Sony A9G OLED TV Review

The Sony A9G is a high-end 2019 OLED TV, and directly replaces Sony's 2018 A9F. All OLEDs deliver very similar overall picture quality, so the design and the additional features are the main differences from one to another. The main competitors to the Sony A9G are the LG B9, LG E9, LG C9, and Sony A8G. The main LED competitors are the Sony Z9F, the Samsung Q90R, and the Samsung Q80R.

The design is excellent and very different from last year's A9F. The TV is very slim and has a flat stand that supports it well. If you nudge it, it will wobble a little, but not much. The stand is not adjustable, unlike the stand on the Sony A8G. The back of the TV looks nice and has a few small panels that help cover the TV's inputs and guide cables to a single exit. The build quality is excellent and we don't expect you to have any issues with it.

The A9G has a flat stand that supports the TV well and only allows minimal wobble. The stand doesn't lift the TV from the table much, so there's not enough space to put a soundbar in front of the TV without blocking some part of the screen. The stand is not adjustable, unlike the stand found on the A8G.

The footprint of the 55" model is 18,3" x 10.1"

The back of the TV looks good, featuring a nice design with squares. It's made both of metal and of plastic. The metal part of the back helps support the thin screen, whereas the part that hosts the electronics is made of plastic. The plastic part has a few panels that help cover the inputs and also help guide the cables through a single exit to serve with cable management.

The borders are thin and elegant and won't distract you in any way.

Just like most OLEDs TVs, the A9G is very thin. It won't stick out much if you wall-mount it.

The build quality is excellent. The TV feels premium and is very solid with no gaps or loose ends. You should have no issues with it.

The Sony A9G is an OLED TV and as such, it's able to turn off individual pixels. Therefore, it essentially has an infinite contrast ratio.

The A9G does not have a local dimming feature. The TV uses a self-emissive technology and has no backlight. Since it is able to switch off individual pixels, there's no need for local dimming and there is no noticeable blooming around bright objects in dark scenes. Subtitles are displayed perfectly.

The Sony A9G has decent SDR peak brightness in the same ballpark as other OLEDs like the A9F, but it isn't as good as LED TVs like the X950G. It's more suitable for an average lit room, as it won't be able to fight bright room glare.

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

If you don't care about image accuracy, you can obtain higher brightness levels. We were able to momentarily reach 768 nits with the 2% window using the default settings of the 'Vivid' Picture Mode, Brightness set to 'Max', Contrast set to 'Max', Peak Luminance set to 'High', Adv. Contrast enhancer set to 'High', and Color set to '60'.

The Sony A9G has decent HDR peak brightness, good enough to display bright highlights in HDR as long as you are not in a very bright room. It's in the same ballpark as the Sony A9F, but can't reach the HDR levels of LED TVs like the Z9F.

We measured the peak brightness, using 'HDR Cinema' Picture Mode, with Brightness set to 'Max', and Color temperature set to 'Expert 1'.

If you don't care about image accuracy, you can obtain higher brightness levels. We were able to momentarily reach 794 nits with the 2% window using the default settings of the 'Vivid' Picture Mode, Brightness set to 'Max', Contrast set to 'Max', Black Level set to 'High', Adv. Contrast enhancer set to 'High', and Color set to '60'.

Excellent gray uniformity on the Sony A9G. There is no noticeable dirty screen effect, which is great news for sports fans. It has the same good performance in darker scenes, as well. Like previous OLED TVs, there are some very faint horizontal and vertical lines noticeable in a pitch black room when displaying near-black scenes.

The Sony A9G, just like all OLED TVs, has excellent wide viewing angles. The image remains accurate when viewed from the side and the TV is an excellent choice for those with wide seating arrangements. Brightness and blacks remain accurate for large viewing angles. Colors, however, shift and lose accuracy at moderate angles. This is still better than the Sony Z9F and the Samsung Q80R, which have VA panels with a special filter that improves the viewing angles at the expense of contrast ratio.

Perfect black uniformity, as expected from an OLED TV.

The A9G has excellent reflection handling. The glossy filter greatly diminishes reflection intensity and you should not have any issues with distracting reflections. The filter adds a slight purple tint, but it's not noticeable in normal use.

The accuracy of the TV with our pre-calibration settings is decent. There are noticeable errors in the brighter grays, and some enthusiasts will also pick out the errors in the colors. The gamma does not track the target well and most scenes appear brighter than they should be. The color temperature is a little warm and the TV has a slight reddish-yellow tint.

