√ Sony A8H OLED Review : Best all-rounder

Sony Bravia A8H/A8 OLED TV

By combining Sony's premium OLED image performance with a powerful and direct sound system, the Sony A8H OLED TV is an incredibly fascinating TV choice for serious home theater fans.

It is equipped with Sony's top X1 Ultimate processor, Pixel Contrast Booster (for more vivid image highlights), and the X-Motion Clarity function of a new version of OLED originally developed for FALD LCD TVs.

In terms of audio, at the same time, Sony’s usual Acoustic Surface Audio system (actually "stimulating" the TV screen to produce sound) consists of two subwoofer bass systems and an Acoustic Auto Calibration system that can automatically optimize TV sound. Just a few quick test pulses can be used in your room.

The result is nothing more than gorgeous. Although this set of equipment may be defeated by the successor of Sony A80J, it is currently the best TV set among Sony products.

Although the 65A8's core lacks brightness, making it most suitable for use in relatively dark rooms, its color refinement, local contrast, and noise-free clarity make the image consistently fascinating. Basically, this is the dream of a serious movie fan.

As long as you can handle the fact that Sony 65A8's images are far from the brightest, we can provide you with the most exquisite, true-to-life and most refined images you've seen on any TV so far.

Sony Bravia A8H/A8 OLED TV Price and release date

Sony A8H / A8 OLED TVs were announced at the 2020 International Consumer Electronics Show and are now available worldwide in 55-inch and 65-inch sizes, and there is a single design variant called A85 OLED in the UK, which can replace metal Blade holder. A "premium booth".

In terms of price, the 55-inch Sony KD-55A8/XBR-55A8 is priced at $1,899/£1,799, while the larger 65-inch Sony KD-65A8/XBR-65A8 is priced at $2,799/£2,799.

This is almost the same price as LG's CX OLED, although this year CX will also adopt a 48-inch size and a screen size of up to 77 inches.

Sony Bravia A8H/A8 OLED TV Design

The 65-inch Sony KD-65A8 / XBR-65A8 we received for this review has an amazing industrial design, and the outer few inches of the screen are incredibly thin like OLED technology. However, these slim drills are beautifully processed on the 65A8, and they are sturdy and durable.

The rest of the rear carries a deeper, equally heavy body, housing necessities such as connections, processors and panel drivers. However, this deeper part is definitely muscular, simple and well-made, so that it actually increases the appeal of the design, rather than making it feel like a "necessary evil".

From the front, the screen has a pleasing overall appearance, and there are few decorations that can distract you from the screen. However, this decorative metal texture continues to maintain a high build quality, and the relatively fine desktop feet have minimal interference during work.

The feet can also be connected in two different ways. The screen can be placed directly on top of the screen, or the screen can be raised a few inches so that you have room to add a soundbar to the setup.

Connections include four HDMI, three USB, an Ethernet port, a headphone output, a composite video input and a digital audio output. In addition, of course there are built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

HDMI can support the latest HDCP 2.3 anti-piracy system, and support automatic game mode switching and eARC audio to pass uncompressed Dolby Atmos to compatible sound bars.

Although these features will be enabled on Sony’s own PS5 game console later this year, this Sony model does not support 4K/120Hz or “variable refresh rate”.

The last thing about the design involves the 65A8's remote control. With its cool metal effect surface, spacious layout and sensitive buttons, it is a far cry from the annoying layout and useless flush buttons in previous generations of Sony TV phones.

Sony Bravia A8H/A8 OLED TV Performance

The HD/SDR pictures of the Sony A8 are indeed beautiful things. For beginners, the upgrade of this set of content below 4K is a miracle. It seems effortless to add a high level of detail and texture without causing the image to look strained or noisy. This is even very useful if you feed 65A8 to a source of severe granular or low quality.

Similarly, the color judgment applied to each magnified pixel is also excellent, which means that there is nothing thicker, and a slightly "off" hue will not cause the magnification engine to be smaller.

