Sony XEL-1 OLED: small size, big price

Fwd Tech  Wednesday 28 January 2009

Can you afford to splash £3,500 on an 11-inch telly? You can? Good for you…

We’ve been going on about OLED since the first time we saw Sony’s first telly to use that tech, the XEL-1, at 2007’s CES! That was two years ago, but the set’s only just now going on sale in the UK, and with a whopping £3,489 price tag!

Okay, it’s hard to deny that the XEL-1 is the future of television, with its slinky 3mm-thin body and 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, but should you rush out and buy one? Not, unless you’re more minted than a Polo mints factory. For some reason inexplicable reason, Sony is charging us Brits twice what the Americans are paying for the XEL-1.

The picture quality is undeniable, but (to quote ever single footballer under the son) at the end of the day, this is an 11-inch TV. And to spend three and a half Gs on a television of that size, in this economic climate, is more obscene than we care to mention. That’s it. Move on now…