Sony A8H OLED TV Review

The Sony A8H OLED replaces the Sony A8G OLED from 2019 and is Sony's entry-level OLED for 2020, sitting below their Master series. It competes with other OLED TVs, like the LG CX OLED and the Vizio OLED 2020.

The Sony A8H has an exceptional design. It's simple, the bezels are extremely thin on all sides, and it comes with Sony's two-way position stand, which allows you to set the TV higher up on its feet to make space for a soundbar. The TV looks and feels premium all-around.

The Sony A8H comes with Sony's two-way position stand, which has two height settings. The higher setting provides enough room for most soundbars, so the lower portion of the screen doesn't get obstructed. The stand comes in four pieces: two feet and two brackets. The brackets and the feet can be set in different configurations to achieve the desired height.

Footprint of the 55" stand in the elevated position: 41.3" x 12.8".

The back of the screen itself is metal, but the rest is made out of plastic. There's not much in terms of cable management; you can only route the cables through the back of the stand. If you choose to wall-mount it, it's compatible with Sony's SU-WL855 slim wall-mount.

The bezels are extremely thin, even thinner than the Sony A8G OLED's.

The TV is extremely thin and shouldn't stick out when wall-mounted.

The TV is a mix of metal and plastic. It feels solidly-built, and there are no issues with its construction. There's a bit of flex in the back panel, but nothing of concern. The stand supports the TV well, and there's almost no wobble.

Like all OLED TVs, the Sony A8H has an infinite contrast ratio, as it can turn the pixels off completely. This results in perfect blacks, which is great for dark room viewing.

Decent SDR peak brightness. The brightness varies depending on the scene. It's better suited for a dark to moderately-lit room, as it may have trouble overcoming glare in a very bright environment. That said, it's a very decent upgrade from the Sony A8G OLED.

During our testing, we observed that the peak brightness ramps up over some time and then drops very quickly once it reaches its peak. This happens during static scenes and can take up to 45 seconds to ramp up to its peak brightness. This isn't noticeable in normal content, though.

We measured the SDR peak brightness after calibration, using the 'Custom' Picture Mode, 'Expert 1' Color Temperature, and with Peak Luminance set to 'High'.

Update 07/23/2021: We've added two new videos demonstrating the panel performance with real content.

The Sony A8H doesn't have a local dimming feature since there's no backlight. OLED panels can turn off pixels individually, so there are no issues with blooming, and subtitles are displayed perfectly.

Update 07/23/2021: We've added two new videos demonstrating the panel performance with real content.

Decent HDR peak brightness. There's a lot of variation in brightness across different content. This is enough to deliver a good HDR experience.

We measured the HDR peak brightness before calibration, using the 'Custom' Picture Mode and 'Expert 2' Color Temperature. Brightness was set to maximum and Contrast was left at '90', which is the default.

The Sony A8H has excellent gray uniformity, although this can vary between units. There's almost no visible dirty screen effect, which is great for watching sports or scenes with a lot of uniform colors. Uniformity is even better in darker scenes. We didn't notice any horizontal or vertical banding like on some other OLEDs, although this may occur with more extensive use over time.

OLED panels can turn individual pixels off completely, resulting in perfect black uniformity. The deviation is caused by the camera.

The Sony A8H's viewing angles are excellent, making it suitable for large rooms and wide seating arrangements. However, there's still some color shift at moderate viewing angles.

The Sony A8H has exceptional reflection handling. You shouldn't have issues using it in a bright room with multiple light sources. If you want a TV with slightly better reflection handling, check out the Vizio OLED 2020.

Update 12/09/2020: We remeasured the accuracy after calibrating our spectroradiometer. The review has been updated.

Out of the box, the Sony A8H has excellent color accuracy, although this can vary between units. Inaccuracies with most colors shouldn't be noticeable to the naked eye. The color temperature is a bit cold, giving the image a slight blue tint. Gamma follows the target fairly well, except most scenes are still too bright.

After calibration, the color accuracy is exceptional. Gamma, color temperature, and white balance are all nearly perfect. Color accuracy has improved, but there are still some issues with the color blue.

