Looking to add Google TV to your living room this holiday season? Sony's NSX-32GT1 32-inch is one of the best bets, next to Sony's ($199.99, 4 stars). It originally came out for $799.99 direct, but the price has since dropped to $499.99, putting it in line with other feature-rich 32-inch HDTVs. It's also recently received an upgrade to Google TV 3.1, which uses Android Honeycomb. The new version features a more visually appealing menu design and supports the Android Market to bring apps to your TV. For a deeper dive into Google TV 3.1, read our story.

Design

As with the ($2,999.99, 3 stars), the NSX-32GT1 looks more like a desktop monitor than an HDTV. Its rounded edges and glossy white cabinet are right out of Apple's design book, as is the thin metal stand. The panel is framed by shiny black bezels and covered edge-to-edge in glass that gives the set a slick look, but makes the screen a bit reflective. The stand, while sturdy, does not provide any sort of adjustability (not even swivel), so keep that in mind when determining where to place the TV.

HDTVs with edge-mounted LED backlighting usually offer ultra-thin cabinets, but that's not the case here; at 2.25 inches thick, the NSX-32GT1 may be thin compared to the 3-inch-thick ($3,199.99, 4 stars), but it's still about an inch thicker than the ($2,099.99, 3.5 stars). There are no functions buttons to be found on the NSX-32GT1; all picture settings and other adjustments are done using the remote (the same gamepad-like Bluetooth QWERTY remote found on the Internet TV Blu-ray Player). There is a power switch and power and sleep timer LED indicators located along the lower right bezel, as well as remote and ambient light sensors.

Features

Two of the set's four HDMI ports are accessible from the left side, as are a total of four USB ports (that's three more USB ports than you'll get with most TVs), a headphone jack, and a Connect button used to pair the remote with the TV. Around back are an IR Blaster connection, one set of component A/V jacks, a coaxial TV/Cable/Antenna jack, two HDMI ports, an Ethernet port, and one digital audio output. If you have more than one non-HDMI device, you're going to have to get a component switch. The NSX-32GT1 features built-in Wi-Fi that supports two bands (2.4 and 5.0GHz) and will work with 802.11 a/b/g/n networks. A pair of 10-watt speakers are moderately loud and predictably short on bass response, but they are adequate for small rooms.

Google TV brings with it a plethora of online features with a slick user interface, but at this point in time it doesn't quite stack up against the catalog of web apps that you get with sets like the Samsung LN55C650. You do get You Tube, Napster, Netflix, and Amazon Video On Demand, as well as a few kid-based channels and news channels, but for now, you still don't get popular streaming services like Vudu, Hulu, and Blockbuster On Demand. Several major networks have blocked content to Google TV as well, so you can't even watch full episodes from their web sites.

Google TV, for the uninitiated, rounds up all of your media into one easy-to-search user interface. Well-designed with fluid graphics, it consists of a menu on the left-hand panel of your television with various choices: Bookmarks, Applications, Spotlight, Most Visited, Queue, What's On, Sony Recommends, and (if you have DISH Network service) DISH Cinema. The Sony Internet TV interface comes with preloaded apps, but once the App market is available to Google TV later in the year, you will be able to customize your app selection. One of Sony's preloaded apps, Qriocity, offers pay-on-demand content and looks identical to another app on the menu, Sony Recommends.

Google's Chrome browser offers a different web experience than a traditional browser. It keeps track of sites you visit most and presents them to you as "live" icons. If you click on them, you are immediately taken to the site, like a quicker, icon-based bookmark. If you plan on sharing access to the Google TV interface with others, just remember: anyone see what you were perusing on the Internet, so sign out of your email, at the very least. Annoyingly, there is no way to have separate password-protected "accounts" so different family members can surf without everyone seeing what everyone else was looking at. Since the icons are ordered in terms of how often the sites they represent are visited, more than privacy is at stake here—your browser will mix in your popular sites with your housemates', as well, making the Chrome experience a bit less streamlined than it would be on a computer that only you have access to. One positive aspect of Chrome: it offers full Flash support, so you can access video and animated content that an iPhone or iPad might have issues with (assuming the video isn't blocked based on the device, an issue with many television networks' web sites).

