Sharp 65-Inch Aquos XLED TV (4T-C65FV1U)

The last major Sharp TVs we reviewed came out nearly 10 years ago, and since then most of the company's offerings have been aimed at businesses or budget shoppers. With its Aquos XLED line, Sharp is trying to jump into the premium TV field again. The $2,499.99 65-inch model we tested (4T-C65FV1U) is clearly competing with flagship models from LG and Samsung in terms of specs and price. It’s a mini-LED TV with a quantum dot panel, and it’s brighter and has a wider color range than the excellent Samsung S90C and the LG C3 Evo. Brighter and wider don’t always mean better, though; its colors aren’t very accurate out of the box, and shadow details are inconsistent depending on your viewing position. It also lacks an ATSC 3.0 tuner for 1080p TV broadcasts and a hands-free voice assistant. It's a commendable effort from Sharp, but Samsung and LG remain squarely in the lead.

Design: Sleek Screen, Clunky Remote

TVs, even high-end models, rarely have much visual flair anymore, but the Aquos XLED tries to be subtly interesting. The top and sides of the screen are bordered by a thin brushed metal band, while the bottom has a narrow, flat, gunmetal bezel with the Sharp logo in the middle. These elements are all typical, as is the rectangular protrusion below the bottom bezel that holds the infrared remote sensor and indicator LED. The unique element is a sweeping, gently curved accent that runs from the lower corners and over the sensor module. It doesn’t visually pop out, but it’s an elegant touch that avoids the usual nondescript bezel-less rectangle design that most TVs have embraced. Just be aware that the arch has a wide, shallow recess on either side of the sensor box that will probably be a magnet for dust.

The base is also just slightly different enough to be interesting. Visually, it’s a standard rectangular dark gray metal plate that supports the TV on a thick metal stem. However, the stem pivots left and right, so you can adjust the horizontal angle of the screen up to 15 degrees in either direction. Most TVs, especially larger screens, have fixed stands that don’t let you turn the screen to a different angle, so this is a rare benefit. With the 65-inch model we tested, the swivel base seemed stable even when turning the screen. If you don't need the swivel action, you can use an included locking bolt to keep the TV fixed in place. You can also mount the TV on a wall without the stand.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

The Aquos XLED’s ports are split between two sections on the left side of the back of the TV. Two HDMI ports, two USB 2.0 ports, a 3.5mm composite video input, and a 3.5mm service port face left. Two more HDMI ports (one eARC), an optical audio output, a 3.5mm headphone jack, an Ethernet port, and an antenna/cable connector face straight down. A small four-directional control stick sits near the ports in the lower left corner, offering some ability to use the TV without the remote. 

The included long, slim remote is functional, but not particularly elegant. It’s covered in buttons, with a large, flat number pad, a set of playback controls, and dedicated service buttons for Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and YouTube near the top. A circular navigation pad sits below them in a less-than-convenient position, with volume and channel rockers further down. It isn’t as sleek or sophisticated as the remotes included with high-end TVs from LG and Samsung. LG’s Magic Remote has almost as many buttons as Sharp’s, but with a friendlier, more curved design and buttons that are easier to identify solely through touch, plus functionality as a motion-sensing air mouse. Samsung’s Eco Remote is a tiny rectangle that relies mostly on the navigation pad and features a solar panel and a USB-C port for a rechargeable battery (while LG's and Sharp’s remotes use two AA batteries).

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

Sharp packs the Aquos XLED with audio power, giving the TV an 85-watt speaker system with six midrange drivers, four tweeters, and one subwoofer. Here, the subwoofer is better described as a bass driver, as it’s integrated with the TV and lacks the physical space a conventional, separate subwoofer uses to produce true wall-shaking sound.

It offers a higher peak output than most 65- and 75-inch TVs, and the multiple drivers can deliver a wide and detailed sound field from the front thanks to Dolby Atmos support. Still, there’s a limit to the dynamic range and spatial audio imaging a TV’s speakers can provide, and if you really want booming lows or all-around surround sound, you should consider a separate soundbar with its own subwoofer, upward-firing drivers, and/or rear satellites.

LG and Samsung have an edge on this front, not only for the impressive speakers in their high-end TVs, but because their respective Wow Orchestra and Q-Symphony features let certain soundbar models work in conjunction with those integrated speakers for better imaging and dynamic range instead of disabling them like most soundbars typically do.

Smart TV: Google TV, But Not Hands-Free

The Sharp Aquos XLED uses Google TV as its smart TV platform, providing access to all major streaming services and plenty of features. Apps for Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Crunchyroll, Disney+, Max, Netflix, Twitch, and YouTube are available, among many others. It also supports Google Cast for local streaming from your Android device or Chrome tab.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

Despite what appears to be microphones on the TV’s infrared sensor cluster, it doesn’t support hands-free Google Assistant access like Google TV-powered models from Hisense, Sony, and TCL. Considering the high price, this is a notable omission.

To access Google's voice assistant on the Aquos XLED, press the microphone button on the remote before you speak into it. Google Assistant is handy for searching for content, getting general information like the weather and sports scores, and controlling smart home devices.

