Sony A80J OLED TV Review

The design is similar to the Sony A90J OLED, except for the back panel, which features a grid-like pattern. It's a sleek TV that should stand out in any living room.

The stand has three different setup positions. The standard position lets the TV sit closer to the table. There's a narrow position for smaller tables, and finally, a soundbar position that raises the TV to give you space for a soundbar in front.

Footprint of the 55 inch stand:

• Standard position: 41" (W) x 13" (D)
• Soundbar position: 41" (W) x 13" (D) x 2.71" (H)
• Narrow position: 27.3" (W) x 13" (D)

The panel and feet are made of metal, while the rest of the back is textured plastic with diagonal grooves in a grid pattern. It looks good, but aside from the cable tie included in the box, which we didn't use, there's no cable management. Unlike the Sony A8H OLED, the power cable is detachable.

The actual border is the same thickness as the border on the Sony A90J OLED, but it looks bigger on the Sony A80J because it has thicker physical bezels.

The Sony A80J is thin and should look great mounted on a wall, although not all inputs are side-facing and may be harder to reach when wall-mounted.

When it comes to build quality, the Sony A80CJ feels superb. The materials feel premium, and it's very sturdy with no wobble. There's a bit of flex to the plastic back, mostly on the sides, but overall it feels very solidly put together.

Thanks to its self-lit pixels, the Sony A80J has a near-infinite contrast ratio with perfect black levels. It's ideal for watching movies in dark rooms.

The SDR brightness is okay and is on par with other OLEDs. It even measured a little higher in real scenes than the Sony A90J OLED; however, the difference between the two is small. It has an aggressive Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL), which causes large areas to be less dim, and this could be distracting while watching sports like hockey. Overall, it performs well in moderate lighting conditions but isn't bright enough to fight glare in really bright rooms.

We measured SDR brightness after calibration, using the ‘Custom’ Picture Mode, with the ‘Expert 1’ Color Temperature, Peak Luminance set to ‘High’, and Brightness at its max.

We also tested the brightness with Peak Luminance turned off and measured the following:

• Peak 2% Window: 126 cd/m²
• Peak 10% Window: 132 cd/m²
• Peak 25% Window: 132 cd/m²
• Peak 50% Window: 132 cd/m²
• Peak 100% Window: 131 cd/m²
• Sustained 2% Window: 124 cd/m²
• Sustained 10% Window: 129 cd/m²
• Sustained 25% Window: 129 cd/m²
• Sustained 50% Window: 129 cd/m²
• Sustained 100% Window: 129 cd/m²

As you can see, it's a lot dimmer, so we recommend leaving Peak Luminance enabled. However, if the ABL bothers you, it would be best to disable Peak Luminance because brightness doesn't vary between different scenes.

To get the brightest possible image at the expense of accuracy, set the Picture Mode to ‘Vivid’, then set Advanced Contrast Enhancer to 'High', Peak Luminance to ‘High’, Brightness and Contrast at their max, Color Temperature to 'Cool', and Live Color to 'High'. We were able to hit 726 nits in the 2% window using these settings.

As with other OLEDs, the Sony A80J has self-lit pixels, so it doesn't require a backlight, meaning there's no local dimming feature, but it can produce perfect blacks without visible blooming. The videos above are provided so you can see how it performs versus another TV.

Once again, there's no local dimming feature as the pixels turn themselves on and off. The videos are so that you can see how the TV performs compared to other TVs.

The Sony A80J OLED has okay HDR brightness, but it's still good for an OLED. The EOTF follows the target well until it rolls off at higher brightness levels. As with SDR, there's a lot of variation in brightness across different scenes, in part due to the aggressive ABL. Scenes with small highlights get very bright, but dim more with larger areas of brightness. HDR content should still pop, but it may not be able to bring out the brightest highlights.

We measured HDR brightness before calibration in the 'Custom' Picture Mode, with Brightness set to max, Contrast at '90', Color Temperature set to 'Expert 1', and HDR Tone Mapping set to 'Gradation Preferred'.

We also took measurements using the Brightness Preferred setting enabled, and another measurement with Peak Luminance disabled, and got the following:

The Brightness Preferred setting helps increase the EOTF, but it doesn't change the peak luminance. Just like in SDR, turning Peak Luminance off dims the image significantly, so we recommend keeping it on.

The brightest image we achieved was 962 nits in the 2% window, using 'Vivid' mode, with Brightness and Contrast at max, Advanced Contrast Enhancer set to 'High',Peak Luminance at ‘High’, Color Temperature set to 'Cool', and Live Color set to 'High'.

