Sony BRAVIA 8 OLED TV Review

The Sony BRAVIA 8 has a premium design that looks fantastic in any room. Its thin bezels give the TV a sleek look when viewed from the front.

The TV uses two metal feet that you can adjust to four different positions in total. You can have the feet close together in a narrow position or further apart from each other in a wider position. On top of that, you can set the feet to a low or high position, depending on your needs. The low position lifts the TV about 1.73 inches, so it sits very close to your table. The high position (pictured above) lifts the TV about 3.86 inches, so almost any soundbar fits underneath without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand in the narrow position: 22.95" x 9.84".

Footprint of the 65-inch stand in the wide position: 48.98" x 9.84".

The back of the TV is made entirely of plastic and has the familiar checkerboard pattern similar to many other recent Sony TVs. The inputs are on the far left side of the TV when facing the front, but they're in a recessed cutout, so they're a bit hard to reach if you have the TV mounted flush to the wall. There's a plastic cover that can be used to hide the inputs section, but there are no clips for cable management.

The Sony BRAVIA 8 has outstanding build quality. Its metal frame is solid, the TV has some weight to it that makes it feel sturdy, and it barely wobbles in both the low and high stand positions. There are no issues with build quality, and the TV feels premium.

The Sony BRAVIA 8 has remarkable contrast and a nearly infinite contrast ratio. Due to OLED's self-lit pixels, the TV displays bright highlights next to perfect inky blacks, making it very impressive in a dark room.

Since OLEDs don't use local dimming and instead have individual pixels that can be lit up to their maximum brightness next to pixels that are turned off, there's no blooming when bright elements are surrounded by deep blacks.

The TV is an OLED and has no backlight, so its self-lit pixels give it the same performance as a TV with perfect local dimming and no zone transitions. We still film the zone transition video on the TV, so you can see how it compares to a TV with local dimming.

There's no difference in dark scene behavior between the calibrated picture modes and when the TV is set in Game Mode.

The Sony BRAVIA 8 has good HDR brightness that makes highlights stand out during darker scenes. Combined with its remarkable contrast, this TV provides an impactful HDR viewing experience. Unfortunately, large bright scenes are significantly dimmer than smaller, specular highlights due to its aggressive Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL).

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Professional
• Brightness (HDR): Maximum
• Contrast (HDR): 90
• Color Temperature: Expert 2
• Peak Luminance: High
• HDR Tone Mapping: Gradation Preferred

Results with 'HDR Tone Mapping' set to Brightness Preferred:

• Hallway Lights: 657 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 560 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 271 cd/m²

Most scenes are slightly brighter in Game Mode, but the difference is small, and it's a bit less accurate. Highlights pop out during darker moments in games, and combined with its remarkable contrast, this TV provides an impactful HDR gaming experience.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Game
• Brightness (HDR): Maximum
• Contrast (HDR): 90
• Color Temperature: Expert 2
• Peak Luminance: High
• HDR Tone Mapping: Off

Results with 'HDR Tone Mapping' set to Brightness Preferred:

• Hallway Lights: 537 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 375 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 189 cd/m²

The Sony BRAVIA 8 has excellent PQ EOTF tracking, but a large portion of shadows and mid-tones are displayed a bit dimmer than intended, and some mid-tones and highlights are displayed a bit brighter than intended. There's a gradual roll-off near the TV's peak brightness to maintain details in highlights that are brighter than what the TV is capable of.

The Sony BRAVIA 8 has very good SDR brightness and overcomes glare in bright rooms. Its Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL) is aggressive when bright highlights take up most of the screen or if the entire image is bright, like when watching hockey. Outside of that, there isn't much variation in the TV's SDR peak brightness.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Professional
• Brightness (SDR): Maximum
• Contrast (SDR): 90
• Gamma (SDR): 0
• Color Temperature: Expert 1
• Peak Luminance: High

The TV has an excellent color gamut. It covers nearly the entire range of colors in the DCI-P3 color space, and colors are extremely accurate. Its coverage of the Rec.2020 color space used mostly in some nature documentaries and animated films is good, but all colors are undersaturated and inaccurate, with greens and cyans faring the worst.

