- There is a gaping hole in my family room wall
and a matching TV size budget burning a hole in my wallet.
(crackling flames)
Why haven't I spent the budget to fill the hole?
Well, because I've fallen into the same trap
I'm always warning you guys about.
In my search for the perfect TV
we already reviewed two of the hottest sets on the market.
Samsung's S95B QD-OLED
and LG's G2 W-OLED.
But I couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger
because I knew there was something better around the corner.
Fortunately, the corner is this one.
This is it.
For a whopping thousand dollars more,
the A95K from Sony
features the best of all worlds,
at least on paper.
a QD-OLED panel, Sony's outstanding image processing,
Dolby Vision, and a special cooling layer
to push it beyond the performance
of its South Korean competitors.
Will this be the one that ends up in my family room?
I really hope so
because it's getting harder and harder to
convince my sponsors to keep buying me new TVs.
Sponsors like Grid Studio.
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Grid Studio's art frames show off the art
hidden inside technology.
Learn how you could win your own frame
at the end of this video.
Between our last two contenders
the LG G2 and Samsung S95B,
I'm leaning toward the S95B.
And it's all about Samsung's QD-OLED panel technology.
It is super bright, color accurate out of the box,
has topnotch viewing angles,
and we suspect that it won't suffer
from permanent image retention or burn in
to nearly the same degree as earlier OLEDs.
Yes, the lack of polarization does mean that
in a brightly lit room,
it doesn't look as inky black as LG's W-OLED.
But when you've got two scenes side by side
that aren't super dark,
it just plain wins,
or at least it did.
Let's take a look at our newcomer.
For four grand for 65 inch, this better blow me away
- There's a good chance it will.
You know, we're still using QD-OLED panels
and just like with the Samsung
but it's got an extra twist like LG's G2,
it's got that big thermal layer on the back.
So it should dissipate heat a bit better.
- But, they're not using it the way you might think.
LG seems to be using the thermal dissipation layer
to boost brightness without cooking their OLEDs.
Sony seems to be more focused on reducing image retention,
because it's not any brighter
than the vanilla Samsung version.
- Yeah, there's more though.
Compared to Samsung, it has Dolby Vision
to go along with its Dolby Atmos
and it's a Bravia, which means this
or something else from Sony's lineup
is the only way you'll get Dolby Vision in your PS5.
- On my PS5 you say?
- Your PS5, your PS5.
- Can't say I'm a fan of this kind of
ecosystem wall gardening.
And also I don't have a PlayStation 5.
- Yeah, well anyway, it has HDR 10 and HLG
but not HDR 10 plus.
- Why can't they just have all of them?
I mean, I guess it's a lot of work,
but that's another swing and miss to me.
I thought you said I was gonna like this thing
- You are, you are. Dolby Vision's pretty good.
The good news is I'm expecting those supported HDR modes
to look really good on here.
And we measured around 960 nits in HDR
with full field whitening, about 210 nits.
But the big thing is almost 320 nits in SDR.
- [Linus] Really?
- [Guest] Yeah. Which is really good for an OLED.
- Wow. Okay. This already looks great.
Even with the studio lights in my eyes.
- I know.
And as long as the G2 isn't that right there,
that still looks black.
- It still looks black.
- Like it's a pretty minor difference.
- It's a funny thing,
because the issue with the black bars on an IPS
is that they glow.
- Yeah.
- So in the night, they bother you because they're glowing.
They're distracting from the immersion in the content.
- Yeah.
- But on these TVs, they only look gray.
They don't actually emit light.
They just have kind of a gray look
compared to the inky blacks of a W-OLED.
- Yeah, man the fire looks so good.
Like even his peg leg there,
it looks like his legs are actually on fire.
Like, they are, they filmed it on fire probably,
with like fire resistant pants or whatever.
- But without over juicing anything,
it doesn't look cartoonish.
- All the grass looks as green as it should.
