Sony 42 A90K OLED Monitor Review

The Sony 42 A90K has a premium design that looks great in any room. It has very thin bezels on three sides that help it blend into your environment.

The Sony 42 A90K has superb build quality. The back house is mostly made of plastic but feels well-built and solid, with very little flex. It's very stable, and the stand supports the TV very well.

Unfortunately, the Sony 42 A90K has no ergonomic adjustments, but there are leg extensions that lift the display about 2.8" above the table. It's designed to give you room to place a soundbar in front of the TV, but it also improves the ergonomics a bit and brings the center of the screen closer to eye-level. Unfortunately, there's no cable management.

The stand is slim, but it supports the TV extremely well. There's very little wobble. You can configure the stand either as shown, with the display almost flush with the table, or in a soundbar mode as shown here.

There's a physical button on the back of the TV that you can use to change inputs or power the TV on or off, but most of the controls are located on the included remote. The remote is backlit and has a built-in mic for voice control. You can also use the mic on the TV itself for hands-free voice control.

• Remote control
• 2x AAA batteries
• Leg extenders
• Cable management tie wrap
• User guides

The Sony 42 A90K has a near-infinite contrast ratio with perfect black levels in dark rooms, even when they're right next to bright highlights. It makes it a fantastic choice for watching in a dark room.

The Sony 42 A90K doesn't have a backlight, but thanks to its near-infinite contrast ratio, it's equivalent to a perfect local dimming feature. We still film these videos on the TV, so you can see how it performs and compare it with a TV with local dimming.

The Sony 42 A90K's SDR peak brightness is okay. Like all OLED TVs and monitors, it has an aggressive Automatic Brightness Limiter(ABL) that significantly reduces the brightness of large, bright areas. It's especially noticeable when you're using it as a PC monitor, as simple actions like changing tabs or going back to the desktop can cause a significant change in brightness. It's brighter than the LG 48GQ900-B, but there's more noticeable variation in brightness. You can disable ABL by setting Peak Luminance to 'Off', but this simply avoids ABL by limiting the brightness of the display to about 91 cd/m². These results are from after calibration with the 'Game' Picture Mode, Brightness at its max, Peak Luminance on 'High', and the input label set to 'PC'.

The Sony 42 A90K has okay HDR peak brightness. Small highlights are bright enough to stand out well, but it gets dimmer with larger bright areas due to the aggressive Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL). The brightness tracks the EOTF very well, as almost all scenes display at the correct brightness level. There's a very sharp cut-off at the peak brightness, causing a loss of fine details in bright scenes.

These measurements are in the 'Game' Picture Mode with Peak Luminance set to 'High' and HDR Tone Mapping set to 'Off'.

We also measured the peak brightness with Peak Luminance set to 'Brightness Preferred', to match the settings used on the Sony A90K OLED in 'Game' mode. The 42" model is slightly brighter when displaying small highlights, but the overall peak brightness is about the same.

The Sony 42 A90K has an excellent horizontal viewing angle. Colors shift slightly at a moderate angle, which is noticeable if you're sitting close to the screen, as the sides of the screen appear slightly different from the center.

The Sony 42 A90K has an amazing vertical viewing angle. The top and bottom of the screen remain uniform if you're sitting up close.

The Sony 42 A90K has good gray uniformity. There's a bit of dirty screen effect in the center of the screen, but it's not noticeable. The sides of the screen are significantly darker than the center, though, and this is a bit more noticeable. Unfortunately, this is noticeably worse than the Sony A90K OLED.

Thanks to its OLED panel, the Sony 42 A90K has perfect black uniformity, as any pixel that's displaying black is turned off. It results in a perfectly uniform image with no blooming around bright highlights.

The Sony 42 A90K has great accuracy before calibration. Most colors are displayed accurately, but gamma is flat rather than following the sRGB color space, so dark scenes are a bit too dark, and bright scenes are a bit too bright. The white balance is just okay, though, as most shades of gray are noticeably off. Finally, the color temperature is a bit cool, giving everything a slightly bluish tint.

The TV automatically clamps colors to the sRGB color space, as long as you set the input label to 'PC', with the Color Space setting set to 'Auto'. Note that monitors and TVs use different calibration targets, so these results aren't at all comparable to the Sony A90K OLED.

After calibration, the Sony 42 A90K has fantastic accuracy. There are still a few noticeable issues with colors, but gamma follows the sRGB curve well, and the color temperature is much closer to the target. The white balance is significantly better, and there are no remaining issues.

Our calibration process for monitors is very different from our TV methodology, as we generate an ICC profile for monitors instead of using the TV's full calibration system. You can see the full calibration settings for our 48" Sony A90K here.

The Sony 42 A90K has a fantastic SDR color gamut. It can display the entire sRGB color space used by most desktop and web content, including most games. It also has very good coverage of the wider Adobe RGB color space, but it can't display the full range of green and cyan.

A few additional settings are required if you want to use the Adobe RGB color space. With the input label set to 'PC', the TV targets the sRGB color space, even if you have the Color Space setting set to 'Auto'. You have to change that setting to 'ARGB' to target colors wider than the sRGB color space.

