(soft music)
- This is absolutely outrageous.
Who in their right-freaking-mind
would pay this much for a 65 inch TV
when they could have literally 10 of them
for the same money, and then be happy with their purchase?
A lot of people apparently. Everyone from the media
to enthusiasts on AVS Forum is absolutely raving
about the Sony A90J,
a TV that costs 3,800 US dollars
for the 65 inch model.
I thought we were past this, I thought TVs were cheap now.
Well, apparently not, if you wanna build one
with LG's second generation OLED panel
and Sony's unparalleled image processing.
Boy does this thing ever have a lot to live up to,
like our sponsor ESR.
ESR's new HaloLock system
gives you convenient and stylish ways
to wirelessly charge your phone using MagSafe.
Learn more and enter to win an iPhone 12
by watching until the end of the video
or clicking the link in the video description.
(bright upbeat techno)
What does all that money get you?
At first glance the super thin bezels of the A90J
will please all but the strictest minimalist wannabes,
at just 4.1 centimeters thick,
it looks great mounted to the wall
or if a cabinet is more your style, you get two options
elevated for soundbar integration
or full Van Damme style for a nearly bottomless look,
there's three USB ports here and here, ethernet,
optical audio, and a headphone jack
alongside an array of HDMI ports, four in total.
But this is where we hit our first speed bump.
Only two of the A90J's HDMIs are full-fat
48 gigabit per second HDMI 2.1,
which is a real shame since Samsung and LG
are offering 2.1 support across every port
in this price here, but it makes sense at a hardware level.
The reason LG and Samsung are ahead of the pack is
because they bit the bullet and developed their own
SOC's to process HDMI 2.1. Sony on the other hand
uses a media tech SOC, a cost savings for sure
but one that has chained them to the features
or lack thereof, of a third-party solution.
Of course, no one buys a TV to look at the back anyway.
And from the front, it's easy to forget that,
whatever I was just talking about. I mean, look at it.
It is hard to believe how far we've come
in quality, price and performance in just a few short years.
I mean, inky blacks as always,
but the star of the show here is, the stars.
LG boasted that their second-generation panels were so named
for their huge leap forward in brightness,
then proceeded to tell us to expect about a 20% uplift,
which to me, sounded more like an incremental step
than worthy of being called second gen.
Then I got to experience them side by side and yeah,
between the more precise color and increased brightness,
it looks a lot better, but awkward thing,
LG has their own product based on this panel coming soon,
the G1, and for a lower cost. Why would anyone buy a Sony?
Sony's image processing for starters. Historically,
it's been the best in the biz,
and the A90J is no slouch either, with some tweaks.
You got your CineMotion, your Motionflow,
your random and digital noise reduction and,
and why not some smooth gradation?
I mean I'm grateful all these dials exist,
but Reality Creation Sony? Reality Creation.
Why not just call it AI-assisted sharpening,
cause it's actually really good.
So it can be a little exhausting,
trial and erroring all the dials, but thankfully
once you've got it just right, it looks amazing
and your settings will be saved and synced
to their respective inputs.
Dolby Atmos also makes an appearance here
alongside HDR 10 and Dolby Vision Dynamic HDR,
so these are more top tier features that are expected
from a flagship OLED, but there's one glaring omission.
The lack of variable refresh rate support
is something I just can't skip over.
It is promised, apparently by winter 2021,
but the thing is, Sony, this same company is now six months
behind Microsoft on variable refresh rate
for the PlayStation five, which is a great reminder
that when you buy something, you have to evaluate
and purchase what it offers now, and not go based on
what's promised. So what that means is that LGC10
or C1 lineup is still the go-to for gaming
on the big screen.
Once that update drops, however, Sony will have a
very strong contender here, cause here's the thing.
Sony has another trick up their sleeves.
LG's second gen OLED TVs actually lack a key feature
that Sony has built into the A90J:
an aluminum sheet lamination layer.
That is why 20% brighter looked by so much
cause it's way more than 20%.
Thanks to that extra cooling.
Sony is actually driving this thing
as high as 1300 nits, bloody hell!
That is right up there with last generation
quantum dot LED backlit TVs, and in practice,
it makes for a fantastic viewing experience with 4K content,
especially in HDR. Of course, a lot of our content
isn't HDR, or even high res, for that matter.
But the A90J shows its strengths here too.
Bad upscaling can be worse than no upscaling.
And most upscaling, honestly speaking, is bad,
but Sony's algorithms put in work here
and really do make a big difference.