And you can see,
like the yellow patches there,
like, it looks like you're staring at an actual field.
I hate the term, it looks like I'm looking through a window
but that's as close as it's gonna get, I think.
- We haven't talked about reflections.
That was a big advantage on the Samsung compared to the LG.
And it's pretty solid here
- When it's full black. I can see myself.
- Yeah.
- But otherwise, like even here, it's kind of dark
and I can kind of see us a little bit, but...
- It's not that distracting.
And we are lit by studio lighting right now.
This is totally unfair.
This is an unfair situation.
And when we look at the numbers that makes sense
Sony boasts, nearly 90% coverage
of the BT 2020 color space,
and straight out of the box
we got a delta E average of 1.85 in SDR.
Technically that is a slight loss to the S95B
but that's only after using Samsung's onboard calibration.
And a difference of 0.16 is an insignificant price to pay
for our 75 nits of extra brightness.
As for HDR, we measured both IMAX enhanced and cinema modes.
And ladies and gentlemen, we figured out
where most of that thousand extra dollars is going.
Sony's processing.
Not lttstore.com where
they could have picked up a sweet wan hoodie
or a swacket.
Even after using Samsung's calibration app,
the A95K crushes the S95B in HDR.
Without luminance errors
we are getting a delta E average of 3.6, with a max of 6.5.
Like, it's not even close.
The Sony also handles reds significantly better.
Skin tones looks so natural.
Like that looks like a fire lit face.
It doesn't look like a yellow light on a face.
And while some of the other colors
are slightly more accurate on the Samsung,
that lower maximum deviation is more important here.
It wasn't easy getting to this state though.
While we didn't dig into the 10 point white balance
in color adjustments on the Bravia,
we did have to tinker with some of the other settings
and it comes with some trade offs.
To get the most color accurate image in both SDR and HDR,
you can't use the same settings in both modes.
Arrgh.
We found that the best results in HDR
where with gradation preferred HDR tone mapping,
advanced contrast enhancer set to medium,
and live color set to high.
Conversely SDR wants ACE and live color off.
If you keep the SDR settings,
you end up with less accuracy
and more luminance errors in HDR.
When you keep the HDR settings,
color accuracy plummets in HDR.
And I just wish we didn't have to make this trade off.
Though, realistically, an average delta E
of four is still really good for the average viewer.
So what I would probably do is leave it dialed in
for HDR and then take that hit in SDR.
Of course we need more than just great color performance.
What about the features?
It runs it up to 4k 120 Hertz refresh rate,
we will talk about gaming shortly,
integrates with every relevant voice assistant
through the mic in the remote,
and has Sony's cool behind the screen speakers.
These can either be used as better
than average integrated sound, or, and this is really cool,
as a stealthy center channel in a surround config
like the one we set up in this sponsored video
on the A9 HT speakers.
It's even got a freaking webcam.
This, I don't know, that's kind of weird looking.
This definitely merits a closer look.
Those flashes - Yeah.
- Are so crisp.
- Yeah. - And fast.
Normally I don't care about pixel response time
while I'm consuming passive entertainment.
- Sure. - Right?
Like when gaming, when I'm controlling the action I do,
but, it's just, you can tell.
- It's on and off. Yeah.
- Yeah.
And so there's this difference
between the display not being fast
and there being kind of an after effect
to a bright flash like that.
And your eyes being what causes the after effect
of seeing something bright.
- Yeah. But this is just, and then it's gone.
- That's cool.
- Do you like the remote?
You've only used it for like 20 seconds, but...
- Oh, I haven't had any complaints.
- Right? Cause it just feels correct.
- Look at that.
It has buttons you need,
like a dedicated input button.
Ooh. Dedicated Bravia Core button.
I certainly plan to use that.
- I don't think it has like Disney+.
Oh no, it does.
It does.
It has Netflix and Disney+.
- But why would I want those if I have Bravia Core?
I could watch such wonderful movies as Spiderman
and other more different Spiderman.
