Sony Bravia XR A95K OLED TV review: The best 4K TV ever

Price when reviewing

$3,499.99 MSRP (on sale for $2,879.00 at the time of this review)

Best Prices Today: Sony Bravia XR A95K Series OLED TV (65-inch XR-65A95K model)

$2879.00

$2,998.00

$3199.99

This Sony Bravia XR A95K series is the second TV we’ve seen based on Samsung Display’s new RGB OLED technology. It’s also arguably the best (by a slim margin) thanks to Sony’s processing and audio expertise and a superior Smart TV (Google TV) user interface. We like it. A lot.

However, buying the best OLED TV will cost you dearly: at the time of this review, the 65-inch model we tested was on sale for between $2,879 and $3,000, around $1,200 more than the very competitive Samsung’s S95B ($1,800 on sale), and nearly $900 more than LG’s excellent OLED C2/G2 ($2,000 on sale).

This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart TVs.

Bravia XR A95K Series Features and Design

By far the most notable feature of Sony’s A95K series is its 120Hz, 3840 x 2160 pure RGB OLED display. If you’re unfamiliar, the LG OLEDS that have dominated this market segment for the past few years are WRGB. In other words, they use a fourth white sub-pixel to increase the maximum brightness when needed. WRGB works very well, but tends to reduce color saturation in bright spots. Despite this, LG OLEDs have very good color accuracy the vast majority of the time.

The A95K series’ pure RGB technology uses only red, green, and blue subpixels, so it maintains color saturation as highlights get brighter. In our tests, it seems Sony exploits this advantage and overdrives at times. I say “finished”, but the effect is extremely pleasing to the eye.

The other standout feature of the A95K is its use of the display glass as a planar speaker. The rear-mounted turbines, driven by 60 watts of total power, vibrate the panel to very good effect, making this one of the few TVs you won’t feel the immediate need to turn up the sound.

Back to the more mundane aspects: the 65-inch unit Sony sent us is very thin: 1.75 inches at the caboose used to house its electronics and those sound wheels. It sits on a fairly massive stand, bolted to two L-brackets which themselves bolt to the stands. The set with its extremely thin bezel is very attractive, as you can see in the image below.

The 65-inch Bravia XR A95K weighs just under 60 pounds, with the stand contributing about an additional 30 pounds. It was a bit of a bear to struggle myself, but doable. I suggest the help of a friend, who was not available to me at the time. The VESA mounting point is a 300mm x 300mm pattern.

Port selection is top-notch: four HDMI ports, two of which support 120Hz refresh rates, variable refresh rate (VRR), and Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM). An HDMI port also supports eARC. You’ll also find a coaxial connection for an over-the-air TV antenna or cable/satellite box, Ethernet, composite audio with a center speaker input, optical S/PDIF audio output), RS-232 and two USB-A ports ( one on the side of the TV, the other down).

There’s a Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) adapter on board and the Bluetooth radio has latency compensation. There’s support for HDR10 (but not DR10+), Dolby Vision, HLG, Calman auto-calibration, DTS Digital Surround, Dolby Atmos (and precursors). There are a number of sound modes (EQ) as well as fake 3D audio scaling. The TV automatically adjusts its sound to room conditions during setup.

I stream movies over my local network and the built-in media player (which also supports USB mass storage) has become a top notch entity with exceptionally wide codec support.

In short, there’s not a lot of cutting-edge hardware missing from this TV.

Sony Bravia XR A95 Series Smart TV Interface and Remote Control

Sony uses the Google TV interface here, which has become a reasonably efficient and navigable creation. I liked that the home row was taken up with main input and settings icons rather than Sony-sold content.

The voice remote, which supports Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, is the significantly improved, smaller and more focused model Sony launched last year. It’s backlit for use in dark environments and sports-dedicated buttons for settings, input and transport control. I like its balance of minimalism and functionality a bit more than Samsung’s austere remote controls that force you on screen for almost any task.

I will also say that the Sony remote feels nice in the hand. While I like Samsung’s solar-powered rechargeable One Remote from an environmental perspective, the slightly heavier weight of Sony’s battery-powered remote provides more substantial tactile feedback. That said, you should still use the on-screen selectors to enter numbers etc. Sigh.

As for the UI/remote synergy, you can change the settings and see the effect in real time, which can make all the difference if you’re customizing the image for specific content. There are a multitude of options for this task, far more than the non-videophile wants or needs. I was ok with the template settings provided by Sony: Standard, Cinema, IMAX, etc.

Overall, I found Sony’s A95K to be much more efficient in use than Samsung’s Tizen-based S95B.

Picture and sound quality of the Sony Bravia XR A95K series

Although the image of the A95K is not perfect, it’s damn close. Color is rich and eye-perfect, there’s plenty of peak brightness (without blowing out color, thanks to the panel being pure RGB rather than RGBW), and blacks are; That’s good is an OLED TV, so blacks look great.

However, I would be remiss if I did not inform you that the Sony A95K is not as bright as the Samsung S95B. It’s not really noticeable in real life, but there is a slight dip, probably on purpose, as both TVs use the same core panel technology.

If I were to be picky, gradients in the dark end of the spectrum weren’t as accurate as they are with LG’s WRGB panel, but that’s a nice trade-off that most users will never notice.

Screen uniformity is impressive, viewing angles are superbly wide, there’s no blooming around bright objects and the overall picture is in one word: lush. That’s standard for OLED, though, and I did notice some glare at some steep viewing angles, but only when the hard, bright test room lighting was on full blast.

The A95K has a heat dissipation layer that is missing from Samsung and LG’s OLEDs. This keeps the TV bright if you have a constant highlight on the screen. As to how Sony handles burn-in (elements that remain visible, like with older CRTs if you’ve left a static image in place too long) under such circumstances, I don’t know, and I didn’t want to know about Sony. dime. Suffice it to say that OLED panels aren’t the best technology for displaying static images.

Manufacturing defects were extremely rare and minor. There was a touch of shimmer and moire, but not on the scale you’ll see with LED-backlit LCD TVs. The same can be said for rendering fine lines and jaggies.

Note that Sony’s Motionflow smoothing setting didn’t solve the A95K’s stutter issues, only increasing the CineMotion value which tamed it and tame it well. The movement was very fluid.

The sound, thanks to Sony’s planar drivers, is spectacular for a flat screen TV. It won’t replace high-end outboard gear, but don’t buy a soundbar until you hear it – you might just decide you don’t need it. Most notably, the TV actually produces bass. And not a small sum either.

Additionally, the A95K also supports Sony’s 3D audio devices such as the SRS-NS7 neckband speakers we reviewed recently.

The Sony Bravia XR A95K series is fantastic, but expensive

So the Sony Bravia XR A95K is probably the best 4K UHD TV we’ve ever seen. But its main competitor, the 65-inch Samsung S95B, was selling for $1,200 less at the time of this review, and Samsung’s image processing prowess is only an eyebrow behind Sony’s. In everyday use, you’ll be hard pressed to tell the difference. LG has even cheaper OLED TVs, some of which are still among our favorites.

If you want the absolute best smart TV, you want one from the Sony Bravia XR A95K series. If you don’t care about the 2-5% improvement you might never notice, a more efficient user interface (LG’s WebOS is also much better than Samsung’s Tizen), or a superior built-in sound quality, then the competition delivers the best bottom line. assess.