You can see our recommended settings here.

Upscaling of 480p content like DVDs looks good, and there are no upscaling artifacts.

720p content like cable TV is upscaled well, and there are no upscaling issues.

1080p content like Blu-ray movies looks good.

Native 4k content is displayed perfectly. We didn't see any signs of the issue that the Sony A8G OLED had with text rendering when using the TV as a PC monitor.

The Sony A8H can't display an 8k signal.

The Sony A8H has a four sub-pixel structure, like all other OLED TVs. The four sub-pixels are never on at the same time. You can see the green sub-pixel in this photo.

The Sony A8H has an excellent HDR color gamut. It has superb coverage of the commonly used DCI P3 color gamut, and its coverage of the wider Rec 2020 is decent. The EOTF follows the PQ curve almost perfectly, with only some brightening in darker scenes to avoid crushing. Like other Sony OLED TVs, it has a very sharp roll-off towards the TV's peak brightness. The 'Game' mode EOTF is nearly identical, which you can see here.

If you find HDR content too dim, you can make it brighter by setting Advanced Contrast Enhancer to 'High', Peak Brightness to 'High', and Brightness to maximum. These settings will result in this EOTF. You can also increase the Gamma slider and the Black Level for an even brighter image, although they weren't used for our EOTF measurement.

This TV has good color volume. It displays dark colors well due to its superb contrast ratio, but it has a bit of trouble displaying very bright colors.

Exceptional gradient handling. There's only a little bit of banding in the darker shades of gray, green, and red. Enabling Smooth Gradation removes most of it; however, there's still some banding in the greens. That said, it's more noticeable in our test pattern than in normal content. Do note that using the Smooth Gradation feature can cause a loss of fine details in some scenes.

There's a bit of temporary image retention, but it usually goes away after a few minutes. However, this can vary between units.

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.

Like all OLED TVs, the Sony A8H is susceptible to permanent burn-in. However, we don't expect it to be an issue for most people who watch varied content. Sony has built-in two features that can help minimize the risks, which you can read about here.

If you're concerned about the risks of permanent burn-in, then check out the Sony X950H, which is an LED TV.

Like all OLED TVs, the response time is near-instantaneous, which results in almost no blur trail behind fast-moving objects. There's a tiny amount of overshoot in the 0-20% transition, but it shouldn't be noticeable.

The TV doesn't use Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) since there's no backlight, but it isn't flicker-free. The slight dip in brightness is due to the TV's 120Hz refresh rate, which is about every 8ms.

Update 07/22/2020: We've retested the BFI and can confirm that when playing 24p content, the flickering frequency is 96Hz with the Clearness slider set to '1' or '2', and setting it to '3' lowers it to 48Hz.

The Sony A8H has an optional Black Frame Insertion feature. It can flicker at 60Hz or 120Hz, regardless of the refresh rate of the content, meaning that you can set it to 60Hz or 120Hz flickering in 60fps content, and the same goes for 120fps content. To get a 60Hz flicker, set Motionflow to 'Custom', then set Clearness to '3'. For a 120Hz flicker, the Clearness slider should be set to '1' or '2'.

Update 07/15/2020: We've retested the motion interpolation with different content and noticed a good amount of artifacts in scenes that have a lot of movement. This is likely due to the TV continuing to interpolate during intense scenes, whereas other TVs tend to stop.

The Sony A8H can interpolate lower frame rate content up to 120fps to make motion look smoother. It does a good job in slow-moving scenes, but unfortunately, it introduces a lot of artifacts when the action gets intense. To enable motion interpolation, set Cinemotion to 'Auto' and adjust the Smoothness slider to your preference.

Due to the TV's near-instantaneous response time, lower frame rate content can appear to stutter. If the stuttering bothers you, enabling motion interpolation can help.

The Sony A8H can remove judder from all sources. Although it doesn't require any change in the settings to remove judder in 24p content, it's recommended to set Cinemotion to 'Auto', as without it, there are still a few frames that are out of place. For 60p, 60i, and content from native apps, set Cinemotion to 'Auto', Motionflow to 'Custom', and leave the Smoothness slider at '0'.

