Sony A8G 4K HDR OLED TV Hands-On Review

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou know what this might actually be the easiest TV review I do all year in fact since we're shooting this on a Friday I might just go home early hey everybody welcome back on Caleb Denison and today we're doing a full-on review of the Sony a Geo LED TV it's right down below the a 9 G and honestly the two are so stinkin close I could almost just Forge you to the a 9 G review and say this one's cheaper but there are a few differences and we want to take a closer look at that so let's just dive right in shall we so first of all here is a link to our unboxing of this TV we actually take it out of the box get it all set up you learn a little bit about what makes this TV different than the a 9 G but I'll point out the most important stuff right now first of all is the design with a 9 g OLED the more expensive one it sits right above the entertainment stand which looks really cool it's almost as if it's just hovering there practically speaking it's kind of a pain in the butt to move around because you can't get your fingers underneath it but look if you're gonna set it and forget it maybe that's not such a big deal to you the bezels on the a 9g are infinitesimally smaller than the ones on the HG but as you can see here really really trim bezels a very trim profile it's a gorgeous TV the biggest difference though is the stand now we have it oriented this way where the legs are pointing out as you can see but if you want to you can flip it around so that the curved part of the stand currently on the back of the TV actually comes out front I like the look of that better where the curved part is out front but if you're gonna be setting up a sound bar with this TV having the legs out like this makes more sense sony actually provides these little feet that you can put underneath your sound bar so that raises just above these legs and fits night and sleep below the TV you're gonna want a real trim sound bar though so that it doesn't creep up into the screen area the other big difference is the remote the a 9 G has a much nicer brushed metal remote with a less dense layout of buttons this is the old Sony remote as we've known it for years now a couple more things you might want to know if you didn't already it's an Android TV the sony 8 g and as such you know it can run a little bit on the sluggish side you know I'm pressing really really fast and takes a second to catch up Android TV is a resource but you know what it's so much better now than it was last year that I'm not going to complain too much the other thing you want to know is that the screen is the speaker so there's an actuator here and one on the other side that vibrate the screen to make sound and that may not sound like it would sound great but actually it does one of the coolest things about it is if there's somebody over here talking you actually hear the sound coming from the face that's doing the talking same with sound effects like explosions they come from wherever they are on the screen there's a little subwoofer in the back that reinforces that so you do get a fairly full sound but you know a TV of this quality probably deserves at least a sound bar if not a full on home theater system test pattern time and you know what you should expect here so we're looking for blooming around these white boxes in the corners and though you may see something like that through the camera and ultimately the screen you're watching you this on believe me when I say that there is no blooming it's an OLED TV the black pixels are perfectly black the white boxes have very sharp lines around them it's exactly what you would expect from an OLED you see that again here there's no bleed from the white boxes into the black boxes in this checkerboard pattern it's just absolutely perfect those were the SDR patterns here we have the HDR version and obviously you can see that the brightness went way way up so an SDR you're looking at of almost 300 nits of peak brightness you're getting closer to 600 650 on a good day when you're in HDR mode which is not as high as some of the competition but it's still plenty juicy grayscale in SDR looks great exactly what we want to see switch to HDR what we noticed is we lose a little bit of the dark grey on the left and then on the right you can see that the the brights are a little bit blown out and that's because this test pattern goes brighter than the TV is actually capable of producing this is totally normal and what we're used to seeing now we've got a color pattern in standard dynamic range and what we see is what I generally expect especially from Sony out of box color this is the cinema home mode so that's a little bit brighter than the cinema pro mode looks great now that isn't to say that it could not use the help of a calibrator here it is an HDR mode obviously much brighter but what I notice here is that with the calibration you could probably wrangle this thing into while damn near perfect but out of the box it's great so unless you're a video file I think you're gonna be totally stoked with either the cinema home or cinema pro mode hey look we're doing something new so I don't feel like we talked about the reflectivity of these screens enough so we're gonna try this new test which is a stress test believe me this is one of our powerful studio lights aimed right at the screen from directly behind the viewing position you would never have this at home but it helps us kind of show what the anti glare does on these televisions and I would actually give this Sony like a 9 or a 9.5 you'll see in future videos TVs that perform much worse you're not gonna see much better than this so we're seeing actually quite a bit of diffusing of the light and yeah I'm impressed when the TV is in a normal viewing situation you really don't see much in the way of reflections unless the Sun is coming in through your back window so test patterns are great right because their objective and they're measurable subjectively though I think that analysis is important I mean I'm looking at footage I've seen a hundred times this is the spears and Munsell UHD test disc and what I'm seeing here is absolutely exemplary it really comes down to Sony's processing what you get with Sony's processing is toned down HDR