- Yeah.
- It just makes the atmosphere so much more immersive.
The glitter on the night fury,
and it's glitter.
It's not just a white spot.
You know what I mean?
- Yeah. Yeah. - Look at, look at it.
- You see them shine on and off.
- Sparkle.
- Yeah, Yeah. Sparkle, that's the word.
- And you can only do that with individually lit pixels.
Now you said we got a hundred megabit
in one of the other files
but is the TV actually limited to 100 megabit
Like so many others?
- I think so.
I tried speed test
and I got a hundred megabit up and down.
Yeah.
- Put gigabit controllers on these things you guys.
They cost nothing.
And here this feels like sun behind clouds.
- Yes. It looks like an overcast day.
- Like a gray sky.
- Yeah.
- I just love this scene in HDR, man.
The thing is, HDR is not about a brighter image
or even making out more details
in the dark parts of a scene.
It's about light and materials
and them behaving on screen
in a way that's like what we'd expect in the real world.
It's about immersion.
- It's about having a high dynamic range.
- Yes. Thank you. It is kind of right in the name.
Finally, it's time to talk gaming.
We gamed on all three displays
with an RTX 3080 Ti and a Core i9-12900K.
We're gonna have our TVs and our test bench parts
listed below, by the way,
if you wanna check them out.
Surprise, surprise because they're all OLED,
they're all freaking great, actually.
Panel latency testing was done using a new tool
from our friend, Andrew over at techteamGB.
Speaking of tests, we just went around
trying to find out who's the fastest typer at LMG.
And you can only check that video out on Floatplane.
So go get subscribed.
Andrew developed the OSRTT
or open source response time tool.
It's a device that is similar to Nvidia's LDAT
but it's open source, obviously,
and it runs its own Unreal Engine 4 program
in the background to simulate flashes and light changes.
We got pretty similar results from each display,
with the LG and the Sony hitting
about 8.4 milliseconds going from zero to 153.
So, black is zero and 153 is gray.
And the Samsung marginally beat them at 7.9 milliseconds
in the same test,
putting all three of them in the upper echelon
of living room gaming displays.
Now, while the G2 is the only one
with proper Nvidia Gsync compatibility,
all three displays have variable refresh rate
and automatic low latency mode.
So I'm not expecting that
to be a big differentiating factor.
Now to dive deeper into QD-OLED led versus W-OLED
and whether or not it has the same
lightning fast pixel response time,
we've ordered a new sensor for our oscilloscope.
So make sure to get subscribed for all the Lab's content
that we have in store.
But to the eye, all three of them are definitely fine,
which leads us to the conclusion.
Despite the higher price tag.
I think I'm gonna go with the Sony Bravia A95K.
It might not get quite as bright as the Samsung in HDR,
but it's sturdier.
Our S95B has actually started to warp
just from unboxing and re boxing it a few times.
And we're not the only one seeing the problem.
It's more color accurate in HDR,
brighter in SDR and Dolby Vision
is just too good to pass up.
Even if we think Sony's being kind of butt heads
about Dolby vision.
The thing though is that my budget isn't exactly limited.
I actually bought two of the three TVs
rather than wait for review units,
so that I could get an answer quicker
and get my family room built out.
So it's important to give a more grounded perspective.
For almost anyone else,
saving a thousand dollars is a no brainer
for the still very outstanding picture
that you're gonna get from either the LG G2
or Samsung S95B.
Really, I think the main takeaway here
is that if you've got the budget for a flagship TV
it is pretty tough to pick the wrong one for a change.
And if you don't mind waiting a year or two,
there are gonna be some amazing home viewing experiences
available at just wild prices
as the competition heats up here.
Just like my segues heating up,
to our sponsor, Grid Studio.
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They've got over 30 different frames available
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Thanks for watching.
If you enjoyed this video, make sure to check out
the other two videos
dedicated to the S95B and the LG G2
Both of them are really nice,
even if I did choose this one instead.