Challenging the world's first, how can Honor Smart Screen Pro compete with Sony X8500G?

After declaring that it "will not engage in price wars", Honor Smart Screen has set its sights on the mid-to-high-end TV market.

In terms of product layout, Honor Smart Screen has released two 55-inch models, a standard version priced at 3,799 yuan and a Pro version priced at 4,799 yuan. Due to the intensified competition in the panel industry, the prices of high-K large-size LCD TVs have continued to fall in recent years. At present, the average market price of 55-inch 4K LCD TVs has dropped to around 2,000 yuan. This shows that Honor Smart Screen is determined to occupy the mid-to-high-end market.

In fact, when the smart screen was first launched, Honor was targeting Sony, and its intention to target the mid-to-high-end market was obvious.

At the press conference, Honor compared itself to the 55-inch Sony X8500G, which is currently priced at 5,799 yuan. There is still a price difference of 1,000 yuan between Honor Smart Screen Pro and Sony X8500G. Will the result be a draw when Honor Smart Screen competes with the TV brand that is recognized as having the best picture quality in the world?

Today, we put these two TVs together to see how powerful they are.

Stripping away the sales rhetoric of future interaction, the Honor Smart Screen is still essentially a TV. Therefore, in the spirit of talking about the screen without considering the picture quality, let's first take a look at the display quality between the two.

Round 1: Whose colorful pictures are more eye-catching?

In order to highlight the impact of the picture, both TVs have made certain technical investments in wide color gamut technology. The Honor Smart Screen Pro claims that the NTSC color gamut has reached 87%, while the Sony X8500G is equipped with Triluminous, a signature technology.

For this unique Sony technology, Triluminos can bring a wider color gamut and richer color levels, allowing the picture to maintain appropriate saturation without color cast.

We adjusted both TVs to vivid mode and played the test video.

From a subjective eye perspective, the Sony X8500G is clearly superior to the Honor Smart Screen in terms of color vividness. For example, when comparing the rock landscape and the rock wall, the red of the X8500G appears more gorgeous and pure.

This also means that under the same video screen, the X8500G is more eye-catching than the Honor Smart Screen. After all, with Sony's Tricolor Quantum Dot raw materials, there is still a gap compared to the traditional LED backlight.

However, the performance of Honor Smart Screen in dark details is indeed unexpected. In the rock wall area, the texture details of Honor Smart Screen are clearly visible. Compared with the depth of Sony, the display effect is much friendlier.

The two TVs will bring a greater difference in visual perception when watching high-definition sources. The difference is mainly caused by Sony's long-term accumulation of display technology. The X1 chip it carries can fully mobilize every pixel of the LCD panel. In comparison, Honor still has some gap from the industry's top level, but it is still encouraging for a new entrant to achieve such picture quality.

From the perspective of color tone, the X8500G once again takes advantage of its bright colors. We can see that Sony has restored the details of the character's blush, and the overall look is more transparent and delicate. In comparison, the Honor Smart Screen looks more austere and cold, tending to be more elegant.

It is worth noting that both of them have fully restored the texture details of the character's hair, and have clear depictions of areas such as the direction of the hair ends.

In terms of direct visual experience, although the Honor Smart Screen has not yet achieved the same visual impact as Sony, it is still able to compete with top brands in terms of details, which is surprising.

Round 2: Viewing angle comparison, both sides performed well

Both TVs use IPS panels, so they both have wide viewing angles and will not cause color shift at vertical and horizontal angles. From actual tests, both maintain good performance at oblique viewing angles.

Round 3: Dynamic interpolation, which one has smoother picture quality?

In various publicity, Honor Smart Screen emphasizes its magic picture quality engine, which is actually the MEMC motion compensation and other technologies. Judging from the current situation in the industry, these technologies have actually been widely used. Take MEMC for example, which is similar to the interpolation technology, inserting transition frames between two frames of moving pictures to improve the smoothness of the picture performance.

Sony has already had technical reserves in this area, and its Motionflow technology has been well received by users since its launch. In the advanced options of the X8500G, there is an adjustment of the Motionflow level. Although increasing it can increase the smoothness, it will also cause the "jelly effect" of the picture, which is not worth the loss. Therefore, we use the default level here.

Judging from the actual pictures, this comparison is not completely one-sided, and the two still maintain a synchronized posture in some scenes. After slowing down the comparison at the same time, the overall look and feel of the X8500G is slightly smoother than that of the Honor Smart Screen.

