Sony BRAVIA 9 QLED TV Review

The Sony BRAVIA 9 has amazing HDR brightness. Highlights really pop out during darker scenes, and the TV is bright enough that very bright specular highlights even stand out in well-lit scenes. Combined with its exceptional contrast, this TV provides a very impactful HDR viewing experience with all HDR content.

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
• Auto Local Dimming (HDR): High
• HDR Tone Mapping: Gradation Preferred

Results with Advanced Contrast Enhancer set to 'On':

• Hallway Lights: 948 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 754 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 550 cd/m²

Setting local dimming to 'Medium' makes the TV a bit brighter overall than the 'High' setting, as seen in the results below.

• Hallway Lights: 867 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 678 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 280 cd/m²

Most scenes are slightly dimmer in Game Mode, but it's not noticeable. Highlights still pop out during darker moments in games, and it's still bright enough that very bright specular highlights stand out in well-lit scenes. Combined with its exceptional contrast, this TV provides a very 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
• Auto Local Dimming (HDR): High
• HDR Tone Mapping: Gradation Preferred

The Sony BRAVIA 9 has superb SDR brightness and easily overcomes glare in even the brightest of rooms.

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
• Auto Local Dimming (SDR): High

The Sony BRAVIA 9 has amazing contrast. Its native contrast is alright, but with local dimming on 'High,' the TV's contrast ratio delivers incredibly deep blacks that rival those found on OLEDs. Blacks also stay deep when bright highlights are also on screen.

With local dimming on 'Medium,' the TV is a bit brighter overall, but its contrast ratio drops to 184867:1.

The TV's lighting zone precision is outstanding with local dimming on 'High.' There's only a tiny bit of blooming around bright objects and subtitles when they're displayed against a black background. It's so subtle that it's barely noticeable with most content, but there's some noticeable blooming that bleeds into the black bars of letterboxed movies during very bright scenes. There's also more apparent blooming when watching the TV from an angle. Finally, there's considerable blooming across the entire screen if you open any settings menu, even when hitting the volume buttons on the remote.

Setting local dimming to 'Medium' makes the TV a bit brighter overall, but it does slightly increase the amount of blooming. You can also see how the TV looks with local dimming 'Off' to compare the blooming performance with different settings.

The TV has remarkable lighting zone transitions. The leading edge of bright and quick-moving objects is a bit dimmer, and there's some minor haloing, but neither of these are noticeable with most real content.

With local dimming set to 'Medium,' the TV is a bit brighter but has slightly more noticeable zone transitions, which can be seen in this video that compares the Off, Medium, and High settings in the Professional (top row) and Game (bottom row) picture modes.

There's no visible difference in dark scene performance when the TV is set to Game Mode with local dimming on 'High.' However, with local dimming set to 'Medium,' the TV's blooming and zone transitions (bottom row) are noticeably worse.

The TV's black uniformity is very good. With local dimming disabled, the screen is blueish and cloudy. With local dimming on 'High,' the blacks are deep and uniform across the screen, and there's only a tiny bit of blooming around bright objects on a dark background.

Setting local dimming to 'Medium' gives you a slightly brighter image, but the blooming on the cross is more noticeable.

The Sony BRAVIA 9’s SDR color volume is good overall. It has very good coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, only struggling a bit with some lighter shades of color. The TV’s coverage of the wider BT.2020 color space is noticeably worse, and it struggles a lot more with all colors. 

The TV has outstanding color volume. It displays a wide range of colors at high luminance levels, and dark, saturated colors are displayed well due to its exceptional contrast.

The Sony BRAVIA 9 has excellent SDR pre-calibration accuracy. The color temperature is close to perfect, and gamma is very close to our target of 2.2, but all scenes are displayed brighter than intended. The white balance is very good, but blues and reds are a bit overrepresented in most shades of gray. The color accuracy is fantastic, but whites are a bit inaccurate. Fortunately, there are only very minor inaccuracies in some other colors.

The TV has even better SDR accuracy after calibration. The white balance, gamma, and color temperature are essentially perfect. Color accuracy is even better, and inaccuracies in whites are mostly gone. Other colors are still slightly off, but they're close enough that it's not noticeable with real content.

See our full calibration settings.

The Sony BRAVIA 9 has exceptional accuracy in HDR before calibration. There's some minor inaccuracies with white balance in some darker and brighter shades of gray, which makes the TV's color temperature a touch too cool, but it's still very close to 6,500K. Color accuracy is outstanding overall, but there are some very slight inaccuracies with reds. However, even the most ardent color purists likely won't notice these small mapping errors. This is a TV that's incredibly accurate out-of-the-box, so calibration isn't necessary for most people. 

After calibration, the TV is a bit more accurate in HDR. White balance is a bit better now, which brings its color temperature even closer to 6,500K. Color accuracy is mostly unchanged, but the minor mapping errors with reds have been reduced. 

The Sony BRAVIA 9 has excellent PQ EOTF tracking. The TV tracks the curve incredibly close, besides some shadows and midtones being slightly too dark and some highlights being slightly too bright. The TV is bright enough to display content mastered at 600 and 1000 nits, so no roll-off is necessary. With content mastered at 4000 nits, the gradual roll-off near the TV's maximum brightness helps to preserve details in specular highlights.

The Sony BRAVIA 9 has impressive low-quality content smoothing. It does an excellent job at smoothing out artifacts in low bitrate content while still preserving details.

