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User Review
0(0 votes)Sony Bravia A9F It is an excellent 4k TV, one of the best we have tested. Like other OLED TVs, it can produce perfectly deep blacks and it also has a wide color gamut and low input lag. Unfortunately it can’t get the whole screen very bright for those in bright rooms, and there may be a risk of burn-in with static content.
We bought the 55 inch A9F to test, but it is also available in a larger 65 inch size. We expect this larger size to have very similar picture quality.
Sony Bravia A9F OLED 2018 Design
First we’ll look at the design of the TV and then move on to the picture quality. We’ll look at the motion handling and input lag, and then compare to competing models which are currently available. The design of the A9F is great.
The TV looks sleek from the front, without any visible stand. The TV sits on small rubber feet and leans back similar to the A1E. Some people love this, but others can’t stand the lean. It does feel very stable due to the large footprint.
The electronics are located on the stand of the TV, which can make it a bit more difficult to access the inputs or to use the controls. Like the Z9F, the A9F has four HDMI ports that all support HDMI 2.0 full bandwidth signals.
Covers over the rear of the stand can hide all of the cables neatly out of sight which looks great.
It is also possible to fold the stand flat for those who want to wall mount the TV. This does eliminate the lean, but can make accessing the inputs even more difficult. Thankfully there is one HDMI port and one USB port directed out the side for easier access. Looking at a thermal image of the TV we can see a warmer region near the center due to the location of the electronics, overall the TV is fairly cool, and heat shouldn’t cause any issues.
Sony Bravia A9F OLED 2018 Picture Quality
The Sony Bravia A9F is able to produce perfectly deep blacks, which is excellent for those who watch
in the dark. This is also true of other OLED TVs like the A1E and C8. The A9F is a great choice for those who have a wide room and sometimes watch the TV from an angle. When moving off-axis, the brightness doesn’t change much and the image remains mostly accurate but the colors do shift. This is much better than most TVs with VA panels such as the Vizio P Quantum. The Sony Z9F does have improved viewing angles over other VA TVs so may also be a good choice
for those with wide seating and IPS TVs also offer accurate images for wide rooms but at the expense of dark room performance.
The A9F is excellent at dealing with reflections. It has a glossy finish so reflections do remain defined rather than smeared but their intensity is reduced significantly. Like many other TVs with excellent reflection handling, this does result in a purple tint though which some people don’t like.
It is especially visible when the TV is off. The A9F can produce bright highlights in our HDR real scene at about 630 nits.
We can see how this compares to other TVs we’ve tested in the past two years, and
it is a good result. Small bright areas like windows which take up 2% or 10% of the screen area can also get
bright, however very large bright objects are a different story.
The TV is restricted from drawing too much power by an automatic brightness limiter or ABL . This causes the screen brightness to change depending on the content. Most of the time this isn’t noticeable, but when used as a PC monitor this can be distracting. The ABL can be disabled by turning the ‘Peak Luminance’ option off. This prevents the change in brightness, but results in a fairly dim image at about one hundred and forty nits across the whole screen. For those who want a bright TV to overcome glare then a bright LED TV may be worth it. The 50% gray uniformity is excellent.
This is generally the case for OLED TVs which fare better than LCD models. This is great for sports, as dirty screen effect isn’t distracting when watching hockey or football. Very dark grays do show some banding though when viewed in a dark room, which may be noticeable in dark scenes.
This varies between units, but it is a common result for new OLEDs. The A9F has an excellent wide color gamut for producing vivid highlights in HDR. It isn’t as good as the Samsung QLEDs, but still makes HDR content pop.
It can also display these saturated colors at a wider range of brightness levels than other OLED TVs, which is great. HDR content can be displayed accurately as the A9F closely tracks the reference PQ curve. Like the Z9F but unlike previous Sony models, all of the picture modes have the same EOTF
tracking.
There is very little roll off, but this is great for those who care about brightness accuracy when watching HDR.
The gradient performance of the A9F is excellent. It can smoothly display a 10 bit signal, with the best performance we’ve tested. Even problematic dark shades can be displayed with only minor banding. This is excellent for those who care about banding in movies or games and there is alsoa ‘Smooth Gradation’ feature to reduce banding in content.
Like other OLED TVs, the A9F may have the risk of burn-in after displaying long periods of static content.
Sony Bravia 3d Tv Manual
It uses an organic compound to emit light, which degrades with usage. You can see our video series linked below for an investigation into this issue, however we don’t expect it to be a problem for most people with changing content.
The response time of the A9F is instantaneous. This results in very little blur following moving content, as most of the blur is the result of persistence from sample and hold of the image. This is great for gaming and watching sports. For 60 Hz content this displays each frame for half the duration, with black frames between.
It works well to clear up persistence blur, and is useful for gamers. Those sensitive to flicker may find it distracting and it reduces the screen brightness significantly though so isn’t for everyone. It also isn’t possible with a one-hundred and twenty hertz signals from a PC as it causes every second frame to be lost.
The A9F has an excellent low input lag, which is an improvement over previous Sony models like the A1E especially for 1080p signals. It also natively supports a one-hundred-and-twenty hertz signal with low input lag, which is
excellent.
Sony Bravia A9F OLED 2018 operating System
The A9F runs a version of Android TV which is customized by Sony. Unlike the A1E and A8F, it comes with Android 8 or Oreo. This results in a massively improved interface speed which is great. It is still possible to access a huge range of apps on the google play store and the home screen makes it easy to find new content.
It is a bit less intuitive than LG’s WebOS or Samsung’s Smart Hub but still works great. A google assistant button on the remote provides quick voice access to a huge range of features like searching for content or setting a timer.
Sony Bravia A9F OLED 2018 Sound Quality
The A9F has better sound than most TVs, but it isn’t as good as dedicated speakers. It gets loud, and can produce clear dialog. Like the A1E, the surface of the A9F vibrates to produce some sound. The A9F also features a new ‘Audio System’ mode, and can replace the center channel when connected to an audio receiver and external speakers. The TV needs to be turned on for this function.
The TV is also advertised to support eARC for higher bandwidth audio passthrough, however we unfortunately haven’t been able to test this as there is very little equipment which supports it yet.
Conclusion
So overall the Sony A9F is a great TV, with excellent picture quality. Like other OLED TVs, it is best suited to a dark room with wide seating. It isn’t without flaws though, as long periods of static content may result in permanent burn-in and the whole screen can’t get bright to overcome glare.
The A1E is the predecessor to the A9F. It shares many of the same design characteristics including leaning back on a rear stand and acoustic surface speakers. The A9F offers a few improvements though, like the faster android Oreo interface, lower input lag, and support for four high bandwidth HDMI ports.
The A9F Is better for a dark room or wide seating though, as it can produce deeper dark scenes and remains accurate when viewed at an angle.