Sony XBR-65A9F OLED TV Preview

See the full review for the Sony XBR-65A9F OLED TV.

Complementing their highly successful LCD Master Series televisions, Sony dives deep into OLED territory offering the darkest, uniform black levels across the screen.

The Sony XBR-65A9F television is a marriage of superb contrast and color accuracy. Extremely powerful processing manages the minute details. When you purchase a Sony Master Series OLED television, you are absolutely getting what you pay for.

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Buying an OLED television guarantees excellent dynamic range. Its deep black levels are unmatched by any other technology and this level of accuracy, precision, and reproduction extends throughout all the darkest shades of HD and Ultra HD/HDR video. OLEDs provide an unparalleled viewing experience with dark content, and when scenes are punctuated with bright highlights, the division between the darkest black and the brightest white are fully realized. Even the best local-dimming LCD televisions cannot achieve this same effect with perfect edge-to-edge uniformity, though they can play those bright highlights with a little more intensity. Thus, what technology does one choose? OLED or LCD? Understanding these differences, Sony provides a solution for consumers by offering both. As my previous review of Sony’s excellent Master Series LCD XBR-65Z9F indicates, LCD and OLED TVs offer two different viewing experiences.

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Sony’s XBR-65A9F OLED, driven by Sony’s 4K Picture Processor X1 Ultimate optimized for OLED, creates an image nothing short of spectacular. The Sony Master Series OLED is hands-down one of my favorite televisions today. It creates some of the most detailed images I’ve ever seen on a flat panel with a level of depth, uniformity, and color saturation that is incredibly pleasing, polished, and satisfying. Powered by Android Oreo 8.0, this OLED has control capabilities from Google, Alexa, and Apple. It can be auto-calibrated through SpectraCal’s CalMAN software with a level of precision that will make both ardent filmmakers and movie buffs revel in ecstasy. The Sony XBR-65A9F OLED also has a unique feature called Acoustic Surface. Actuators placed behind the panel turn the screen into a sound-emitting device – no speakers required. Like Sony’s OLEDs of the past, the vibrations from the panel turn into the soundtrack of the movie or show thus negating the need for bulky side or rear speakers. In fact, for people stuck on space (or cash), using the heavy-duty binding posts on the rear of the panel transforms this television into a home theater center speaker as well. That’s seriously cool. With this unique audio solution, incredible contrast from a 750-nit calibrated peak HDR brightness panel, and the Picture Processor X1 Ultimate, this Sony XBR-65A9F is in an OLED class of its own.

See the full review for the Sony XBR-65A9F OLED TV.

Mike Osadciw

Mike was unexpectedly lured into hifi as a 10 year old when he first spun the vinyl of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Intrigued by the album cover and inserts, he wasn’t aware that he’d find a connection with music through stereo sound and atmospheric effects. Finding similar music to enjoy and a great stereo to play them on became a new quest for his young, moldable, budding audiophile mind. The laserdisc player later converted him to a videophile too, and he was determined to earn his ISF certification while working at a HiFi shop that was paying his tuition. It was here where high fidelity audio and video collided at full force; video calibrator by day and music lover by night (and his studies whenever he could fit them in). He continued to work at various HiFi shops once graduated with his B.A. (Hons) in Political Science and Anthropology at McMaster University in Hamilton, ON. The dream of becoming a politician or an archaeologist soon faded into oblivion. After receiving M.Ed. at Daemon College in Amherst, NY, Mike changed his full-time career path to teaching but remains ever-present in the audio-video community in Ontario. As a highly active and respected THX/ISF calibrator, Mike has contributed articles to Canada HiFi Magazine and can still be found speaking at video seminars, measuring product performance for manufacturers, and performing calibration work for both consumers and Toronto’s post-production community. He has a strong commitment for video performance with an emphasis on measurement but understands that you can’t get blood from a stone, especially when most environments are compromised. It’s not all about pretty looking graphs, it’s about making good pictures.