Sony’s already given us one terrific OLED this year in the A9G, but that’s their top
of the line model. Now we’re gonna show you what comes right before it in the 2019
lineup.
Hi I’m Carl with Abt, and in this video, we’re gonna be looking at the A8G series
from Sony and showing you what kind of updates it got over last years A8F.
This is a TV I had high hopes for because I liked the A9G so much. I knew there were
gonna be some areas where they had to scale back to keep the cost down, but as soon as
I finished setting up the TV I was greeted with something I wasn’t expecting….Android
N. I’m not sure why they didn’t put O on here right out of the box, but that makes
a big difference. “O” runs more smoothly, it’s a better interface and just an overall
better experience. Hopefully, we get a firmware update soon so people can enjoy the much better
operating system. The other part I wasn’t too thrilled about was the remote. This is
not an inexpensive TV. I really think Sony should’ve included the newer, and much better
looking remote you get with the A9G and 950G. Don’t get me wrong, this one’s still completely
functional, it just doesn’t look or feel nearly as nice. And the last negative, before
I get into the positives, is no HDMI 2.1 features. None of the 2019 Sony’s, so far, have had
HDMI 2.1, which was no surprise. They were pretty clear with us about that at CES, but
at least a couple, like the 950g and A9G, have had eARC. This has almost the same input
set as the X800G, a much less expensive TV. But thankfully it’s not all negative.
This does come with Sony’s great sounding Acoustic surface audio system. But it’s
a little different than last years A8F. The G has two actuators where the F had three
to give you a dedicated center channel. Sony’s claim is they’ve been able to improve the
efficiency to the point where having that dedicated center channel wasn’t necessary.
And bass is still gonna be supplied by two subwoofers. They’re not big, but they’re
pretty effective. After listening to this one for a while, I do think it sounds just
as good as the A8F. I wasn’t even noticing the lack of a center channel. Now, if you
choose not to use the built-in audio, the pedestal that comes with the G has a neat
little trick that the F didn’t. You can flip it around and put the TV back on which
creates a gap at the bottom that allows you to use a soundbar without blocking the screen.
I honestly think all TV pedestals should be designed this way. It's really nice.
And the sounds not the only thing that’s good on this one. The picture quality’s still top-notch.
Even better, I would say, than the A8F. The panel technology was updated for 2019 and
because of that you’re gonna get even smoother motion and supposedly better input lag times
than last year, however, when we did our input lag tests each one of the TVs was at 47.2
milliseconds with game mode turned on. To be fair, this was done on 1080p at 60hz so
they may have improved the 4k input numbers, we just don’t have the tools here to accurately
test 4k lag yet. And motion did seem to be slightly better on the A8G, which is a great
thing since the F was already excellent. For picture processing, this one gets Sonys
X1 Extreme processor, just like the F. It gives you realistic colors and great contrast,
which is very evident as soon as you throw on some HDR content. You can see lots of detail
in the bright and dark areas of the picture. Black uniformity, as you probably could have
guessed, was perfect, and because there’s no need for a separate backlight you’re
not gonna see any sort of light bleed or have any of the local dimming issues that you’d
typically experience with an LED backlit TV. Viewing angles were super wide which anyone
sitting off center will definitely appreciate and the screen handled reflections well too.
Here, we have one of our set lights shining off the screen and you can see how it softens
it up to the point where it really becomes almost a non-factor.
So the list of updates isn’t huge, but there’s some notable things here. You get the multifunctional
pedestal, updated panel technology, better motion handling, great sound, and slightly
better picture. But, you’re still missing an eARC, input lag times, at least on 1080p
at 60 hertz, weren’t showing an improvement over the A8F, the Android N operating system
and older remote were kind of a bummer to see too.
What do you think? Do the updates outweigh the negatives? Make sure to let us know in the comments and for
all our current pricing make sure you click the links in the description. As always, we
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