The TV has very good color volume. It displays dark, saturated colors very well, and its ability to display bright whites is outstanding. It doesn't display other colors as brightly as it does whites, but it's still enough to display bright and vibrant colors.

The Sony BRAVIA 8 has just decent pre-calibration accuracy. Its white balance is disappointing, with blues very overrepresented in mid-grays and brighter grays. The color temperature is noticeably cooler than our target of 6500K. The color accuracy is great, but there are still some inaccuracies with most colors. Gamma is close to our target of 2.2, but some scenes are slightly too dark, while others are slightly too bright.

The TV has fantastic accuracy after calibration. The white balance and color temperature are essentially perfect. Gamma is now closer to our target of 2.2, with only some bright scenes being slightly too bright. Color accuracy is even better than before, but there are still some minor inaccuracies with yellows, reds, light blues, and whites.

You can see our full calibration settings here.

The Sony BRAVIA 8 has excellent gray uniformity. If you look closely, there are some very faint vertical lines on the panel, but these aren't noticeable from a normal viewing distance.

Because OLEDs can turn off individual pixels, the TV has incredible black uniformity with no blooming or halo effect around bright objects.

The TV has an incredibly wide viewing angle that remains mostly consistent from almost any angle, but there is some color washout at more aggressive angles. Still, it's an excellent choice for watching TV in a group setting.

The TV has outstanding reflection handling. Its glossy screen finish significantly reduces the intensity of indirect reflections, like when you have glare from a ceiling light that isn't directly facing the screen. It does a fantastic job of reducing the intensity of direct reflections, like a lamp positioned in front of the screen.

The TV has very good HDR native gradient handling. There's some noticeable banding in dark grays and bright greens, but all other colors have minimal banding or no banding at all.

The TV has impressive low-quality content smoothing. It does an excellent job at smoothing out artifacts in low bit rate content while still preserving details.

The TV does an excellent job with upscaling low-resolution content like DVDs, standard definition cable channels, and lower-resolution streams. Details are well-defined and clear enough, but very fine details and small hard-coded text are a bit hard to make out.

Sharpness processing was calibrated with no over-sharpening for low-resolution content, with the following settings:

• Sharpness: 50
• Reality Creation: Auto

The TV adds excessive sharpening when adjusting the default value of '50' to '51,' which you can see here. You can also see this unusual behavior by comparing the two photos below.

• Sharpness: 50
• Sharpness: 51

The Sony BRAVIA 8 uses a WOLED panel with a WRGB pixel structure where all four pixels are never lit at the same time. Due to its subpixel layout, it has minor issues with displaying text on Windows since ClearType isn't well optimized to non-RGB subpixel layouts, but most users won't be bothered by this.

The Sony BRAVIA 8 has a nearly instantaneous response time, resulting in incredibly clear motion with almost no blur behind fast-moving objects. Due to the sample-and-hold nature of OLED technology, there's still some persistence blur when gaming at 60Hz, but it's not noticeable at higher refresh rates.

This TV doesn't have a traditional backlight and doesn't use pulse-width modulation (PWM) to dim each pixel, but it's not completely flicker-free. There's a slight dip in brightness that corresponds to the TV's refresh rate. This differs from the PWM flicker on TVs with LED backlights and occurs on every OLED we've tested. It's not noticeable, and most people won't be bothered by this, but it can still bother people who are extra sensitive to flicker.

The TV has an optional black frame insertion (BFI) feature that reduces the appearance of persistence blur caused by the TV's nearly instantaneous response time. It can only insert black frames at a 60Hz refresh rate.

This TV has an optional motion interpolation feature to improve the clarity of motion. It does a good job at smoothing out slower scenes, but there are some noticeable artifacts present. In faster-moving scenes, it can't keep up, and there are distracting artifacts and haloing.

Unfortunately, due to the TV's nearly instantaneous pixel response time, there's stutter with low frame rate content, which is most noticeable during slow panning shots.

