Bang & Olufsen BeoVision 4-85 review

Spruce-up your yacht or penthouse flat with the last word in home cinema style

BeoVision 4-85
Expensive and exceptionally well engineered, this TV is one for the super rich

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BeoVision 4-85

Paired with a reference-level Oppo BDP-95EU Blu-ray player, the BeoVision 4-85 pumps out some seriously great 3D pictures.

Perhaps it's just the size of the screen that creates such enveloping intensity (not that we sat directly underneath it), but a run-through of Avatar delivered some of the most convincing 3D pictures we've seen.

Heavy on contrast and with a searing brightness (at least, for a 3D screen), the BeoVision 4-85 deciphered with intrinsic depth and startling detail the scene where the floating flowers settle on Jake. The way the screen picks out pricks of bright light in otherwise inky black areas of the image is brilliant. In the dog attack scene, it all moves a touch too fast for the BeoVision 4-85; there's a suggestion of crosstalk, though it's mostly a problem with judder.

Colour is sublime, as it is in 2D mode. There's a huge drop in contrast with those 3D specs dumped, though it's still enough to impress when compared to mainstream plasmas. On 2D mode there simply isn't any motion blur at all, which is why plasma is best for monster screens (though the 3D specs do introduce some).

Sky channels look better than Freeview, which is blighted by softness and fizzing around moving objects. That's no surprise on a screen this big, and the good work done in contrast and colour is retained. Overall, the BeoVision 4-85 is a top-drawer screen for 3D and 2D, while for standard definition it does a decent job at cleaning it up, considering its size.

It would be remiss not to point out that 3D material is best viewed on Active 3D screens in as near to blackout as possible – and the BeoVision4-85 is no different.

Jamie Carter

Jamie is a freelance tech, travel and space journalist based in the UK. He’s been writing regularly for Techradar since it was launched in 2008 and also writes regularly for Forbes, The Telegraph, the South China Morning Post, Sky & Telescope and the Sky At Night magazine as well as other Future titles T3, Digital Camera World, All About Space and Space.com. He also edits two of his own websites, TravGear.com and WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com that reflect his obsession with travel gear and solar eclipse travel. He is the author of A Stargazing Program For Beginners (Springer, 2015),