Round 4: High-definition analysis, the details are revealed

The picture display effects of both are remarkable, especially in the second picture, the X8500G has clearer cliff texture than the Smart Screen Pro, but the Smart Screen Pro is better than the X8500G in the light and dark details of the woods.

Considering the previous comparison of color tones, it is not difficult to see that the Smart Screen Pro has put a lot of effort into the details of light and dark contrast this time. Both use side-entry backlights, and there are hardware deficiencies in the backlight partitioning capability, which rely more on algorithm adjustment to compensate. As a newcomer to the market, the Smart Screen Pro is well prepared to achieve this level of light and dark contrast.

Round 5: Low latency, can both parties get rid of lag?

Not only the picture quality, but also the delay of the TV is of great importance to gamers. When using HDMI cables to transmit data, the TV does not directly display it, but requires a series of technical reprocessing by the internal chip before it can be displayed. From the time we type the operation until the corresponding picture appears on the TV, there will be a certain delay time in between, and the whole process becomes the post-processing process of the TV.

We connected the TV projector via an HDMI cable and called up an online stopwatch to take pictures of the two screens. The time difference can be simply regarded as the delay time. The whole process was repeated six times to get a rough result.

When the vivid mode is turned on respectively, the delay difference between the two TVs is not that big, both maintained at around 80ms.

However, both TVs have a game mode, so the post-processing time will be reduced to a certain extent, reducing the delay. In comparison, the delay value of Sony X8500G is slightly lower than that of Smart Screen Pro, with the average value of the former being around 47.3ms and the latter being around 52.5ms.

In terms of the overall effect, both games can achieve a significant reduction in latency, so for gamers, it is very important to turn on the corresponding mode when playing games. The latency of general games needs to be kept within 50ms. There is no doubt that Sony has a better performance in games.

Round 6: System gameplay, smart screen leads without pressure

There is no need to compare this round. Sony has never paid much attention to the TV system, and the overall style language tends to be simple or even crude, while Honor focuses on interactive gameplay and even added a camera for this purpose. The huge gap between the two can be imagined.

Compared with Sony's native Android 8.0, Honor Smart Screen Pro uses the recently popular Hongmeng system. It is worth noting that there are no advertisements when both TVs are turned on, and the internal advertisements are limited to the film playing level, so there is not much difference between the two companies in this regard.

In terms of scalability, the X8500G with Android supports installing APK via USB, while the Hongmeng system software of the Smart Screen Pro needs to be compiled and adapted, so it currently only supports its own application market, with limited scalability. However, this is not a rigid demand, not to mention that the Smart Screen Pro's main focus on interaction has broken through the screen-to-screen restrictions, and mobile phone screen projection can directly bring rich gameplay. With the stability of screen projection in the future, the functionality of the TV itself will be further weakened, and this is just a microcosm of the interactive era.

Comparing the two, Sony is clearly out of step with the times. However, one question is – are these interactive features worth the premium we pay for?

From the current interactive experience, traditional TVs need to rely on third-party screen projection apps to perform related functions, and there are certain deficiencies in the degree of adaptation and screen projection delay. The Honor Smart Screen has made great efforts to optimize the three aspects of "how to interact", "interaction feedback" and "interaction surface". Although we can achieve similar effects through DLNA or Miracast mirroring, the NFC method of the Smart Screen is undoubtedly the best solution for startup, and Huawei Share and Magic Screen Control also have unique advantages in control and data.

From the actual experience, the interactive experience of the smart screen is indeed far superior to that of traditional manufacturers, and Huawei also has the potential of Hongmeng system and 5G on this screen, and the future is worth looking forward to. From this point of view, it is worthwhile for Huawei users to pay for the convenience of the smart screen.

In fact, it is the emergence of smart screens that has also driven traditional manufacturers and injected a lot of inspiration into the market. It is foreseeable that in the future, televisions will not only be used for viewing, but also become the entrance to the home interaction center. Traditional manufacturers undoubtedly need to speed up in this area.

Summarize

In terms of overall effect, Honor does have a certain gap with Sony, but in terms of performance such as light and dark contrast, it has been able to be on par with or even surpass Sony, which is really commendable.

In terms of top-notch image quality, Sony still represents the most cutting-edge level in the industry. However, the "dark horse" Honor Smart Screen Pro has also demonstrated its technical strength. According to our observation, the Smart Screen Pro is still comparable to the mid-range models of first-tier manufacturers such as Samsung.

For Honor today, if it wants to catch up with the high-end products of first-tier manufacturers, it still needs to make up for the technological gap. When time has settled, Honor will inevitably launch another attack and establish its own industry brand value.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.