This TV removes judder automatically from 24p sources, like a Blu-ray player or an external streaming device with a 'Match Frame Rate' feature. For 60Hz sources, like a cable box or the native apps, Motionflow has to be enabled, with both sliders at 'Min' and CineMotion set to 'High' to remove judder.

The TV supports HDMI Forum VRR and G-SYNC but doesn't support FreeSync. It works well across a wide refresh rate range and supports sources with Low-Frame-Compensation (LFC), which ensures your games remain nearly tear-free even when your frame rate drops very low.

This TV has incredibly low input lag when set into Game Mode, which ensures a very responsive gaming experience with very little delay between your actions with your controller or mouse and the action on-screen.

Outside of game mode, the TV's input lag is much higher, and there's a noticeable delay when hitting buttons on the remote, like when pausing a movie.

The Sony BRAVIA 8 supports all common resolutions up to 4k @ 120Hz on two of its four HDMI ports. Chroma 4:4:4 signals are displayed properly with all supported resolutions when the TV's 'Content Type' is set to Game or PC, which is important for text clarity. Unfortunately, the TV doesn't support 1440p.

With the exception of 1440p, the TV is fully compatible with everything the PS5 offers, like 4k @ 120Hz, as well as HDMI Forum VRR. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to manually switch to Game Mode to get the lowest input lag.

With the exception of 1440p, the TV is fully compatible with everything the Xbox Series X|S offers, including 4k @ 120Hz, HDMI Forum VRR, FreeSync Premium Pro, and Dolby Vision gaming. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to manually switch to Game Mode to get the lowest input lag.

The Sony BRAVIA 8 has HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on HDMI ports 3 and 4, with both supporting up to 4k @ 120Hz. Unfortunately, the HDMI 3 port is also the eARC port, so you lose a high bandwidth port when you plug a soundbar into the TV. The TV supports Dolby Vision, and it has an ATSC 3.0 tuner, so you can watch 4k content over the air.

Like some previous Sony TVs, you can use the TV's built-in speakers as a center channel when paired with a soundbar or receiver. Unfortunately, it only has Sony's S-Center input and doesn't have traditional speaker inputs, so it's only compatible with certain soundbars and receivers made by Sony.

The TV supports eARC, which lets you pass high-quality, uncompressed audio to a compatible receiver or soundbar through an HDMI cable. It supports all major audio formats, so you don't have to worry about compatibility with external sources.

The Sony BRAVIA 8 has a decent frequency response. It produces some bass, but it's not enough for impactful bass. The TV's sound profile is well-balanced at moderate volume levels, making dialogue easy to understand. The sound becomes unbalanced near and at the TV's maximum volume, which is unfortunate since the TV doesn't get very loud.

The TV has good distortion performance. There's no audible distortion at moderate volume levels, and although the distortion increases a bit as you raise the volume, it's only audible at maximum volume.

The Sony BRAVIA 8 uses version 12 of the popular Google TV operating system, and the interface is smooth and easy to use. The TV has a minor bug when using the 'Detailed Signal Info' option that shows a native refresh rate of 120Hz when outputting a 60Hz signal.

Unfortunately, like almost all TVs on the market, the smart interface contains ads, and you can't disable them.

The TV has a fantastic selection of apps, so finding your favorite content is easy. You can cast content from your phone using the built-in AirPlay 2 or Chromecast. You can also play videos directly from a USB stick.

The remote is backlit and has a matte finish with blue speckles. Outside of that, the remote is identical to the one included with last year's Sony A80L/A80CL OLED. It has buttons for popular streaming services, and you can use the built-in microphone to switch inputs, change apps, search within apps, ask for the weather and time, and change settings like brightness.

There's a single button on the bottom of the TV that can be used to switch inputs, adjust the volume, change channels, and power the TV on/off. There's also a small button that you can use to turn on/off the TV's built-in microphone.

• Setup guide
• Remote (with 2x AAA batteries)
• Power cable