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The 4 Best Sony TVs of 2024 Reviews

Updated
Best Sony TVs

We've bought and tested more than 70 Sony TVs. The best Sony TVs are generally a safe bet when looking for the best TV for your needs. They tend to have great picture quality, a few extra features, and good color accuracy. Their high-end and mid-range models compete well with other brands, although at a price premium. Sadly, they don't offer many budget-friendly options.

Updates

Best Sony Smart TVs


  1. Best Sony TV

    The best Sony TV we've tested is the Sony A95L OLED. This impressive TV delivers incredible picture quality in any viewing environment thanks to its QD-OLED panel technology. Dark scenes look incredible, with perfect contrast and no distracting blooming around bright highlights in dark scenes. Colors are vibrant and lifelike, and the TV can display an incredibly wide range of colors. Thanks to Sony's excellent processing capabilities, the TV delivers an image that closely matches the content creator's intent, with nearly perfect PQ-EOTF tracking and fantastic gradient processing. This is a fantastic choice for cinephiles who care about image fidelity.

    It also has impressive gaming features, including HDMI 2.1 bandwidth for 4k @ 120Hz gaming. It's part of Sony's 'Perfect for PS5' lineup, which offers a few unique features that help ensure you get the best experience possible when gaming on PS5, like Auto HDR Tone Mapping and Auto Genre Picture Mode. It supports a wide range of formats, including Dolby Vision HDR, and it supports eARC audio passthrough and all common audio formats, so you can spend more time enjoying your favorite movies and less time playing with settings and worrying about format support. It's expensive but remains one of the best TVs on the market.

    See our review

  2. Best Upper Mid-Range Sony TV

    The best upper mid-range Sony TV we've tested is the Sony X93L/X93CL. Unlike the Sony A95L OLED, which uses a QD-OLED panel to deliver perfect blacks, this TV uses a Mini LED full array backlight to reduce the backlight intensity on a zone-by-zone basis. It results in much brighter highlights than the QD-OLED, but there's more blooming around bright objects and subtitles. This means the TV is better suited for a bright room, and the higher-end Sony QD-OLED is better for a dark room.

    Like all Sony TVs, the X93L runs the Google TV smart interface, which is fast and easy to use. It has a great selection of streaming apps, and the built-in Google Play Store makes it easy to find others. It also has a few great gaming features, similar to the A95L, and it's also part of Sony's 'Perfect for PS5' lineup, with support for 4k @ 120Hz gaming and advanced features like Auto HDR Tone Mapping and Auto Genre Picture Mode. It also supports the same advanced video and audio formats as its more expensive sibling, so it's an amazing choice for a home theater TV. The higher-end Sony X95L is slightly better overall, but unfortunately, it's only available in an 85-inch model size in North America, although other regions have smaller sizes. The X95L is the best LED TV we've ever reviewed, but it's not worth the price premium over the X93L for most people.

    See our review

  3. Best Mid-Range Sony TV

    If you want something cheaper but don't want to sacrifice picture quality much, the best Sony TV we've tested in the mid-range category is the Sony X90L/X90CL. It's a great TV overall with great picture quality. It has an excellent contrast ratio and decent black uniformity, but unlike the Sony X93L/X93CL, it doesn't have a Mini LED backlight, so there's a bit more blooming around bright objects with local dimming.

    It has worse reflection handling and a slightly narrower viewing angle than the X93L, so it's not as well-suited for a wide seating arrangement. It has excellent peak brightness, so despite its worse reflection handling, it's still a great choice for a bright living room. It has the same great gaming features and advanced video and audio format support as the more expensive Sony TVs, and it runs the same great Google TV interface with a great selection of streaming apps. Its predecessor, the Sony X90K, is sold for a similar price but is a worse TV overall, so go for the newer model.

    See our review

  4. Best Budget Sony TV

    While Sony doesn't offer truly budget TVs like other brands, and you can find cheaper TVs elsewhere, they have some affordable models, like the Sony X80K. It's the entry-level TV in their 2022 lineup, so you can save some money if you're willing to give up on the gaming and other higher-end features of more expensive panels, like local dimming. However, its picture quality isn't nearly as good as the Sony X90L/X90CL, especially in dark rooms, as it has a different panel type with a lower native contrast ratio that results in blacks that look gray. Instead, it has a wide viewing angle, making the image remain accurate from the sides, which is ideal for wide seating arrangements.

    Since this TV doesn't look good in dark rooms, it's best to use it in a well-lit environment because it has decent peak brightness and reflection handling, meaning it performs well with a few lights around. Like most Sony displays, the out-of-the-box accuracy is excellent, and it comes with the same great Google TV interface, making it easy to stream your favorite content, and you won't have to use an external streaming device. If you want a better Sony TV than the X80K but aren't willing to step up to the mid-range, look up the Sony X85K. It's a bit more expensive, but it has better image quality and more gaming features at the cost of a narrower viewing angle and slightly worse reflection handling than the X80K.

