Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Best OLED TV? Sony BRAVIA XR A90J”.
Thanks to sony for sponsoring this video, so back when you could like go to a best buyer, big box, store and shop for things, i used to love going and looking at tvs and seeing what was new. My main tv set that i bought four years ago and i moved into my house as a 75 inch sony, bravia, xbr z9d. It’S led and it’s been my main set for pretty much everything, but i’m ready to make that jump into oled um. For me, it’s for sports, but also now that i’m getting back into console gaming. It’S a video game play there as well, and i’ve tended to gravitate towards sony. I’Ve got two of them in my house, so this guy behind me is sony’s 2021 bravia xr, a90j. 4K hdr oled tv, it’s a mouthful uh, but it’s their top of the line.
Oled set available in three different sizes: 55 65 inch. I have behind me and – and i can’t wait to see it but don’t know what it’s going to cost yet 83 inch version. There’S a lot to like about these sets and this one here comes in at 4. 000.
So it’s a lot of money. If you’re going to make that commitment to spend that amount of money, you want to make sure you are getting everything possible from a tv. So, let’s talk about it, so obviously it’s oled organic light emitting diode. I’Ve made videos on what oled tvs mean, we’ll link them down below if you’re interested, but essentially, if you’re not into the tv lingo oled each pixel lights or turns itself off meaning. When things are black, they are really black because pixels are off, but the knock on outlets has always been they look beautiful like, but they don’t get that bright. So sony’s confronts that head-on. They’Re saying this is their brightest oled ever, but my question was like what does that mean? So we’ve got it set up here in like a controlled environment, where there’s only one window, there’s not much direct light. This is like the ideal setting for set and it looks awesome, but at my house i’ve got windows, windows and a lot of direct sunlight, and you probably do too wherever you want to set up your sets.
That was really the big test. I thought for how this tv was going to look and i’ve seen oled sets in the past getting pretty washed out this one didn’t at all, and you can see it. You don’t even take my word for it. Here’S a lot of sunlight and here’s an oled set two things that generally don’t go together and the picture still looks bright easily watchable. It looks as bright as pretty much any other non-oled set that i’ve seen in direct sunlight. If i can like quantify it – and this is a very strange thing to say about oleds, if you have it in a room like this, where you can control the lighting, you do not need the brightness at 100.
In fact, we turned it down a little bit as somebody who’s reviewed. A lot of oled sets the past few years. Uh, that’s the first time i’ve been able to say that i’m gon na mount the tv up on a wall, but i have a really good option of actually using the stand that comes with it. A lot of tv stands or just ugly. Tv stands, sony’s done something kind of interesting here: they’ve got feet on it, but you can actually make it sit. Almost look like it’s sitting flush with the stand, so it looks like it’s kind of rising out of it. Now you can raise it up too. If you don’t like that, look, i just thought it looked.
Awesome looked like it was kind of coming out of the stand there. It’S really low profile. It looks like the tv is just kind of hanging out on its own all right.
So obviously it’s a tv like you want to do stuff on it and watch stuff uh. My three use cases, and hopefully yours are the same or at least one of the three are you’re going to stream things. You know tv you’re going to watch movies and you’re going to play games on it. If you’re going to watch tv and stream, you can obviously you can plug in whatever set top box. You want.
There’S hdmi. Ports are plenty uh. It does come, though, with google tv, it’s the same ui you can get from google’s own 49 dollar little box and it works really. Well, it’s been redesigned, the ui is really nice.
It’S got airplay and home kit compatibility. So if you’re in apple’s ecosystem you don’t have to plug in an apple tv box, you get all of that kind of right out of the, i guess, the giant cardboard box that it comes in, if not in the apple ecosystem. Like i said it comes with google tv so on the remote you’ve got a really good google assistant, which did an awesome job with voice, there’s chromecast built in pretty much whatever device you have whatever source you want to play on here. You could probably play it to the set wirelessly. I also you don’t have to talk to the remote to use google assistant, the tv will actually listen to you. If you want to, you could just say the okay without having to use the remote, you can control the tv with your voice. If you want to for something that you guys might be able to actually see yourself, if you watch the final season of game of thrones in episode, three, it’s maybe a little too nerdy. There was a really dark battle, scene, uh and on my tv set at home i couldn’t see much. I could barely see the main characters for me. That was like the darkest thing that i’ve ever seen on a set.
So i wanted to see what that looked. Like here um on something where maybe you couldn’t see those things in the past, i started seeing nuances i couldn’t see before there were mountains. In the background that i had no idea were there, you can actually see details uh on the dragons there’s a lot of things that the set brought out that i just didn’t know were there so obviously running google tv have access to, like all the google apps, That you could want sony also includes bravia core.
