Sony’s CES Highlights Include Wafer-Thin UltraHD TVs and 4K Camcorders

The razor-thin 65-inch X900C is one of Sony’s new quantum-dot 4K TVs. Sony

One of the major themes at CES 2015 is that 4K is here to stay. The coming year will see far more UltraHD sets, far more readily available 4K content, and probably more new 4K TVs than 1080p sets.

Sony is covering both ends of the 4K spectrum—watching it and making it—with its announcements at this year’s show. There will be new wall-hangable, impossibly thin “floating” 4K sets. And because our eyeballs will likely decide that only UltraHD is good enough for them in the coming years, there are also some very affordable 4K camcorders to record things with.

The most immediately accessible, especially for Mountain Dew drinkers, is the 4K Action Cam FDR-X100V. It’s a water/shock/freeze-proof GoPro rival that shoots UltraHD video at 30fps and 24fps in XAVC S format. In 4K, the camera captures at a bitrate up to 100Mbps, and you can dial back the resolution to 1080p to record at 120fps or 720p to record at 240fps.

The FDR-X100V is a tiny 4K action camcorder. Sony

The rugged camcorder also has an optical-stabilization system built with correcting drone-specific shake in mind, and Sony says the lens has an ultra-wide 170-degree field of coverage. A few manual controls are in the mix, including exposure-compensation and white-balance adjustments. The 4K action cam is due in February for $500 or $600 as a kit with a dedicated remote.

Bigger—but not by much—is the new HDR-AX33 Handycam, which is the smallest handheld 4K camcorder Sony has released to date. It shoots 3,840 x 2160 XAVC S video at 30p and 24p, and it has built-in Wi-Fi that enables it to live-stream footage to Ustream. Its manual controls are deeper, and it has the trippy “Balanced Optical SteadyShot” system that allows the entire lens housing to float around and combat hand shake. That camcorder is coming in mid-February for $1,100.

And as you might expect, Sony wants to sell you some new sets for watching all that 4K footage. The new top-of-the-line models are the 55- and 65-inch XBR-X900C and 75-inch XBR-910C, all of which have the company’s “Triluminous” wide color gamut displays. In past years, Triluminous has been Sony’s code name for quantum-dot technology, and that’s likely to be the case with the new X900 series models. A Sony spokesperson described this year’s models as having a wider color gamut, higher dynamic range, and plasma-like deep blacks.

In any event, they’re absurdly thin (less than 0.2 inches thick at their slimmest point), with barely any bezels. And although they come with a cosmetically pleasant stand, you can also mount them “flush with the wall,” according to Sony.

All of those sets come equipped with Android TV and ChromeCast features baked in, as do a couple of beefier higher-end models that also have the same panel and processing technology. The quantum-dot “Triluminos” X930C (65 inches) and X940C (75 inches) trade in the thin profile and easy wall-hangability for better built-in speakers. Each of them has front-facing speakers, including a subwoofer, and the sets support 24-bit/96kHz audio.

You’ll have to wait till the Spring to get the new sets, and pricing hasn’t been announced yet.