Armed with a QWERTY keyboard, the remote almost resembles a white Playstation game controller. The great thing about having a plethora of buttons and options on a remote is that you can do or control virtually anything on the device. Unfortunately, it also means the remote can get crowded with vaguely-differentiated buttons. There are two click-wheel-esque sections, for instance; the left-hand set of buttons has Up/Down and Left/Right navigation controls surrounding an Enter button in the circle's center. The right-hand set is laid out similarly, but the surrounding buttons are Home, Window Minimize (so you can watch TV while doing other tasks simultaneously), Settings, and Previous Screen, and the center area is both a click-able button and a mini-trackpad for your finger.

The trackpad works well, with just the right amount of sensitivity to guide a cursor around the screen. As a button, however, it acts similarly to an Enter button--but we already have one of those on the left-hand control pad. Sometimes you can use either the Enter button or the trackpad button for a specific task, but sometimes you need to use one and not the other. The problem is: which button is the right one is rarely obvious, and the learning curve can be annoying. Ideally, there would be just be one master trackpad and separate, dedicated Home and Settings buttons. Despite this gripe, typing is easy on the remote, and you eventually learn how to control the whole system despite the button redundancy.

The remote is ideally sized, but would benefit from a more streamlined design and better sensitivity. At least it isn't as large as Logitech's remote for the Revue with Google TV, which is the size of a computer keyboard. Regardless, it feels a bit cluttered.

Picture, audio, and network settings are built in to the Google UI, making it easy to tweak options and search for content from a unified menu system with the remote. There are five Picture modes (Standard, Cinema, Vivid, Graphics, Custom), with Cinema providing the best overall picture presets out of the box. In addition to brightness, contrast, tint, and sharpness settings, you can fine tune white balance and gamma values and adjust red, green, and blue saturation levels. Here you'll also find noise reduction, aspect ratio, color temperature, and CineMotion (film-based) settings, plus several ECO settings where you can enable quick start (reduces the time it takes to go from off to a full picture), auto shut-off (TV powers down after 15 minutes without a signal), and power saving (the TV goes into standby mode after a predetermined period of inactivity) modes. In my testing, the Quick start feature used around 54 watts to bring the set from off to ready, and it did it in a heartbeat. In regular mode, the set used just 32 watts, but there was a 32 second wait before the set was ready to roll.

Performance

The NSX-32GT1 delivers relatively dark blacks (0.03cd/m2) and mostly accurate colors. Red and green color measurements were very close to the CIE 1976 chromaticity spec, but blues were oversaturated. Fortunately, the heavy blues do not affect skin tones or cause blacks to appear purplish, and there was no evidence of tinting in the DisplayMate 64-Step grayscale patterns.

HD picture quality was very clean and passed all of my HQV Blu-ray image tests with ease. The BBC production of Planet Earth on blu-ray played smoothly and was crisp with excellent shadow detail. Standard definition quality is another story, however; although the picture was relatively sharp, background noise was an issue while displaying both my DVD test movies and SD programming via the lab's satellite box. Setting the noise reduction option to medium helped eliminate some, but not all, of the artifacts.

As is often the case with edge-lit LED lighting, the NSX-32GT1's overall screen uniformity took a slight hit, particularly along the upper edge where some areas appeared a bit brighter than the rest. These hot spots were most noticeable in very dark scenes. Also disappointing was the panel's viewing angles; as I moved away from dead center colors were not as punchy, causing the picture to look a bit washed out.

The 32-inch panel drew an average of 53 watts of power while displaying high definition content from my Blu-ray test disc. Based on the national average cost of 11.55 cents per kWh and calculated for an average of 5 hours of daily use, The NSX-32GT1 will add approximately 90 cents a month to your utility bill. While that's not quite as efficient as the 32-inch Westinghouse LD-3255, it's still good enough to earn it our Greentech award for energy efficiency.

The Sony NSX-32GT1 is unique in that it is the first HDTV to offer integrated Google TV, and while it does not look like a typical HDTV, its cool white cabinet and edge-to-edge glass design will dress up any room. However, this TV is not what you would call a stellar performer; it has trouble with standard definition noise and screen uniformity and suffers from narrow viewing angles. I'd also prefer a few more practical AV inputs instead of an overabundance of USB ports. That said, if you want a stylish HDTV with the latest online content delivery system built right in, the NSX-32GT1 is the only game in town. At least for now.

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