Sharp AQUOS XLED TV Review (75-inch) – Stunningly Immersive Mini-LED Masterpiece from Japan

Launched earlier this year at CES 2023, the new Sharp AQUOS XLED range of smart TVs in Malaysia eschews mainstream LCDs or OLED panels and instead opts for a more sophisticated Mini-LED panel that aims to offer superior brightness and contrast paired with massive display sizes that take the concept of home entertainment to new heights. 

We recently had the opportunity to review their absolutely gorgeous and massive new TV  and here’s our Sharp AQUOS XLED TV review where we put their largest 75-inch model yet to the test

Sharp AQUOS XLED TV Review (75-inch) – Build and Design

Our Sharp AQUOS XLED TV review sample comes with an absolutely gigantic 75-inch Mini-LED panel though it also comes in a slightly smaller 65-inch version for homes with slightly less than palatial proportions. A vastly larger 120-inch made-to-order model does exist though it’s so far exclusive to Japan for now.

The 75-inch AQUOS XLED TV itself features slim side and top metal bezels done up in a light gunmetal grey with the bottom bezel being just a tad thicker while featuring the Sharp logo limned in silver to create a sleek and eye catching design that can act as the centrepiece of any room.

Out of the box, the TV ships with a hefty pedestal stand that complements the design nicely for placement on a mantelpiece. Getting it set up and mounted on the provided pedestal is, at the very least, a two-man job though having an additional assistant on hand to guide all the components into their proper mountings and screw them in is a prudent measure.  Belying its massive size, the TV supports a VESA mount on the rear which allows you to minimise its footprint.

Sharp AQUOS XLED TV Review (75-inch) – A good reason for being chunky with ARSS+ speakers

While the aesthetics  look stylishly elegant from up front, our 75-inch Sharp AQUOS XLED TV review sample is somewhat chunky at about 88mm thick when viewed from the side though there is a good reason for this. Plenty of TVs in the market typically have a rudimentary 2.0 stereo speaker setup.For better sound in most cases with many other competing TVs, you’ll have to buy a separate soundbar or set of speakers. 

In the case of the Sharp AQUOS XLED, you get better audio straight out of the box as the TV integrates Sharp’s own Around Speaker System Plus (ARSS+) audio system with the extra depth in its dimensions devoted towards offering a series of speakers and better acoustics. 

Hidden within the frame itself are 11 speakers including a 15W subwoofer. The bottom left and right edges of our Sharp AQUOS XLED TV review unit feature a pair of 15W tweeters firing forwards with two pairs of forward firing 10W drivers for a total of four and a pair of upward firing 10W drivers as well as an additional two pairs of upward-firing tweeters for extra sound staging.

The aforementioned 15W subwoofer is plonked near the rear central portion of the base to form a 2.1.2 speaker system that also supports Dolby Atmos with 85W of total power.

Sharp’s audio solution represents quite a bit of savings both literally and figuratively as less space is needed to prop or mount a soundbar for decent sound while more casual owners needn’t necessarily have to chunk out for their own external soundbar or speaker system for decent audio unless they’re looking for a more comprehensive 7.0.0 home theatre setup and the TV is capable of doing so via eARC support.

Sharp AQUOS XLED TV Review (75-inch) – Mini-LEDs and AQUOS XLED tech

The biggest draw to the Sharp AQUOS XLED TV is the massive 75-inch 4K UHD 120Hz Mini-LED panel. Sharp’s experience as a pioneer in manufacturing LCDs with over three decades in the business is put to good use here as the 75-inch 4K UHD Mini-LED panel used in the Sharp AQUOS XLED TV integrates a host of new technologies to offer superior visual quality compared to conventional 4K LCD TVs that they’ve dubbed as AQUOS XLED technology. 

Under AQUOS XLED’s collective umbrella of new technologies are a trio of mutually complementary technologies to offer a superior viewing experience that Sharp refers to as Xtreme mini LEDs, Xtreme brightness backlighting and Deep Chroma QD technology.

Sharp’s Xtreme mini LED array features over 2,000 micro dimming zones each of which can be independently turned on or off to offer exquisitely precise and superior blacks and brilliant whites for footage onscreen. In the case of Xtreme Brightness, as Sharp refers to their technology, the brand has managed to shoehorn a whopping 88x more backlight LEDs into their mini-LED array to offer 6 times the brightness of a conventional 4K LCD TV at 1,900 nits peak brightness. 

That’s not all as Sharp also has their Deep Chroma QD technology to offer exquisitely rich and vibrant colour gamut that has 60% more colour gamut coverage area than a conventional TV.