In Game Mode, the HDR brightness is about the same as outside of Game Mode. For the most part, the difference is hardly noticeable, although real scenes appear slightly dimmer.

We measured this using the same settings, only in the 'Game' Picture Mode.

The Sony A80J has excellent gray uniformity, although this can vary between units. The screen looks very uniform with practically no dirty screen effect, and we didn't notice any banding or issues in near-dark scenes, which can sometimes occur on OLEDs with more extensive use over time.

Note: A few owners have reported seeing a grid-like pattern on their TV in uniform scenes. It's usually not noticeable with real content, but this is a manufacturing defect; if you see it on yours, you should exchange it.

Like all OLEDs, the Sony A80J can completely turn off individual pixels to achieve perfect black uniformity, with no visible blooming around bright objects. As OLEDs have perfect black uniformity, there's no variation between individual units.

The Sony A80J has great viewing angles, but they're not quite as good as the LG A1 OLED. The image stays accurate from the sides, which is great for accommodating more people or wide seating arrangements.

The Sony A80J has a slightly matte finish, unlike the Sony A90J OLED. The reflections are duller but more widely diffused than on a typical glossy screen. The reflection handling is still superb overall, meaning glare won't be an issue in most rooms, but placing it directly opposite a window or light source isn't a good idea because it doesn't get bright. Note that we've seen reports that the 77 inch version has a glossy finish, which handles light differently.

The out-of-the-box accuracy is excellent. The white balance and color inaccuracies are minor and are hard to spot with the naked eye. Gamma is great too, but it doesn't follow the 2.2 target well with some bright scenes, so a few scenes are either over-brightened or too dark. Also, its color temperature is on the cold side, giving the image a blue tint. Out-of-the-box accuracy can vary between units, but it's rarely an issue on Sony TVs.

The Sony A80J has fantastic accuracy after calibration. The white balance, gamma, and color temperature are all nearly perfect, and while there are some slight inaccuracies with a few colors, it's not noticeable at all.

You can see our recommended settings here.

The Sony A80CJ has no issues upscaling 480p content like DVDs.

It upscales 720p content, like cable TV, well.

1080p content, like Blu-ray movies, looks good with no upscaling artifacts.

The Sony A80J displays native 4k content perfectly.

The Sony A80J doesn't support 8k.

The Sony A80J has a WRGB sub-pixel layout, like other OLED TVs. All four are never on at the same time, but you can see some of the blue sub-pixels lit up in this photo.

The Sony A80J has an excellent color gamut, considered wide for HDR content by our testing criteria. It has full coverage of the DCI P3 color space used in most HDR content and decent coverage of the wider Rec. 2020.

The color volume is decent. It has trouble with colors at higher luminance levels due to its limited brightness, but it can display dark saturated colors well.

Gradients look fantastic on the Sony A80J, with very little visible banding aside from a bit in the grays and greens. If you notice banding, enabling Smooth Gradation can help even out gradients, although you may lose some fine details.

There's a slight amount of temporary image retention, but only immediately after displaying a high contrast image for ten minutes, and it fades quickly. This test is only indicative of short-term image retention and not the permanent burn-in that may occur with longer exposure to static images. It can also vary between individual units.

Like all OLED TVs, the Sony A80J is susceptible to permanent burn-in, which can happen with constant exposure to static elements like a channel logo or desktop interface. However, we don't expect it to be an issue for most people who watch varied content, and there are built-in features to minimize the risk, including Pixel Shift and Panel Refresh. You can read more about those here.

The Sony A80J has a near-instantaneous response time, like other OLED TVs. Motion looks exceptionally clear with minimal blur trail behind fast-moving objects. However, we noticed that the A80J overshoots and then dips back more quickly in darker transitions than the Sony A90J OLED; however, this isn't noticeable.

The Sony A80J isn't completely flicker-free; the slight dip in brightness you see in the chart every 8ms is due to the TV's 120Hz refresh rate, which isn't noticeable.

The Sony A80CJ has a black frame insertion feature to try to improve the appearance of motion. It can flicker at 60Hz or 120Hz; the photo above is with the 60Hz flicker, and you can see the 120Hz flicker here. The BFI scoring is based on the frequencies at which it flickers and not the actual performance.

The Sony A80J has a motion interpolation feature to interpolate 30 or 60 fps content to a higher frame rate. Like most other TVs, it works well with slow-paced content and smooths out movement, but it struggles to keep up with fast-paced scenes. There are artifacts with fast-moving objects, but there isn't much haloing, which is good.