    See our review

Compared To Other Brands


  • Versatile lineup.
    Sony is one of a few companies that make both OLED and LED options. It means you can choose either panel if you want to buy a Sony TV, and both their OLEDs and LED TVs provide good picture quality.
  • Great upscaling and motion handling.
    Sony TVs, even the cheaper models, do better than the competition at upscaling lower-resolution content, and they offer great motion handling.
  • Great color accuracy.
    Sony TVs are known for their excellent out-of-the-box accuracy, especially the high-end models. You likely won't need to calibrate your Sony TV to enjoy the best viewing experience.
  • High price.
    Sony TVs are often priced above the competition in their category, meaning you can find better value elsewhere.

Sony vs Samsung

Samsung TVs have comparable picture quality to Sony TVs, and in general, they're pretty competitive. A big difference is that Samsung has better gaming performance, but if you don't need that, either brand is a good choice.

Sony vs LG

Sony and LG each make OLED and LED TVs. LG is the dominant OLED brand for OLEDs because they have better gaming performance and cost less. However, Sony's LED models are far better than LG's because they get brighter, have better uniformity, and usually have better contrast.

As a rule of thumb, it's pretty hard to go wrong when buying a Sony TV, especially if you don't need it for competitive gaming. Their more entry-level offerings aren't great, but any high-end LED and OLED models are a safe bet. Their Google TV smart platform offers many apps to download with an easy-to-use interface. You might pay a slight premium over competing models, but you'll usually have a good TV.

Lineup

2024 Lineup

Although Sony had a presence and even a press conference at CES 2024, they didn't announce any new models. They held a private invitation-only event instead, where they showed off their new Mini LED backlight tech that they'll be using in their 2024 flagship Mini LED model. This new tech uses much smaller dimming zones than previous models, and a new LED driver uses a combination of PWM dimming and DC direct dimming to achieve much finer control over the backlight levels. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take any photos, but their demo TV had the LEDs exposed, so we could see exactly what the backlight was doing, and it looked incredible. The backlight control was so precise that we could tell what the screen was showing just by the brightness of individual LEDs. Unlike some other Mini LED backlights, Sony seems to be aiming for the most precise dimming possible with this technology, and they aren't averaging the backlight out across multiple zones. Sony wouldn't say anything about the final TV powered by this new backlight, but hopefully, we'll learn more soon.

Since CES, some details of Sony's 2024 lineup have leaked through government registration information. The information available suggests a major lineup revamp this year, with Sony eliminating the separation between their 'X'-Series LED TVs and their 'A'-Series OLED models. However, this information should be taken with a massive grain of salt, as registration information can be outdated or incomplete. We don't know when Sony plans on announcing their full 2024 lineup, but we'll update this article when they do.

Model names

Their product naming is easy to understand, and the 2023 lineup follows the same naming convention as in past years. If the model starts with A, it's an OLED; if it's X, it's an LED, and their Z Series is 8k. Next comes the model number; the higher the number, the better. Lastly, the suffix letter indicates the year. So, for example, the Sony X800H is an entry-level LED model from 2020, while the A90J is a high-end OLED model from 2021.

  • *L = 2023
  • *K = 2022
  • *J = 2021

Since 2021, all their TVs share the same model number worldwide, making it easy to identify models if you're shopping from a different region. That's not to say they're completely identical, though, as there are some slight regional differences, and not all models are available worldwide.

Recent Updates

  1. Mar 18, 2024: We confirmed our current picks' availability and accuracy and condensed the article for clarity.

  2. Jan 18, 2024: Added information about Sony's 2024 TV lineup.

  3. Dec 19, 2023: The new Sony A95L OLED replaced its predecessor, the Sony A95K OLED, as the 'Best Sony TV'.

  4. Oct 23, 2023: Added mention of the recently reviewed Sony X95L under the 'Best Upper Mid-Range Sony TV' pick and reviewed the article to ensure it's still accurate.

  5. Aug 24, 2023: Replaced the Sony X95K with the Sony X93L/X93CL as the 'Best Upper Mid-Range Sony TV', replaced the Sony X90K with the Sony X90L/X90CL as the 'Best Mid-Range Sony TV', and refreshed the text for accuracy and consistency.

Conclusion

While they tend not to be the cheapest, Sony produces great TVs. They'll generally be versatile, helping to make them suitable for most people. The smart features can take some time to learn for some people, but the overall package offered by their TVs is still better than average. At this point, it's safe to say that their overall reputation holds, and people who will find themselves disappointed by purchasing one of their TVs are rare.

Test Results