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

Microsoft
By Microsoft 12 Min Read
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At first sight

Expert assessment

Professionals

Fantastic picture quality. Great sound. Nice industrial design

Versus

Very expensive

Our verdict

Sony’s Bravia XR A95K series TV offers fantastic colour, brightness, black, processing and sound. It’s hands down the best smart TV on the market, and it’s priced to support that theory.

Price at time of review

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

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

Retail price

$2879.00

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$3199.99

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Sony $3499.99

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Price comparison of over 24,000 shops worldwide

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

Buying the best OLED TV, however, is going to cost you: At the time of this review, the 65-inch model we tested retailed for between $2,879 and $3,000, about $1,200 more than Samsung’s very competitive S95B ($1,800 on sale) and nearly $900 more than the excellent C2/G2 OLED ($2,000 on sale).

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

Features and design of the Bravia XR A95K series

By far the most notable feature of Sony’s A95K series is the 120Hz, 3840 x 2160 pure RGB OLED display. If you’re not familiar, the LG OLEDs that have dominated this market segment in recent years are WRGB. That is, they use a fourth white sub-pixel to boost peak 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 most of the time.

The pure RGB technology of the A95K series uses only red, green and blue sub-pixels, then maintains color saturation as the highlights get brighter. In our tests, it seems that Sony exploits this advantage and over-saturated in some places. I say “finished”, but the effect is extremely pleasing to the eye.

The other outstanding feature of the A95K is the use of display glass as a planar speaker. The rear-mounted fans, driven by 60 watts of total power, vibrate the panel to great effect, making it one of the few TVs whose sound you won’t feel the immediate need to boost.

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

origin 1This side angle shows the unique stand of the Sony Bravia XR A95K.

The 65-inch Bravia XR A95K weighs just under 60 pounds, with the mount contributing another 30 pounds or so. It’s been a bit of a bear to wrestle with myself, but doable. I suggest the help of a friend, which 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 set-top box, ethernet, composite audio with center speaker input, S/PDIF optical audio out), RS-232, and two USB-A ports (one on the side of the TV, the other on the bottom).

origin 1This pure side view shows some of the ports on the A95K. The others face down on the underside of the cavity.

There’s a Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) adapter on board, and the Bluetooth radio features latency compensation. There is support for HDR10 (but not DR10+), Dolby Vision, HLG, Calman autocalibration, DTS Digital Surround, Dolby Atmos (and precursors). There are several audio modes (EQ) and a mock 3D audio upscaling. The TV automatically adjusts the sound according to room conditions during setup.

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

In short, this TV lacks a little avant-garde.

Sony Bravia XR A95 series smart TV interface and remote control

Sony uses the Google TV interface here, which has matured into a reasonably efficient and navigable creation. I really liked that the main row is taken up by the main input and settings icons rather than the content Sony is selling.

The Voice Remote, which supports Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, is the vastly improved, smaller, more focused model that Sony began shipping last year. It’s backlit for use in dark environments and sports dedicated buttons for settings, inputs, and transport control. I like its balance of minimalism and functionality a bit more than Samsung’s austere remotes that force you to the screen for almost any task.

origin 1The A95K’s bundled voice remote has a nice feel and is much sleeker in appearance than the company’s old-school remotes.

I will also say that the Sony remote is pleasant to hold. While I like Samsung’s rechargeable One Remote from an environmental standpoint, the slightly heavier weight of Sony’s battery-operated remote provides more substantial tactile feedback. That said, you still have to use the on-screen selectors to enter numbers and the like. Sigh.

As for the UI/remote synergy, you can tweak the settings and see the effect in real-time, which can make a difference if you’re customizing the image for specific content. There are a myriad of options for that task, far more than the non-videophile probably wants or needs. I was fine with the model settings provided by Sony: Standard, Cinema, IMAX, and so on.

All in all, I found using Sony’s A95K to be significantly more efficient than Samsung’s Tizen-based S95B.

The picture and sound quality of the Sony Bravia XR A95K series

While the A95K image is not Perfect, it’s damn close. Color is rich and perfect to the naked eye, there’s plenty of peak brightness (without dulling the color, thanks to the panel being pure RGB rather than RGBW) and blacks are; well, this is an OLED TV, so blacks are great.

I’d be remiss, however, if I didn’t inform you that Sony’s A95K isn’t nearly as bright as Samsung’s 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 had to be picky, gradients in the dark end of the spectrum weren’t quite as accurate as they are with LG’s WRGB panel, but it’s a worthwhile trade-off that most users will never notice.

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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. This is standard for OLED, however, and I did notice some glare from some steep viewing angles, but only when the test room’s harsh, bright lighting was on full blast.

The A95K features a heat dissipation layer that is absent in OLEDs from Samsung and LG. This allows the TV to stay bright if there is a constant highlight on the screen. As to how Sony handles burn-in (items remaining visible, as with older CRTs if you’ve left a static image in place too long) under those circumstances, I don’t know, and didn’t want to find out on Sony dime. Just think that OLED panels are not the best technology for displaying static images.

Workmanship defects were extremely rare and minor. There was a touch of sparkle and moiré, 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 fix the A95K’s judder issues, just increasing the CineMotion value tamed it, and it tamed it well. The movement was very smooth.

The sound, thanks to Sony’s planar drivers, is spectacular for a flat-screen TV. It won’t replace top-tier outboard gear, but stop buying a soundbar until you hear it—you might just decide you don’t need one. In particular, the TV actually produces bass. And not even a minimal amount.

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

The Sony Bravia XR A95K series is great, 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 just an eyebrow of a gnat behind that of Sony’s. In day-to-day use, you’ll be hard-pressed to tell the difference. LG offers even cheaper OLED TVs, some of which are still among our favorites.

If you want the best smart TV ever, you want one from the Sony Bravia XR A95K series. If you don’t care about the two to five percent improvement you may never notice, a more efficient UI (LG’s WebOS is also vastly better than Samsung’s Tizen), or superior built-in sound quality, then the competition offers. the best value bottom line.

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