The Sony A8H doesn't support any variable refresh rate technologies. If you want an OLED TV with VRR support, check out the LG BX OLED.

The Sony A8H has great low input lag, a significant upgrade from the Sony A8G OLED. It's low as long as you're in 'Game' mode, and PC users can be in either 'Game' or 'Graphics' mode, although 'Game' mode is what we used for testing and is the recommended one. The 'Game' mode input lag should be fine for most casual gaming, but not so much for competitive gaming.

To use motion interpolation, set Motionflow to 'Custom', adjust the Smoothness slider to '3', and set Cinemotion to 'Auto'.

Update 08/05/2020: We've retested the TV's ability to display a 1440p signal with the latest firmware update. It can now display a 1440p @ 60Hz signal from an Xbox One, but not on a PC, as the results are the same as previously reported.

The Sony A8H supports most common resolutions, but it gets a bit complicated when it comes to 1440p. Native 1440p @ 60Hz doesn't quite work, as it's indicated in the display info panel as a downscaled native 4k image. However, it's possible to force a native 1440p @ 60Hz image, it just displays it with a huge border around. As for 1440p @ 120Hz, it can do so, but it skips frames.

The TV can display chroma 4:4:4 properly at all supported resolutions; you only need to be in 'Game' or 'Graphics' Picture mode. For full-bandwidth signals like 4k @ 60Hz + 10-bit HDR, the HDMI signal format must be set to 'Enhanced format' for the input is use.

The Sony A8H is advertised as HDCP 2.3 compliant, but it isn't something that we test for. It doesn't support HDMI 2.1, but if you want an OLED TV that does, look into the LG GX OLED.

There's a composite input to connect older devices like DVD players. Unfortunately, it requires an adapter, and it isn't included in the box.

Even though the Sony A8H doesn't have an HDMI 2.1 port, it supports eARC, which lets you send high-quality audio over an HDMI connection. There are a few steps to take in order to activate it. First, make sure that Speakers is set to 'Audio System', then set eARC to 'Auto', Digital Audio Out to 'Auto 1', and finally, set Passthrough to 'Auto', otherwise it won't work with DTS content.

The frequency response of the Sony A8H is good. It has Sony's Acoustic Surface Audio, which uses actuators to make the screen vibrate. There's a very healthy amount of bass, but there isn't enough low and sub-bass to create that room-shaking, rumbling sound. It gets very loud, though, and there's very little compression even when playing at max volume. Like the Sony X950H, it has a digital room correction feature that automatically adjusts the frequency response based on your room's acoustics.

The distortion performance is okay. It isn't much of an issue when playing at low to moderate volume levels, but there's significantly more distortion when playing near max volume. That said, it depends on the content and shouldn't be noticeable for most people.

Update 07/15/2020:It has been mentioned to us that apps and settings can be customized to show on the quick menu and quick settings list, which further reduces the amount of time required to access them. The 'Time Taken' values have been updated.

The Sony A8H ships with Android 9.0. The interface hasn't changed much. It's still easy to navigate, it runs smoothly, and we didn't encounter any issues during testing.

There's a row of sponsored content on the home screen. It can't be removed using the normal settings menu, but there's a workaround, which you can see here.

Since this is an Android TV, you get access to the Google Play Store. It has a large selection of apps, and most of them run very smoothly.

The remote has been slightly redesigned. There are fewer buttons than the Sony A8G OLED's remote, and the top of the remote now has a brushed metal finish, even though it's plastic. The button layout hasn't changed that much, and there are still shortcuts to Netflix and Google Play. There's a built-in microphone and a dedicated button to summon the Google Assistant. General inquiries and content search work properly, but we couldn't change certain settings, like the brightness of the TV.

The TV's control is just a single button now, down from the three-button layout of the Sony A8G OLED. It allows you to turn the TV On/Off, change the channel, change the input source, adjust the volume, and restart the TV. Pressing the button lets you navigate to the next option in the on-screen menu, and a long press selects the highlighted option.

• User guide
• Remote control
• 2x AAA batteries