According to Sharp, this combination of technologies for the AQUOS XLED TVs confers unique advantages, blending the best qualities of an LCD and OLED TV with Sharp’s Mini-LED offering being brighter than the former and offering greater contrast than the latter.

Rather than the mainstream DCI-P3 colour gamut, the Sharp AQUOS XLED TV primarily uses the more recently introduced BT.2020 colour gamut or Rec.2020 standard as it is known in some circles.

The new BT.2020 standard supports higher resolution 4K and 8K content, supports up to 120Hz refresh rates, acts as a guidelines for the standards for ultra high definition television UHDTV and, more importantly, covers 40% more colour gamut than DCI-P3 which in turn means being able to offer richer, more accurate colour accuracy and rendition for content onscreen. 

Our Sharp AQUOS XLED TV review sample supports a whopping 88% BT.2020 colour gamut which is currently the highest rating in the world at this point in time. Gamers will also appreciate the fact that the TV has a 120Hz native refresh rate and also integrates support for AMD FreeSync Premium to minimise tearing when gaming. The TV also supports HDR10 along with Dolby Vision IQ standards for high dynamic range (HDR) content  though it does not, at present, support HDR10+ content for now.  

What all this boils down to is that on paper, the Sharp AQUOS XLED TV’s 75-inch 4K Mini-LED display is able to deliver superb colour accuracy above and beyond current mainstream standards, has excellent brightness and has the tech to go toe to toe with other flagship TVs.

Sharp AQUOS XLED TV Review (75-inch) – Ports and Remotes

Located on the rear left of the TV in a raised housing are its complement of ports spaced around a cluster of side and bottom-facing ports which cover most eventualities in a home entertainment setup including the option to add in an external soundbar as well as consoles and other devices. 

You get a pair of USB Type-A ports for plugging in basic flash drives and other storage media, a quartet of HDMI 2.1 ports with one of them offering eARC/ARC support which will be of value for console gamers, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a wired Ethernet net port and a digital audio output.

Accessing these ports are a chore as they’re located all the way to the back and rear of the TV with half of them clustered sideways and downward which is made more complicated by the sheer size of the TV itself so you’ll likely need to get all your necessary peripherals plugged in first on installation. Seeing as it’s a smart TV, the Sharp AQUOS XLED TV also has WiFi 5 (802.11ac) as well as Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity for pairing with other devices.

In addition to the stand itself, Sharp also issues not one but two remote controls with every AQUOS XLED TV in Malaysia with one featuring a numeric keypad and a denser setup with more options to control colour settings while the other has a simpler design but with a larger navigation button and equal functionality. 

Both remotes ship with a pair of AAA batteries to power them and work equally well with the additional remote acting as a redundancy measure if one goes walkabout behind the couch. Functionally speaking, the smaller 65-inch AQUOS XLED TV  is understandably sized a bit smaller and is a bit cheaper.than our 75-inch review sample but has an identical setup and extra kit in the box along with similar hardware under the hood.

Sharp AQUOS XLED TV Review (75-inch) – Setup and Performance

Our Sharp AQUOS XLED TV review sample runs Android TV 11 firmware under the hood which is a proven, widely used firmware that’s highly popular among many mainstream TVs. While the install for Android TV 11 is mostly stock for our review sample, it adds in several apps unique to Sharp such as Sharp Select which suggests applications to install on the TV.

For Malaysia, the Sharp Select app recommends adding the likes of Plex, Viki, iQiYi, UnifiTV, Disney Hotstar, Spotify and more to offer easier access to more popular local streaming apps. Another unique Sharp specific app is Sharp Cocoro album which is a transliteration from Japanese for Heart but which in effect acts mostly as an image manager and which allows the AQUOS XLED TV to act as a massive photo viewer by simply bunging in a thumb drive into the USB Type-A slot in the rear. 

There’s support for the standard JPG and PNG formats though more unusual ones like gifts and whatnot aren’t on the list for now. It’s certainly not something you’d use often but it’s a nice thing to have around for viewing family photos, holiday clips and the like. 

Minus the firmware, there’s still about 16GB of storage which is plenty for installing additional apps and other additional content if so needed. Powering the TV is their own Sharp X5 X-Revelation quad-core processor though there’s no details as to what process it uses or clock speed at the time of writing.

Logging into Android TV is a perfunctory affair via a Google account which also saves user settings and it is generally preferred to do so so that individual users can retain their preferred settings. The menus and settings are primarily stock for the TV with all of the usual settings available for users familiar with what Android TV has to offer. It also has all of the more popular content streaming apps like Amazon Prime Video, YouTube and Netflix preinstalled. 

