Sony A8F tv assessment: excessive-end complications

IoE News

November 2, 2018

if you’re browsing for a brand new tv, you doubtless fall into one in every of two camps: someone who wants to spend lower than $ 1,000 or somebody who desires the top-quality photograph satisfactory they can get, rate be damned. if you’re in the first camp, make sure you purchase TCL’s 6 collection tv, which charges around $ 650 for a 55-inch mannequin and is the ideal tv you can get for only a grand.

On the other conclusion of the spectrum, LG’s line of OLED TVs has long been the way to go for the ideal image great which you could get. They customarily sell for between $ 2,000 and $ three,000, reckoning on what size you want.

however LG isn’t the best tv maker obtainable with OLED TVs, and in case you seem round, that you can discover OLED TVs with a great deal bigger price tags. So, what do you get from a multi-thousand-greenback television in 2018 that LG’s superlative OLED options don’t offer you? I’ve been testing Sony’s $ 3,800 65-inch A8F to find out.

The A8F is an replace to the A1E from 2017, and it’s an OLED tv in both fifty five or sixty five inches with a sleek design. It has 4K decision and helps both HDR10 and Dolby imaginative and prescient HDR. not like the A1E’s exciting design with a kickstand within the again, the A8F is greater average, with a base on the bottom that supports the television. This design makes it much less demanding to mount on a wall than before. however like the A1E, there aren’t any audio system on the facets or under the reveal — all of the sound comes from Sony’s Acoustic floor expertise, which makes use of the panel itself to venture sound ahead. The entrance-firing device is augmented by means of a rear-firing subwoofer for brought bass.

This design offers the A8F a gorgeous presentation of just an enormous screen with the trimmest of bezels surrounding it. Even the stand puts the tv flush in opposition t your credenza or whatever floor it’s on — there’s no hole or legs beneath the monitor. This can make it tough to place a soundbar in front of the television, besides the fact that children, because it will possible block part of the seen display.

The Acoustic floor device works very neatly. It mimics the journey you get from a movie theater the place sound is forged from behind the reveal. It’s tuned for talk, so the song and sound outcomes don’t drown out the stuff you truly are looking to hear in a movie. It additionally gets impressively loud by itself.

but most individuals doling out nearly $ 4,000 for a television aren’t doing so for its sound, and they’re likely going to make use of an external sound gadget alongside the tv anyhow. No, they’re paying that expense for the graphic, and the A8F’s photo first-class is impressive. hues are rich, blacks are as darkish as they can be, and viewing angles are gigantic. The HDR capabilities blow their own horns the panel’s latitude, and Sony has employed its personal hints to make HDR10 content material seem to be comparable to Dolby imaginative and prescient content material. It’s an exquisite viewing journey, even within the boring room the place I verified the television.

here’s the rub, although: there are best a handful of corporations that make OLED panels, and Sony isn’t considered one of them. That capacity that the A8F is the usage of the same OLED panels as LG’s TVs, which cost a whole bunch of greenbacks less for a similar reveal measurement. Sony claims that its processing technology is what separates its TVs from different OLEDs and that the A8F’s proprietary X1 intense 4K HDR processor is the important thing to even better graphic high-quality.

the new processor, which Sony claims is 40 % greater effective than its predecessor, is in a position to an entire litany of buzzwordy styles of facets, similar to “Object-based mostly HDR Remastering,” “dual Database Processing,” and “tremendous Bit Mapping.” All of those are supposed to make contributions to stronger picture pleasant, in spite of the fact that the content you’re gazing isn’t the highest decision or excellent.

I’m certain Sony’s expertise gives some difference in lab assessments and Sony has a number of examples to show it out, but if it’s any more advantageous than an LG OLED for standard viewing, it’s simplest incrementally so. on the end of the day, OLED is still OLED, and when the panels are the identical, processing can best make so a whole lot of a difference.

There are other explanations I’d doubtless save my funds and go together with LG’s tv over the A8F, as well. The A8F runs Android television with Google’s Assistant, however it’s nonetheless using a dated edition based on Android 7.1 Nougat. Sony says an replace to Android 8.0 Oreo is coming this year, however hasn’t arrived in the months I’ve been checking out the tv.

I’m no longer bound if it’s the old version of Android television or whatever else, but fundamental performance of navigating the home reveal, opening apps, scrolling via menus, and the like is downright awful on the A8F. It’s gradual, slow, frustrating to use, and never whatever thing that I want to cope with on a virtually $ 4,000 television. A $ 500 Roku tv will run circles around the Sony from a usability standpoint, and that’s ridiculous.

additionally, the A8F struggles when streaming content material during the a lot of apps, no matter if it’s Netflix, Google Play motion pictures, Vudu, or anything else. inspite of no matter if I used Wi-Fi or a hardwired Ethernet line, content buffers plenty, bitrates fall, and fine immediately turns to crap. It makes it difficult to appreciate the A8F’s superb image excellent when Vudu can handiest muster a couple of frames per 2nd of The final Jedi at a time.

Granted, if you’re using an external source for your content material, equivalent to a 4K Blu-ray participant, none of this should be an issue. however with more and more casual television gazing happening over streaming services, it’s a big black eye on the A8F’s experience. Sony told me that the minimal bandwidth obligatory to circulation 4K HDR content is 15 to 20Mbps, which whereas actually a excessive-speed connection, isn’t out of reach for most cyber web services. For what it’s worth, the streaming considerations I’ve skilled listed here are constrained to the A8F — other TVs and set-excellent containers we’ve demonstrated have had no such complications keeping a flow on the same information superhighway connection.

unluckily, despite the A8F’s outstanding photograph satisfactory and striking design, it’s now not justifiably more desirable than LG’s choices, and in lots of techniques, it’s worse. When it involves this television, spending greater doesn’t always get you more.