Because of that crazy Fry's sale (65W850A @ $1499), I have been demoing one of these sets in my home. Yes, I currently have a Sony LED edge-lit LCD sitting on a coffee table in front of my VT60. This double-TV effect is jarringly realistic, like the double-frame effect you get when playing a 30fps console game on a fast-refresh TV like a plasma or...a Sony TV with Motionflow Impulse.
All the usual problems common with LED edge-lit LCDs are present in this set. Black screen uniformity would be great if it weren't for the narrow viewing angles on this S-PVA panel, which causes noticeable washout and brightening on the right and left edges. There is slight vignetting on the left and right edges, this is apparently characteristic on the 2013 Sony LCDs and present across the entire range which have TRILUMINOS due to the way the filter is applied to the panel. There is also a "shadow" in the center of the screen which is darker than the edges, so flashlighting is visible during on-angle viewing. There is also vertical banding during horizontal panning shots, especially on solid-color images like soccer fields. So, this set is basically displaying all the flaws of LED edge-lit LCD in terms of uniformity.
The colors on this set are quite good, even though it's not Sony's top-shelf panel as the W850A is the step-down model from the W900A in 2013. The TRILUMINOS filter seems to help a lot, keep in mind I'm comparing the colors on this set to the plasma display panel on my VT60 which supposedly displays 98% DCI color gamut and it compares pretty favorably. It seems a bit undersaturated compared to the VT60 but engaging Live Color switches the TV into the TRILUMINOS expanded gamut and it gets reasonably close to the VT60 without completely oversaturating and exaggerating everything in sight.
Black levels and contrast are of course no contest, the VT60 blows the W850A out of the water in black levels. The lower contrast ratio of the W850A makes general content look more flat than on the VT60, which means for movies at least the superior choice is the plasma. However for the general TV viewing and gaming, the flatter image actually makes things easier to see, this is dramatically evident in games where HUDs tended to be blindingly bright on the plasma compared to the LCD. I'm not sure how I feel about this, especially since the game UIs being blindingly bright also means the UIs just burn in that much faster.
Okay, I've gotten all the usual desultory image quality shit out of the way, now let's talk about gaming.
Motionflow Impulse is MINDBLOWING. Believe the hype, Impulse is for real. It creates true CRT-like motion resolution on an LCD. There is no sample-and-hold. There is no LCD smearing, because of how Impulse blinks the backlight. Impulse mode doesn't have any Motion Compensated Frame Interpolation either, which eliminates the artifacting characteristic of MCFI. And most amazingly, it does this with only ~30-33ms of input lag when in Impulse mode. The W850A, and presumably other Sony TVs which implement Impulse, is arguably the best gaming TV ever made. Impulse is so good at creating true CRT-like motion resolution that I'm sitting here watching the World Cup in Impulse mode and I actually prefer the interpolation-free picture over the other Motionflow settings which have MCFI.
Yes, it introduces noticeable flicker and if you are sensitive to CRT flicker you will get an ear-splitting headache after 5 minutes of looking at Impulse. Unless Sony implements 120hz backlight blinking such as Lightboost on computer monitors, flicker is unavoidable at 60hz refresh. You really have to demo Impulse mode before you spend the money unless you enjoy returning TVs to stores, because some people will be accepting of the flicker in Impulse and other people will reject it immediately.
There is also the issue of brightness in Impulse mode. The backlight blinks in a 3:1 refresh, the W850A has a 120hz panel and for 3/4 of the refresh, the backlight is off and for 1/4 of the refresh, the backlight is on. This is how it eliminates the LCD smearing, because the backlight is off while the liquid crystals untwist and twist. However this does mean that brightness of the set drops by a whopping 75% while in Impulse mode. You must use Impulse in a light-controlled room, in my case my room is set up to accommodate my VT60 and so I was able to crank up the brightness settings on the W850A to make Impulse workable in my living room. If you are viewing in a room with a lot of ambient light, Impulse will most assuredly be too dark to be usable. If you are viewing in a room which is set up for a plasma, you'll be fine.
I'm going to go ahead and be brutally honest here, because I'm not being paid to say one thing or another. The motion resolution of the W850A in Impulse is superior to the motion resolution of the VT60 for gaming. The plasma has noticeable blue and orange phosphor trailing at edges due to the different brightness decay rates of the different phosphors, this reduces effective motion resolution. In Game Mode, the VT60 also disables some of it's motion smoothing features and the panel's native motion resolution is roughly 800 lines. The W850A achieves a true 1080 lines of motion resolution in Impulse. Yes, the LCD is clearer than the plasma for playing fast-motion games. Furthermore the W850A has lower input lag than the VT60 in Game Mode, ~30-33ms according to Leo Bodnar vs. ~42-47ms.
Oh right, I also get really nasty IR on my VT60. The UI of FFXIV might as well be a permanent part of my plasma at this point, because I literally have to leave the TV on all night running slides to remove the day's burn-in from gaming, which heats up my house because the plasma is a space heater and triples my electric bill. If I turn the plasma off at night, then I'll have the UI forever on my TV since I can't wash the IR away while the TV is off. The past 7 months of ownership of my plasma has really opened my eyes to the problems of gaming on a VT60. The picture quality is unmatched, but the IR is absolutely a killer for gamers and honestly it drives me nuts that I pretty much can't watch regular TV after a few hours of gaming because I'll have to look at the game UI during the movie or show. With the W850A, after I'm done gaming, I turn it off or I just switch to Game of Thrones. No IR, no worries. In the back of my mind the past 7 months I've always wondered if I was permanently destoying my plasma display panel by playing games with persistent HUD elements so much on it. The VT60 is not a cheap TV either, I don't need this kind of constant worrying.
So for gamers, it really does come down to this. I can't live anymore with the IR and burn-in on my plasma anymore for gaming. The VT60 has literally the best picture quality I have ever seen on a consumer TV. The picture quality of the W850A does not come close to the VT60 in all the traditional measurements of quality, like uniformity, contrast, black level, and dark-room viewing. But as a gaming TV, the W850A KO's the VT60 in the first round and proceeds to kick sand in it's face. Superior motion resolution in games, better input lag, and complete lack of IR/burn-in dramatically outweighs pure picture quality concerns when gaming.
If I could build a TV carousel, I would put these TV back-to-back and turn the carousel around when switching between playing games and watching movies. This isn't particularly feasible and disconnecting and re-connecting cables would be a pain in the ass. So now I face a real dilemma. I could return the W850A to the store and just deal with the fucking pain in the ass that is IR/burn-in. I could put the VT60 back in it's box and try to sell it, I'm sure there's people out there who are still looking for the last of the Panasonic plasmas and I could get a good price for a 7-months used set. But really I wish there was a TV which could combine the best parts of the plasma and the LCD into one amazing God-set. OLED can't come soon enough, I guess.
I hope you enjoyed my wall of text. Also, Uruguay are nothing without Luis Suarez.