The TV does an exceptional job with upscaling low-resolution content like DVDs, standard definition cable channels, or 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: 60
• Reality Creation: Auto

The TV has impressive HDR native gradient handling. There's noticeable banding in brighter blues, but all other colors have minimal or no banding at all.

This TV has decently low input lag when set into Game Mode, which ensures a responsive gaming experience. It's worth noting that despite the TV having low enough input lag that you don't feel any major delay with your inputs while gaming, it's a bit higher than most higher-tier models from other manufacturers.

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 9 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.

The Sony BRAVIA 9 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.

The TV has disappointing pixel transitions at its maximum refresh rate of 120Hz. There's no overshoot, so you don't see inverse ghosting. However, its response time is very slow in Game Mode, so fast motion is blurry. 

The TV has disappointing pixel transitions at its maximum refresh rate of 120Hz. There's no overshoot, so you don't see inverse ghosting. However, its response time is very slow in Game Mode, so fast motion is blurry. 

It has disappointing pixel transitions at 60Hz. Its response time is faster overall at 60Hz than at 120Hz, but there's a lot more overshoot at 60Hz, so fast motion is blurry and has inverse ghosting. 

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.

Due to the TV's quick response time, there's some noticeable stutter when watching movies or TV shows, and it's most apparent in 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 Sony BRAVIA 9 has an excellent response time in the 'Professional' picture mode, so there's minimal blur behind fast motion when watching content. Unfortunately, it's slower when coming out of dark states, so there's some black smearing in dark scene transitions.

The TV uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to control the backlight intensity. With local dimming enabled, it flickers at 720Hz in all picture modes, which is high enough that it isn't noticeable, but it can still bother those sensitive to flicker.

With local dimming disabled, the TV flickers at 720Hz with the brightness set to '34' or below. With the brightness set above '34,' it has 720Hz blips that are unnoticeable.

There's an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion, which you can enable to improve the appearance of motion. Unfortunately, the image is blurry and there's some image duplication.

The Sony BRAVIA 9 has an optional motion interpolation feature to improve the clarity of motion. It works well with smoothing out motion in slower-moving scenes. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well in faster-moving scenes, and there are noticeable artifacts and a stutter-like effect in the background.

The Sony BRAVIA 9 has adequate direct reflection handling, but you do see your lamp, wall light, or window on the screen when watching content or playing video games in a bright room. Furthermore, the TV's wide viewing angle layer adds echoes of light to the visible reflections. 

Black levels on the Sony BRAVIA 9 are okay in a bright room. Although blacks do become raised in a bright room, they’re still deep enough that the image doesn’t look washed out. 

The Sony BRAVIA 9 has good total reflection handling. Its glossy coating does an outstanding job at reducing the intensity of indirect reflections. Unfortunately, there's noticeable rainbow smearing across the screen. 

The Sony BRAVIA 9 has good color saturation in ambient lighting. Colors shown at all levels of luminance are still vibrant and saturated in a bright room, even after they lose some saturation from ambient sources of light.  

The Sony BRAVIA 9 has an alright viewing angle. The image looks mostly consistent from a slight angle, but there's gamma shifting, the black levels raise, and there's color washout that worsens the further you move off-center. The image is noticeably degraded at an aggressive angle, so the TV isn't a very good choice for a large group setting.

Unfortunately, the Sony BRAVIA 9 has mediocre gray uniformity. There's noticeable dirty screen effect towards the center of the screen, and the edges of the screen are darker than the middle. Its uniformity is excellent on a very dark or near-black screen, but the edges are lighter than the center. Gray uniformity is unique to each individual panel, so it's possible that other units look better than ours.

The TV uses a BGR (Blue-Green-Red) subpixel layout instead of the traditional RGB layout. For video or gaming content, this doesn't cause any issues, but for PC monitor use, it can be a problem as it impacts the text clarity, although not everyone will notice this.

The TV has great separation between colors, which helps with its color purity and its ability to display a wide range of colors. 

The TV has HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on HDMI ports 3 and 4, with both supporting up to 4k @ 120Hz. Unfortunately, HDMI 3 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 like the Sony A95L OLED does, 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 TV has a premium design that looks fantastic in any room. It's thicker than most modern TVs, but 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 1.34 inches, so it sits very close to your table. The high position (pictured above) lifts the TV about 3.74 inches, so almost any soundbar fits underneath without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand in the narrow position: 18.82" x 13.78".

Footprint of the 65-inch stand in the wide position: 55.83" x 13.78".

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, so they're accessible if you have the TV mounted flush to the wall. There are also plastic covers to hide the inputs section and partially hide the feet. You can also run cables through the TV's feet to help with cable management. On top of that, the TV comes with cable ties to help manage cables further.

The TV slightly leans forward, but the tilt is small enough that you don't notice it when using it.

The Sony BRAVIA 9 has outstanding build quality. Its thick 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 and sturdy.

The Sony BRAVIA 9 uses version 12 of the popular Google TV operating system, and the interface is smooth and easy to use. Sometimes settings get stuck and changing values doesn't do anything. However, this is rare, and you can fix it by restarting the TV.

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

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 X95L. 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 left side 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
• Power cable
• Cable ties
• Optical adapter

The Sony BRAVIA 9 TV has a very good frequency response. It produces some bass, but it's not enough for impactful bass. Fortunately, the TV's sound profile is well-balanced, making dialogue easy to understand. The TV gets pretty loud and even remains well-balanced near and at max volume, which is great.