highlights so they're not as bright and punchy as say an LG OLED but they preserve highlight detail which I'm a big fan of and also I feel like the HDR highlights here are plenty bright especially against the perfectly black canvas it's just fantastic the colors are also very rich and vibrant I credit that to Sony's processing as well overall just a really really balanced TV you know sony strives to make this TV look as close as it can to its professional $30,000 OLED monitors that Hollywood uses and I've seen the two side-by-side it does a great job and I notice here motion is also very good this is a clip that has tripped up other sets Sony's motion processing is excellent it does not introduce any soap-opera effect it just looks very very smooth without having unnatural smoothness to it here's something else sony processing is especially good at cleaning up lossy compressed video so we're streaming off of YouTube something with this much blue in it I expect to see some macro blocking a little bit of banding and the big sky scenes and the sony does a great job of cleaning all that up now if you get right up on the TV you can see a little bit of that noise but when you sit in a normal distance it's gone sony absolutely cleans it up better than virtually any other TV manufacturer out on the market right now and that is crucial because most of us stream our content or watch cable and satellite so let's check out cable and satellite ask and you shall receive you guys have been wanting feedback on how the TV's perform with cable and satellite signals which we know are really compressed and usually low resolution around 720p unless you're lucky enough to be watching a 4k station there's a saying you can't polish a turd and this is true even with TV as great as the Sony it can only do so much it is attempting to clean up some of the dirtiness but there compression artifacts all over the place here luckily you don't sit this close to a TV so you don't notice it so much but like hey real soap opera effect right I did notice with this television though that sports looked particularly good the motion was good and not too flashy or stuttery as we've seen with some other televisions so honestly this is going to be as good as it gets for satellite or cable so let's put things into perspective shall we the sony a 9 g which i called the best TV of the year because it's just my favorite cost $3,800 for a 65 inch the sony a 8 g behind me is $1,300 less at just $2,500 just twenty five hundred dollars yeah it's a lot of money the LG c 9 by comparison is also $2,500 for the 65 inch TV so you've got some really good options under $3,000 for a 65 inch outlet and that is awesome my pick though it's gonna have to be for the sony I love the a a G I think it brings a lot of that Sony picture quality and processing that I talked about with really nice design Android TV works well enough for me so it's a win hey everybody thanks for watching hit me up in the comments down below I'm sure you have something to say about this video good or bad like subscribe hit that notification bell so you know when we're coming out with a new video and in the meantime check out my review of the LG c9 OLED right over hereyou know what this might actually be the easiest TV review I do all year in fact since we're shooting this on a Friday I might just go home early hey everybody welcome back on Caleb Denison and today we're doing a full-on review of the Sony a Geo LED TV it's right down below the a 9 G and honestly the two are so stinkin close I could almost just Forge you to the a 9 G review and say this one's cheaper but there are a few differences and we want to take a closer look at that so let's just dive right in shall we so first of all here is a link to our unboxing of this TV we actually take it out of the box get it all set up you learn a little bit about what makes this TV different than the a 9 G but I'll point out the most important stuff right now first of all is the design with a 9 g OLED the more expensive one it sits right above the entertainment stand which looks really cool it's almost as if it's just hovering there practically speaking it's kind of a pain in the butt to move around because you can't get your fingers underneath it but look if you're gonna set it and forget it maybe that's not such a big deal to you the bezels on the a 9g are infinitesimally smaller than the ones on the HG but as you can see here really really trim bezels a very trim profile it's a gorgeous TV the biggest difference though is the stand now we have it oriented this way where the legs are pointing out as you can see but if you want to you can flip it around so that the curved part of the stand currently on the back of the TV actually comes out front I like the look of that better where the curved part is out front but if you're gonna be setting up a sound bar with this TV having the legs out like this makes more sense sony actually provides these little feet that you can put underneath your sound bar so that raises just above these legs and fits night and sleep below the TV you're gonna want a real trim sound bar though so that it doesn't creep up into the screen area the other big difference is the remote the a 9 G has a much nicer brushed metal remote with a less dense layout of buttons this is the old Sony remote as we've known it for years now a couple more things you might want to know if you didn't already it's an Android TV the sony 8 g and as such you know it can run a little bit on the sluggish side you know I'm pressing really really fast and takes a second to catch up Android TV is a resource but you know what it's so much better now than it was last year that I'm not going to complain too much the other thing you want to know is that the screen is the speaker so there's an actuator here and one on the other side that vibrate the screen to make sound and that may not sound like it would sound great but actually it does one of the coolest things about it is if there's somebody over here talking you actually hear the sound coming from the face that's doing the talking same with sound effects like explosions they come from wherever they are on the screen there's a little subwoofer in the back that reinforces that so you do get a fairly full sound but you know a TV of this quality probably deserves