As the TV has a near-instantaneous response time, lower-frame-rate content appears to stutter because each frame is held on longer. If this bothers you, try enabling the motion interpolation feature.

The Sony A80CJ removes 24p judder from any source, which helps with the appearance of motion in movies. There are different settings needed for native apps and 60p/i sources, which you can learn about here.

Update 03/04/2022: Sony released an update to include VRR support with firmware PKG6.5660.0668NAA.

The Sony A80J has VRR support after a firmware update, and it performs like the VRR support on the Sony A90J OLED. It works without any issue on the Xbox Series X for a tear-free gaming experience. However, it doesn't support FreeSync at all, and because the Xbox Series X supports both HDMI Forum VRR and FreeSync, it's confirmed that it supports HDMI Forum VRR natively.

It's also G-SYNC compatible, but there are some issues with it. It's tear-free with 4k @ 120Hz signals from the NVIDIA RTX 3060 graphics card, but the screen flickered black at times like the A90J. Sadly, 1080p @ 120Hz on the pendulum test demo causes the screen to go black, but 1080p @ 60Hz works without issue. Still, there wasn't any screen tearing in Destiny 2 with 4k @ 120Hz and 1080p @ 120Hz signals, so it does its job at reducing screen tearing when it works properly.

Update 03/04/2022: Sony released an update to include VRR support with firmware PKG6.5660.0668NAA. However, like other TVs, we couldn't get proper VRR input lag readings because the TV kept crashing. We experienced the same issue with the Sony A90J OLED, and we're looking into it.

The Sony A80J has objectively low input lag, but it's not as good as some other gaming TVs like the LG C1 OLED. You won't notice any delay, but it's not ideal for competitive gaming, especially at 60Hz. 1440p @ 60Hz is a bit higher than 1080p or 4k @ 60Hz, but as explained in the Supported Resolutions section, we had to force a 1440p signal, whereas other formats are natively supported, which might explain the slight increase in input lag.

The Sony A80CJ supports most resolutions, including proper 4k @ 120Hz. However, we couldn't get 1440p to work properly. First off, it can't display 1440p @ 120Hz, just like the Sony A90J OLED. Then, when forcing 1440p @ 60Hz, it downscaled from 4k with a black border that couldn't be removed or adjusted because the screen settings were grayed out. We retried it a few days later and could force a proper 1440p signal, although it only allowed for RGB output. Despite that, it still displayed proper chroma 4:4:4. It also displays chroma 4:4:4 with 1080p and 4k signals.

Update 03/04/2022: After a firmware up to version PKG6.5660.0668NAA, the Sony A80J now supports both VRR and ALLM with the Xbox Series X.

The Sony A80J supports most resolutions on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. It can't do 4k @ 120Hz on the Xbox while 'Enhanced Format (Dolby Vision)' is enabled, so you either have to choose between 4k @ 120Hz games without Dolby Vision or 4k @ 60Hz with it.

The Sony A80CJ has two HDMI 2.1 ports, but HDMI 3 is also the eARC port, so if you have both an Xbox Series X and a PS5, you may have to give up one of the HDMI 2.1 ports for audio passthrough.

To enable eARC, set Speakers to 'Audio System', turn on eARC Mode, and then set Digital Audio Out to 'Auto 1' and Passthrough to 'Auto'.

The Sony A80J has good built-in speakers, noticeably better than the Sony A90J OLED, especially concerning bass, which sounds significantly punchier. Overall, the sound profile is well balanced, so dialogue sounds clear.

There's a lot of distortion at the TV's max volume, but it's much better at moderate volume levels. However, distortion depends on the content, and not everyone can hear it.

Like the Sony A90J OLED and other 2021 Sony TVs, the A80J runs on Google TV, which replaces Android TV. It's a little more streamlined than Android, and it runs very smoothly. We didn't experience any bugs while using it, either.

Google TV includes ads on the home page and app store. While you can opt-out of ad personalization, you can't opt-out of getting ads or suggested content.

The app store has a wide range of apps available to download.

The Sony A80J comes with a similar remote to the Sony A90J OLED, but it doesn't have backlighting and comes in a black finish instead of silver. It has shortcut keys, and you can use it as a universal remote, although this feature depends on the device and region. We got it to work with the PS5, but not our Blu-ray player, for instance. It works with the Android TV Remote app, and you can use its voice command feature to change inputs and volume, adjust certain settings, and search within apps.

There's a single button on the back left side of the TV, which you can use to change channels and inputs, adjust volume, and power the TV On/Off.

• Remote control
• 2x AAA batteries
• Cable tie
• User guides