It’S a streaming app, that’s exclusive to just like very select sony tv sets. It’S also going to give you 10 free movies of your choice, which was awesome if you purchased the set so for a tv that costs 4 000 bucks any perks that save me some money uh. I will take speaking of perks if you own a ps5 or xbox series x, you’re, going to have probably the biggest perk or the biggest reasons that i wanted to look at.
This set play 4k games at 120 frames per second, so this tv has two 4k hdmi 2.1 ports and that, like .1, is a giant difference. That means it’s capable of showing content at 120 frames per second, so claps for that. So, and if there is a downside, one of them is e-arc. That means, if you have both consoles, you have a ps5, an xbox you want to plug in, like a sound bar or something there might be issues if you want to run all of those with one cable. If you’re using a receiver, though that supports 4k 120, then it won’t be an issue, but at least know that going in so watching tv streaming content you’re going to watch movies. The picture is going to look awesome, but you want to have obviously sound. That’S going to sound good as well. No certainly you can plug in a receiver, surround sound, sound bar whatever you want and bypass the speakers the tv set does have, but the speakers that come built in um are already really good. So if you look at the set um, you can’t see speakers and sony’s been doing this for a few years, but they put speakers in the back and then also underneath the screen. So obviously like this isn’t the first sony set to do this, but it is the best one that i’ve heard to date.
Uh the sound is loud and obviously you need it to be. But more importantly, the sound is clear. So sony is claiming the speakers can simulate a surround sound system. Well, clearly, having actual surround sound system, i think is obviously going to sound better. I think if you didn’t initially have one, this tv would go a long way kind of convincing you that maybe you don’t need one right away, especially if you’re spending four thousand dollars on a new tv uh moral is, i guess the sound was pretty impressive, because There were times when someone was talking to the right side of the screen and it sounded like. I could hear the audio coming from the right side of the set. It’S a small thing and it’s not a deal breaker not to have that, but certainly made. It seem more enjoyable and also made it seem more premium for a set that carries a premium price, so the picture looks good, but there’s a lot of tech that makes that happen and if you’ve bought any sony tvs or looked them up online anywhere. There’S a lot of marketing language that sort of goes into their secret sauce to make their pictures look so good. So the first one and probably the most important, is their new bravia, xr cognitive processor.
So tony claims it can determine actually what’s in the scene, you’re watching and then optimize the image of, what’s meant to be the focal point. So, okay, so example, let’s say you’ve got people on screen right. It’S going to happen. The tv is supposed to do things like sharpen only the actors and not the background dynamically adjust the brightness and color to give it a more vibrant and sort of beautifully contrasty picture, something that at least i found annoying when buying a new tv is having to Go into like picture menu system, adjust picture settings and do like a bunch of calibration stuff, and so i do think it’s a good idea to go in and sort of make those adjustments on a tv, especially for like where you have it set up uh the One big problem with those adjustments: there have to be applied to everything, you’re watching right, so every show movie or scene going on so the new bravia xr cognitive processor.
It’S helping adjust each senior watching and at least from my experience – and you know the week or so i’ve had this uh. It’S done a really good job. So, like the game of thrones example like from earlier, i think was like the most extreme of like where it comes in handy um, but it’s not just the brightness and like that cognitive processor at work, um sony’s got their xr triluminous pro and xr. Oled contrast pro features that are also sort of working behind the scenes.
So to cliff note, these features what they’re doing they’re, giving you more enhanced accurate color reproduction as well as improved contrast with deeper black levels, and you can see that when you’re watching those dark scenes. So what sony’s doing, i think they’re taking like the best parts of oled with like those darks and the contrasts and they’re making them just a little bit better. It’S tough to separate from competition, because the technology is what the technology is. But sony has separated themselves with the brightness and what the processing can do, and the best thing i can say about this is that you won’t notice it while you’re watching.
But if you go to a friend’s house when you can do that again or you go look at another oled set you’ll see a difference. You might not know what that difference is, but you’ll be able to see it, and it’s really because of sony’s processing. That’S happening all behind the scenes, all right, so that’s the sony, bravia xr, a90j 4k hdr oled tv. It is a mouthful for a really well-rounded set.
What made me excited was the brightness, especially when you’re in well-lit settings, but the reason i’m looking to upgrade is for that 4k gaming to get that high refresh rate on my ps5, something that i’ve been really eager to do. I’Ve kind of been waiting for a reason uh to upgrade my set. So again, this is a 65 inch version, there’s a 55 and an 83 that also will be available. This one here is four thousand dollars, and that is a lot of money.
I can’t say whether or not it’s worth it for you or not, but if you decide to spend that money for the set you’re gon na get a tv, that’s gon na do everything you could ask it to do really really well and have a picture. That’S going to look beautiful, bright and vibrant anywhere that you want to put it you .