at least a sound bar if not a full on home theater system test pattern time and you know what you should expect here so we're looking for blooming around these white boxes in the corners and though you may see something like that through the camera and ultimately the screen you're watching you this on believe me when I say that there is no blooming it's an OLED TV the black pixels are perfectly black the white boxes have very sharp lines around them it's exactly what you would expect from an OLED you see that again here there's no bleed from the white boxes into the black boxes in this checkerboard pattern it's just absolutely perfect those were the SDR patterns here we have the HDR version and obviously you can see that the brightness went way way up so an SDR you're looking at of almost 300 nits of peak brightness you're getting closer to 600 650 on a good day when you're in HDR mode which is not as high as some of the competition but it's still plenty juicy grayscale in SDR looks great exactly what we want to see switch to HDR what we noticed is we lose a little bit of the dark grey on the left and then on the right you can see that the the brights are a little bit blown out and that's because this test pattern goes brighter than the TV is actually capable of producing this is totally normal and what we're used to seeing now we've got a color pattern in standard dynamic range and what we see is what I generally expect especially from Sony out of box color this is the cinema home mode so that's a little bit brighter than the cinema pro mode looks great now that isn't to say that it could not use the help of a calibrator here it is an HDR mode obviously much brighter but what I notice here is that with the calibration you could probably wrangle this thing into while damn near perfect but out of the box it's great so unless you're a video file I think you're gonna be totally stoked with either the cinema home or cinema pro mode hey look we're doing something new so I don't feel like we talked about the reflectivity of these screens enough so we're gonna try this new test which is a stress test believe me this is one of our powerful studio lights aimed right at the screen from directly behind the viewing position you would never have this at home but it helps us kind of show what the anti glare does on these televisions and I would actually give this Sony like a 9 or a 9.5 you'll see in future videos TVs that perform much worse you're not gonna see much better than this so we're seeing actually quite a bit of diffusing of the light and yeah I'm impressed when the TV is in a normal viewing situation you really don't see much in the way of reflections unless the Sun is coming in through your back window so test patterns are great right because their objective and they're measurable subjectively though I think that analysis is important I mean I'm looking at footage I've seen a hundred times this is the spears and Munsell UHD test disc and what I'm seeing here is absolutely exemplary it really comes down to Sony's processing what you get with Sony's processing is toned down HDR highlights so they're not as bright and punchy as say an LG OLED but they preserve highlight detail which I'm a big fan of and also I feel like the HDR highlights here are plenty bright especially against the perfectly black canvas it's just fantastic the colors are also very rich and vibrant I credit that to Sony's processing as well overall just a really really balanced TV you know sony strives to make this TV look as close as it can to its professional $30,000 OLED monitors that Hollywood uses and I've seen the two side-by-side it does a great job and I notice here motion is also very good this is a clip that has tripped up other sets Sony's motion processing is excellent it does not introduce any soap-opera effect it just looks very very smooth without having unnatural smoothness to it here's something else sony processing is especially good at cleaning up lossy compressed video so we're streaming off of YouTube something with this much blue in it I expect to see some macro blocking a little bit of banding and the big sky scenes and the sony does a great job of cleaning all that up now if you get right up on the TV you can see a little bit of that noise but when you sit in a normal distance it's gone sony absolutely cleans it up better than virtually any other TV manufacturer out on the market right now and that is crucial because most of us stream our content or watch cable and satellite so let's check out cable and satellite ask and you shall receive you guys have been wanting feedback on how the TV's perform with cable and satellite signals which we know are really compressed and usually low resolution around 720p unless you're lucky enough to be watching a 4k station there's a saying you can't polish a turd and this is true even with TV as great as the Sony it can only do so much it is attempting to clean up some of the dirtiness but there compression artifacts all over the place here luckily you don't sit this close to a TV so you don't notice it so much but like hey real soap opera effect right I did notice with this television though that sports looked particularly good the motion was good and not too flashy or stuttery as we've seen with some other televisions so honestly this is going to be as good as it gets for satellite or cable so let's put things into perspective shall we the sony a 9 g which i called the best TV of the year because it's just my favorite cost $3,800 for a 65 inch the sony a 8 g behind me is $1,300 less at just $2,500 just twenty five hundred dollars yeah it's a lot of money the LG c 9 by comparison is also $2,500 for the 65 inch TV so you've got some really good options under $3,000 for a 65 inch outlet and that is awesome my pick though it's gonna have to be for the sony I love the a a G I think it brings a lot of that Sony picture quality and processing that I talked about with really nice design Android TV works well enough for me so it's a win hey everybody thanks for watching hit me up in the comments down below I'm sure you have something to say about this video good or bad like subscribe hit that notification bell so you know when we're coming out with a new video and in the meantime check out my review of the LG c9 OLED right over here\n"