In today's TV world, 65A8's vivid, standard and movie picture presets can usually be rewritten to HDR for SDR sources that cannot be turned off. However, unlike today’s television industry, this re-production is actually convincing. It takes a relatively gentle method to prevent its color and light expansion from being too far away from the SDR original material.

It can also work on an object-based basis instead of applying a set of rules to the entire image, which in turn helps it get a more natural look than most SDR to HDR converters.

If you are a gamer, in the end, you will be happy to hear that when the 65A8 switches to its game preset, the input delay (the time it takes for the screen to render the image) drops to a very impressive 18ms.

The 4K/HDR photos of Sony 65A8 take the beauty witnessed by HD/SDR content to a higher level.

For example, dark HDR scenes show Sony's excellent control over one of the trickiest aspects of OLED technology: the transition from full color to almost black. There is absolutely no indication that some OLED screens may suffer low noise interference in very dark areas. In fact, we haven't seen such excellent control, refinement, and black level depth and consistency from any other OLED TV-or any other TV time slot.

The Sony 65A8 is also excellent in the wide color gamut associated with HDR images. The huge tonal subtleties of Sony's color management can make 4K HDR images present a perfect fusion of three-dimensional, natural and subtle. In fact, the level of detail displayed on traditionally difficult areas (such as skin tones, dark and shadow details) is as good as I see anywhere other than professional OLED mastering monitors.

At the same time, Sony’s Bitmapping technology eliminates the phenomenon of fine color aberration in HDR/Wide Color Gamut content that may cause the HDR screen to appear on the 65A8. Sometimes, the processing behind this situation can cause a slight loss of fine details in the "bitmap" area. However, the positive factors clearly outweigh this small disadvantage.

Otherwise, the clarity and detail of the native 4K images are great. The classic and delicate details, such as skin pores, woodland leaves, distant brickwork, and rocky mountains covered with lichen, are impeccable. Moreover, even without the common sharpness-related artifacts (such as ghost images, compressed object edges, exaggerated source noise or exaggerated particles), extremely high sharpness can be achieved.

No matter if you are dealing with a lot of movements, the clarity will hardly miss any beat. The "MotionFlow 1" setting of the Sony motion processor excellently eliminates the jitter of the 24p movie source, making the movie look more cinematic without superimposing the soft "soap opera effect", so the motion processor with lower sensitivity May cause this situation.

However, even better is the "Clear Motion" option, which calls Sony's new X-Motion Clarity feature. When using the OLED format, X-Motion Clarity does not insert full-screen black between real image frames like the typical black frame insertion technology. Instead, it only inserts a partial black frame on a part of the image while enhancing the remaining image area. This produces the natural 24p feel associated with BFI technology without causing the usual severe brightness reduction side effects.

The only 4K/HDR problem with the Sony 65A8 is that it is not suitable for bright rooms like some rival TVs, due to its lack of 4K/120Hz support for games. And the high reflectivity of the screen.

Sony Bravia A8H/A8 OLED TV Sound

The sound of the 65A8 provides a suitable companion for its impeccable film photos. Compared to the sound commonly heard on OLED or LCD TVs, using stereo "actuators" to excite the screen to produce TV audio does indeed help to produce a more detailed and powerful sound field.

The sound can hardly track the motion on the screen, so, for example, if the car moves from one side of the screen to the other, you will actually hear the sound as the car moves on the screen. The voice will always be locked on the lips of the speaker.

But it is crucial that the sound is not limited to the screen. Ambient sounds and off-screen sounds go far beyond the physical frame of the screen, filling the entire room and immersing you in the action. In fact, when I watch Dolby Atmos content, I sometimes even get some impression of surrounding sound effects from behind me.

The 65A8's Dolby Atmos stage does not have much height. However, otherwise, the accuracy and dynamics of object-based sound playback are still exceptionally effective for built-in TV speaker systems.

Sony’s Acoustic Surface Audio system adds a second subwoofer, which can also very effectively round the midrange and bass of the 65A8, without distortion or cracks even at very high volumes. In fact, it can maintain a clear picture even in loud, dense action scenes, which is extraordinary for panel excitation technology.

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