The Bravia XR processor is able to take
what little information it's given
and dynamically make local adjustments to contrast
and gamma to bring pop back to parts of the image on screen.
And the addition of the low CineMotion setting,
it was previously only an on and off toggle
in the last generation X900H,
means that you now have a nice middle ground
for low bitrate stream content enhancement.
Essentially what it does is tries to detect what sort
of processing has already been done to your image
then tries to "un" it.
So cranking it up to high for highly compressed content
like Netflix has a profound effect on the experience.
Now, something that's plagued OLEDs in the past
has been the lack of near blacks in very dark content,
dubbed as Near-Black Chrominance Overshoot by HDTV test.
In our viewing of a handful of dark scenes though,
we didn't see any blocking or a lack of depth to the darks.
So thumbs up from me there.
Moving along to the other half of the TV experience though,
how does it sound? Great.
Actually really great.
The surprisingly crisp sound profile comes
thanks to dual primary actuators that are mounted directly
behind the screen at 10 Watts per channel
along with dual 20 watt subwoofers for the low end
and as a result of the well-designed audio package
I would actually think twice before outfitting this TV
with a soundbar, I mean, a soundbar along
with a dedicated subwoofer to bring
some low end grunt back? Yeah.
There's no replacement for displacement,
but even so I can comfortably say that the sound here
is best in class for being integrated.
As they say, though, good hardware is nothing
without good software, and included in the A90J's
tool quiver is a super easy automatic room EQ.
It leverages the microphone in the remote to measure
and adjust the speaker output based on how your space
reacts to sound and your seating location.
Now I can actually show you this. Yay!
(digital blipping)
Pew pew. And that's it.
There is no manual EQ, thumbs down for that,
but we focus the auto configurator
to a couple of different seating positions,
and I can verify it does make a difference.
If you're more of an AV receiver person,
you can also use the TV as a center channel over eARC
to add to a full speaker setup, but if your other speakers
don't match Sony's acoustic timbre,
you might be better off getting something
that's a closer match anyway. Sony's new remote
is a breath of fresh air. Everyone else is trying to do
simpler, simpler, simpler, and this just,
has all the features, which personally
I prefer. It's larger, longer.
There's four shortcuts to the usual bunch
of content providers.
And the aluminized top is a nice touch, pun intended.
It's sturdy and comfortable to use with nice grippy backing,
and this might seem minor, but having the remote
light up when it's jostled, so nice
when you're looking for it in the dark.
All other TV makers, please take note.
And, as for the software on the TV,
Google TV is a really nice improvement
over the more dated Android TV
and the experience is much better for it.
Finding content across all your services is easy
with the built-in cross platform search
and menu navigation is snappy
with all the Google integrated services
that you could wish for.
There's also Apple Airplay 2 if that's your preferred flavor
of device, but hey, maybe you don't like flavor at all.
You can just take a clean refreshing sip
of flavorless water. LTTstore.com.
So where does that leave us?
We've got a highly featured, very smart TV
that kills it in the image processing department
and uses the latest generation
of OLED panel seemingly to its utmost,
along with a nice sound package and a sleek aesthetic.
Would I buy one?
No, not for what I would want to use it for, anyway.
Variable refresh rate makes a huge difference for gaming
and I suspect that matters to a lot of you as well.
But if you're more of a passive content consumer
and you play the occasional game
and you can stomach the price, the A90J is a great TV
as it is now. And when VRR gets added to the mix,
it will be scary tempting,
just like I'm tempted to tell you about our sponsor, ESR.
ESR wants to help make charging your iPhone 12 easier.
Whether you're in the car or at the office,
ESR has the product for you.
The HaloLock car charger uses MagSafe to keep your phone
firmly attached to your dash while wirelessly charging it.
And you can easily rotate your phone between landscape
and portrait modes without removing the clamp.
It charges at up to seven and a half watts
for faster charging. And if you're at your desk,
the HaloLock kickstand charger uses MagSafe
to keep your phone propped up for convenient viewing.
The HaloLock system supports any
of the new iPhone 12 series phones caseless,
or you can use any iPhone with a MagSafe-compatible case.
ESR is also giving three lucky viewers a chance
to win a brand new iPhone 12 and four ESR HaloLock products.
So get your HaloLock chargers today
and enter to win an iPhone 12 using the links
down in the video description.
If you guys liked this video, maybe take a look
at the other side of the coin with our video using
LGC10 48-inch as a monitor. That thing is so awesome.