User settings are diverse and some patience may be needed to tweak the settings to taste. Out of the box, our Sharp AQUOS XLED TV review sample features 7 possible picture modes that consist of Comfort for easy viewing at night, Standard mode, Dynamic mode for more vivid footage, Sports mode, a Movie mode, an Eco mode to save of the leccy bill and, of note, a Game mode that reduces latency which is critical for competitive multiplayer gaming.

When subjected to 4K reference footage and set to its default standard mode picture settings, our Sharp AQUOS XLED TV review unit was able to deliver relatively accurate colour rendition with superb skin tones, beautifully deep blacks and lovely reams of detail.

This mastery of colours and brightness is are especially apparent in footage from the Mandalorian where the numerous dark scenes as well as the array of textures from the various articles of leather clothing and armour worn by Din Djarin and other characters were retained without being squished to a smudges of brown or black. 

In Squid Game, the TV was able to properly render the hot neon pink uniforms donned by the guards along with the muted green of the tracksuits used by the contestants while ensuring skin tones as well as the eerie sunlit opening scene with the giant killer doll remained true to life. In 4K footage from the Dark Knight Rises, subtle textures and especially dark areas brim with detail.

The TV itself also handles blooming relatively well especially in daytime or relatively well lit scenarios where it’s night invisible and it is really only apparent in extremely dimly lit scenarios like watching a movie at night with the curtains drawn and viewing extremely high contrast content. 

Of note is that the TV supports HDR10 which retains static metadata and has the same tone mapping and brightness settings throughout the entirety of a film and Dolby Vision which is capable of per-scene dynamic brightness and tone mapping so every part of a movie looks fantastic and well lit. 

This is, of course, contingent if a given movie has HDR10 or Dolby Vision metadata embedded in it. Oddly enough, the Sharp AQUOS XLED TV doesn’t support the HDR10+ standard which is a set of HDR standards initiated by Samsung and which is more commonly seen on content on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video though this doesn’t impinge on the playability of a movie and it simple reverts to HDR10. 

Standards aside, our Sharp AQUOS XLED TV review sample was a dab hand for gaming and Cyberpunk 2077 when tested on a PC via a HDMI cable with its intense gunfights and intricate landscapes looked fantastic onscreen with minimal ghosting.

While not immediately apparent, the default colour temperature veers slightly on the warm side. Fortunately this can be tweaked to taste in the settings with little trouble and a quick tweak in settings resulted in far more pleasant looking footage. 

On the acoustic front, our Sharp AQUOS XLED TV review unit with its built-in 85W speakers was able to offer excellent volume that’s loud enough to terrify the neighbours two houses away without distortion. There’s also a good amount of sound left and right sound staging too though this is understandably not particularly deep seeing the speaker setup though bass was pleasantly rumbly. 

For those seeking to tweak the audio especially for music, there may be a quirk or two in its settings. Dolby Atmos is on by default which also precludes the option to tweak any equaliser or sound settings. It’s not immediately obvious but the only way to allow customising audio settings is only by disabling Dolby Atmos. Having the option to do so higher up in the menus or settings rather than having it nested deep in the corner of the menus would be a welcome improvement in future.

That aside, it does a good job for most movies and a fair job for music with clear vocals and detail. Short of a dedicated soundbar or external speaker setup, this is one of the best integrated speakers in a smart TV on test.

Should you buy the Sharp 75-inch AQUOS XLED TV?

The Sharp AQUOS XLED TV is a dark horse contender for 2023, capable of doing justice to premium content on account of excellent brightness, wonderfully lifelike colour rendition and deep blacks on its massive 75-inch Mini-LED panel. A 65-inch variant is also available in Malaysia. If you’re looking for a large 4K Mini-LED TV offering superb picture quality, the Sharp AQUOS XLED TV comes highly recommended.

Sharp AQUOS XLED TV (75-inch) Specifications

Price RM25,999 (75-inch) RM15,999 (65-inch)
Display 75-inch 4K Ultra HD (3,840 x 2,160) Mini-LED display, 120Hz refresh rate, HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision IQ
OS Android 11 TV
Speakers 85W total, ARSS+ (11 speakers – 4 main down firing speakers, 2 forward firing tweeters, 2 up firing main drivers, 2 up firing tweeters 1 15W subwoofer) w/Dolby Atmos, 2.1.2 speaker system
Connectivity WiFi, Bluetooth 5.1
Inputs 2 x USB Type A, 4 x HDMI 2.1, 1 x AV-IN (mini plug), 1 x headphone, 1 x Digital audio output, 1 Ethernet
Size/Weight 1,667 x 970 x 88mm (without stand) / 40.5kg (without stand)

Sharp AQUOS XLED TV review sample courtesy of Sharp Malaysia. For more details, please visit https://my.sharp/aquos/xled