Performance: Slightly Cool Colors

The Aquos XLED is a mini-LED 4K TV with a 120Hz refresh rate and support for high dynamic range (HDR) content in Dolby Vision, HDR10, and hybrid log gamma (HLG). It has an ATSC 1.0 tuner for over-the-air TV, but no ATSC 3.0 for 1080p broadcasts, which is disappointing. LG’s C3 Evo also lacks an ATSC 3.0 tuner, but Hisense and Samsung’s higher-end TVs have them.

We test TVs using a Klein K-10A colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays’ Calman software. Out of the box, with an SDR signal in Movie mode, the Aquos XLED shows a peak brightness of 199 nits with a full-screen white field and 218 nits with an 18% white field, along with effectively perfect blacks. This is quite dim even for SDR, but increasing the backlight to full and setting both local dimming and contrast control to high pushes that peak brightness up to 472 nits with a full-screen white field and 1,270 nits with an 18% white field. These settings do make the blacks less than perfect, though, at 0.001cd/m^2, which, to be fair, is still excellent.

With an HDR signal, the Aquos XLED shows a peak brightness of 523 nits with a full-screen white field and 1,648 nits with an 18% white field, along with negligible black levels. Local dimming LED backlight arrays, especially mini-LED arrays, can cut out enough light to offer black levels similar to OLED panels with little light bloom (which OLED TVs fundamentally don’t produce), making contrast ratios for these TVs effectively infinite. Though the contrast ratio number has become much less relevant, peak brightness and the ability to display fine shadow details are still very important.

(Credit: PCMag)

The above charts show the Aquos XLED’s color performance in Movie mode with an SDR signal compared with Rec.709 broadcast standards, and an HDR signal compared with DCI-P3 digital cinema standards. In both cases, the TV runs a bit cool, with whites drifting a bit toward blue. Red, greens, and yellows are spot-on in SDR, but cyans and magentas are also pulled toward blue. HDR is a bit more balanced, with whites just a touch warmer but still cool, and cyans and magentas much more in line with where they should be. Greens and reds exceed the DCI-P3 color space, but yellows are slightly undersaturated. Generally, this is an impressively wide color gamut, but not the most accurately saturated one out of the box.

The “Lions” episode of BBC’s Dynasties looks very good on the Aquos XLED. The greens of Serengeti grass look vibrant but not oversaturated or cartoonish, and the fine texture of lightly colored lion fur and dark cowhide comes through clearly. In Movie mode, colors appear natural and balanced across the board.

While colors are vibrant when viewing the Aquos XLED from straight on, they start to desaturate as soon as you move more than about 30 degrees off-angle, which also causes some reduction in contrast. The fading isn’t significant—it’s the dip in color range and contrast you would get moving from a high-end TV to a midrange TV without quantum dots, and the picture stays quite viewable as you move to the side. It just loses some vividness compared with viewing the screen in the sweet spot directly in front of it.

In The Great Gatsby, black suits worn in the party scenes appear properly dark, but their cuts, contours, and textures fade a bit into muddiness without much shadow detail when viewed straight on. If you move a bit to the side the details come out, but the blacks get less dark as well. The whites of lights, balloons, and shirts all pop and look very bright while keeping plenty of highlight detail when directly in front of the TV, and skin tones are saturated and balanced. Some tweaking of the local dimming and auto contrast settings in the TV can help bring out shadow details while preserving the overall contrast, but out of the box in Movie mode there’s a bit of an imbalance depending on where you sit.

Shadow details in some content might get slightly muddy, but the Aquos XLED still has an excellent picture when you’re watching it in the sweet spot. The mini-LED backlight produces deep blacks when needed while still showing bright and vivid highlights, as seen when viewing demo footage from the Spears & Munsil Ultra HD benchmark disc. In a dim-to-moderately lit room, bright subjects like cacti against completely black backgrounds pop out and show very little light bloom around their edges.

Gaming: Quick, But Not the Quickest

A 120Hz refresh rate and support for variable refresh rate (VRR) make the Aquos XLED appealing for gaming, even though it does not support AMD FreeSync or Nvidia G-Sync.

Testing input lag on the TV with an HDFury Diva HDMI matrix, we measured 7.8 milliseconds in Game Mode. That’s below our 10ms threshold to consider a TV good for gaming, though it doesn’t hit the sub-millisecond speeds we’ve recently measured in OLED TVs like the LG C3 Evo and the Samsung S90C. Both LG and Samsung TVs also feature very useful control panels specifically for checking and adjusting settings while gaming, which the Aquos XLED and other Google TV sets we’ve tested lack.

Verdict: A Good Effort That's Priced Too High

Sharp makes a valiant effort to compete with LG and Samsung’s flagship TVs, and in many ways the Aquos XLED comes close. Its mini-LED backlight is very bright and produces excellent contrast, and its quantum dot LCD panel produces a wide color gamut. But unless you’re watching from a sweet spot, those colors desaturate quickly, and they run a bit cool out of the box. In addition, the lack of a far-field microphone array for hands-free Google Assistant and an ATSC 3.0 tuner are disappointing at this high price. The Samsung S90C and the LG C3 Evo OLED TVs both show far more accurate and realistic color, have better shadow detail, and offer hands-free access to Amazon Alexa, so they remain at the top of the pack.