops and bricks.