After calibration, the Sony A9G has nearly perfect accuracy. The errors in the grays almost entirely disappear and the errors in the colors are very hard to notice, even for enthusiasts. The color temperature is spot on target and the gamma follows the curve almost perfectly.

The TV features an auto-calibration feature, but you still need a colorimeter.

You can see our recommended settings here.

The A9G upscales 480p content, like DVDs, well, with no obvious upscaling artifacts.

720p content, like cable, looks good and is displayed without any obvious issues.

1080p content, like Blu-rays or older game consoles, looks excellent.

The A9G, just like the LG C9, uses an WRGB pixel structure. 4k displays perfectly.

Like all other OLEDs, the A9G uses 4 sub-pixel structure, but all 4 sub-pixels are never on at the same time. This image shows the green, white, and blue sub-pixels. You can see the red sub-pixel in our alternative pixel photo.

The Sony A9G has an impressive wide color gamut. It is slightly worse than last year's A9F and most of the other OLED TVs we've tested. This, however, is not noticeable in normal content. The EOTF follows the input stimulus well until it starts a sharp roll off towards the TV's peak brightness. The 'Game' mode EOTF is almost identical as you can see here, although some brighter scenes might be slightly brighter than they should be.

If you find HDR too dim, check out our recommendations here. With these settings, the A9G is significantly brighter in HDR, as shown in this EOTF.

The color volume is decent. It's similar to the LG C8, but worse than the A9F, which has better performance. We even did a side-by-side comparison and verified this. The A9G has difficulty displaying bright saturated colors, as the use of the white subpixel to boost brightness desaturates the pure colors at high brightness levels.

Excellent gradient performance for the Sony A9G. Very minimal banding is visible. The TV gives you the option to correct this by using the Smooth Gradation feature that removes most of it (some enthusiasts might still notice some) at the expense of the loss of some fine details.

The A9G has a very faint temporary image retention that is not noticeable in normal use.

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. We are currently running a long-term test to help us better understand permanent burn-in. You can see our results and read more about our investigation here.

Update 11/01/2019: Updated text to include our stance on burn-in.

The Sony A9G has two features to help mitigate burn-in. We recommend enabling the Pixel Shift option and run the Panel refresh procedure once a year or less, as Sony recommends.

You can read about our investigation into this here.

The Sony A9G, just like all OLED TVs, has an almost-instantaneous response time.

The TV does not use PWM to dim. However, there is an imperceivable dip in brightness at the TV's refresh rate of 120Hz, or at about every 8ms.

The TV has an optional Black Frame Insertion feature. When activated the BFI feature inserts black frames to simulate flicker, which can help motion appear clearer. It only supports 60Hz 'flicker', and this can be bothersome to some people.

BFI is enabled on the A9G by setting Motionflow to 'Custom' and Clearness to 'High'. When BFI is enabled, it causes judder when playing back 60p content.

The A9G can interpolate lower frame rate content to 120Hz. This will introduce some Soap Opera Effect, which might bother some people. When interpolating at 120Hz, you might notice some artifacts, but in general, Sony has one of the best interpolation implementations. If there is too much motion, the TV will stop interpolating, thus avoiding the creation of artifacts. This sudden change in motion can cause the image to appear jerky.

See here for the settings that control the A9G's motion interpolation feature.

The A9G has a nearly-instantaneous response time, and this will create some stutter in movies. If you're bothered by the stutter, then motion interpolation and BFI can help.

The A9G displays movies judder-free no matter the source. However, when BFI is enabled, the TV has judder when playing back 60p content.

See our recommended settings to remove judder here.

The A9G has a native 120Hz panel, but like all Sony TVs, it doesn't support any VRR technology. This is one of the major differences with the 2019 LG C9, which supports HDMI Forum VRR.

The Sony A9G has an excellent low input lag. The TV feels responsive as long as you are in 'Game' or 'Graphics' mode. To get low input lag and display proper chroma 4:4:4 you can use either, but 'Game' mode is recommended.

Just like all Sonys up until now, the A9G does not support low input lag with motion interpolation and doesn't support Auto Low Latency Mode.

Note: the 1440p @120Hz input lag measurement was done using another PC, as the TV could not display the 1440p @ 120Hz resolution from our laptop. This should not have a significant impact on the measured input lag.

The A9G supports the most common resolution and refresh rates. We were not able to display 1440 @120Hz from our laptop but we were able to do so from our desktop. This was strange, as we had not such issues with the A9F.

To properly display chroma 4:4:4 in all supported resolutions, you must enable full bandwidth by setting the 'Enhanced format' from the External inputs menu and choose 'Game' or 'Graphics' mode.

The TV has speaker terminals, so you can connect it to an external AV receiver.