The Sony 42 A90K has incredible color volume. Thanks to its near-infinite contrast ratio, it displays dark, saturated colors well. Bright colors aren't as bright as pure white, but they still look good.

The Sony 42 A90K has a superb color gamut in HDR. It can display almost all of the DCI-P3 color space used by the majority of commercial HDR content, including most games. Coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space is decent. These results are nearly identical to the Sony A90K OLED.

The color volume in HDR is good. Again, it displays dark saturated colors well thanks to its near-infinite contrast ratio, but colors aren't as bright as pure white. Overall, most HDR content looks good, but it's limited by the relatively low brightness of saturated colors and by its incomplete HDR color gamut, especially in the Rec. 2020 color space.

The Sony 42 A90K has excellent reflection handling. Reflections from bright light sources aren't very noticeable, but the anti-reflective coating gives everything a bit of a purple tint.

The Sony 42 A90K has decent text clarity. The pixel density is lower than most typical monitors, and the RWBG subpixel layout isn't supported by most programs. Windows suggests 300% scaling, which is just too large for most people, so the photos above are with 100% scaling. Enabling ClearType (top photo) helps improve the boldness of the letters, but it's still not ideal. Using a higher scaling factor helps a bit, so you might have to play with the display settings a bit to get something that looks good to you.

The Sony 42 A90K has super gradient handling. There's some minor banding in darker shades, but it's not really noticeable. There's a Smooth Gradation feature to improve the appearance of gradients, and it works well. Unlike most TVs, we recommend leaving it on, as it appears to work very well and doesn't increase the input lag at all.

The Sony 42 A90K has a fast refresh rate for a TV, but it's lower than most high-end gaming monitors. Like all TVs, it doesn't have any DisplayPort inputs, so you need an HDMI 2.1 source to get the most out of it.

The Sony 42 A90K supports a variable refresh rate and low framerate compensation, but it's only compatible with devices that support the HDMI Forum VRR standard. If you have a recent NVIDIA graphics card, it works well, but it's not supported by most AMD graphics cards, as they only support FreeSync.

The Sony 42 A90K OLED has a near-instant response time at its max refresh rate of 120Hz, resulting in incredibly smooth motion with no ghosting or overshoot. Unlike most monitors, there are no overdrive settings, but these results are with the variable refresh rate feature enabled. Disabling VRR doesn't change the response time in any noticeable way.

Since this TV's max refresh rate is 120Hz, the results are the same as the response time at max refresh rate.

The response time at 60Hz is a bit worse than at 120Hz, but it's still fantastic. There's no noticeable overshoot and very little ghosting, but transitions to bright pixels are noticeably slower. There's also significant persistence blur when gaming at 60Hz due to the incredibly fast rise/fall time, which causes the image to be held static on the screen for a long time.

The Sony 42 A90K has an optional black frame insertion feature to improve the appearance of 60Hz motion by reducing how long the image is held static. It's only available at 60Hz, and it doesn't work if you're in 'PC' mode.

The Sony 42 A90K isn't technically flicker-free, but it doesn't use pulse-width modulation (PWM) to adjust the display's brightness. There's a small dip in brightness that corresponds to the display's refresh rate; however, it isn't noticeable.

The Sony 42 A90K has objectively good input lag and delivers a responsive gaming experience. It's higher than most true gaming monitors on the market, but it's still low enough for casual gamers, and is comparable to most TVs.

The Sony 42 A90K is nearly fully compatible with the PS5. As part of Sony's 'Perfect for PS5' lineup, it has a few exclusive features that only work with the PS5, including Auto HDR Tone Mapping and Auto Genre Picture Mode.

The Sony 42 A90K has great compatibility with the Xbox Series S|X. It doesn't support 1440p gaming, but 4k @ 120Hz works well over HDMI ports 3 and 4. It supports Dolby Vision gaming, but only at 60Hz with a fixed refresh rate.

Since it's a TV, there's also an ATSC 3.0 tuner and a few extra ports that aren't usually found on monitors, including an optical out port and an ethernet port for wired internet. There's also a composite in port for older devices, but it requires an adapter that's sold separately. Unlike monitors, it doesn't have a DisplayPort input, so if you want a display that does, consider the ASUS ROG Swift OLED PG42UQ.

There are two USB ports, one on the side of the TV and one on the back. The one on the side is a USB 2.0 port, but it's the most accessible one. The one on the back of the TV supports USB 3.0.

The Sony 42 A90K works well with recent Macs for the most part, but some features aren't available. Windows return to their original position if you just close the lid of your MacBook, but it's a bit slower to recover when waking up your computer from sleep. HDR works well, but sadly, the variable refresh rate feature doesn't work, and it's limited to a 60Hz refresh rate.

Since this is a TV, there are a ton of extra features available. It has the Google TV smart interface built-in, which has a great selection of additional streaming apps, so you can watch your favorite shows without powering up your PC. It also has much more advanced image processing features than most standard monitors, meaning you can fine-tune the picture to your liking. You can read more about the available smart features on our TV review here.

The on-screen display is far more detailed than most monitors, as this is a TV.