Sony KV-27FS100 review

As the least expensive 27-inch member of Sony's flat-screen WEGA clan, the KV-27FS100 is also the best value in the family. Though it sports Sony's older design, it's still a good-looking, silver-finish set that features just about every critical video performance attribute available in analog 4:3 TVs today.

The effects of those features are all visible onscreen. Right out of the box, this set looked far better than most we've seen, and measurements bore that out. Its accurate grayscale required little or no adjustment when viewed in the Warm color-temperature setting. Clarity was excellent, skin tones looked natural and rich (thanks to the relatively accurate color decoder), and the image was detailed right down into the darkest colors.

This is also the smallest Sony set that offers our favorite 16:9 Enhanced mode, a.k.a. vertical compression. It enables the TV to display the full vertical resolution of anamorphic DVD movie material (in wide-screen format with letterbox bars), for a net gain of 25 percent more picture information than TV sets without compression. At prices starting around $425 online, the FS100 offers the best price/performance ratio of the 27-inch flat-screen TVs we've seen so far.