Sony BRAVIA 6 OLED  TV Review

The Sony BRAVIA 6 has mediocre peak brightness in HDR. Small details like the sun glinting off the metallic body of a car don't stand out very well, so most HDR content looks dull and lifeless. Scenes that should be bright are instead dull and lifeless, as it can't maintain its limited peak brightness when more of the screen is bright at once.

Unlike higher-end Sony TVs like the Sony BRAVIA 8 II OLED, it doesn't support any brightness-enhancing features like dynamic tone mapping.

Overall, it's significantly dimmer than competing models using the same panel, like the Samsung S85H OLED and the LG B6 OLED 2026.

There's no noticeable difference in brightness when you switch to the TV's dedicated Game mode. Most games look dull and dim in HDR.

The TV has poor peak brightness in SDR. It's not bright enough to overcome even moderate amounts of glare in the day, so it's best suited for a dark or light-controlled room with the blinds closed. It's considerably dimmer when most of the screen is bright at once, like when watching sports.

Like all OLEDs, the Sony BRAVIA 6 has a nearly infinite contrast ratio, giving it perfect contrast. Due to OLED's self-lit pixels, it displays bright highlights next to perfect inky blacks, making it very impressive in a dark room.

Since OLEDs don't use lighting zones and instead have individual pixels that can be lit up to their maximum brightness next to pixels that are turned off, there's no haloing when bright elements are surrounded by deep blacks.

Since OLEDs don't use lighting zones and instead have individual pixels that can be lit up to their maximum brightness next to pixels that are turned off, there's no haloing when bright elements are surrounded by deep blacks.

There's no difference in dark scene behavior when the TV is set in Game mode.

Because OLEDs can turn off individual pixels, the TV has perfect black uniformity with no haloing around bright objects.

The Sony BRAVIA 6 has good color volume in SDR. It displays most of the DCI-P3 color space, and colors are consistently bright, with no loss of saturation in lighter scenes. It struggles to display more of the wider BT.2020 color space, though, and it can't display saturated reds or greens.

The TV has decent color volume in HDR. It displays saturated colors in dim scenes well, thanks to its high contrast ratio, and brighter saturated colors are displayed well. Colors don't get very bright, though, and they're noticeably washed out in very bright scenes.

The Sony BRAVIA 6 has decent accuracy out of the box in SDR. It has great color accuracy, with just a slightly cool average color temperature. Its white balance is noticeably off in bright scenes, though, and bright content is noticeably washed out.

The TV has fantastic accuracy after a full calibration. It's easy to calibrate overall, but it has a limited selection of calibration settings, with no color management system and a simple 10-point white balance system. Despite these limitations, it looks fantastic after calibration, with no noticeable issues.

See our full calibration settings.

The TV has decent accuracy in HDR before calibration. Its white balance is great, but it has a noticeably cool color temperature. It also has great color mapping, but there are noticeable luminance errors.

Calibrating the TV improves the overall accuracy a bit, but it's not perfect. While the white balance is noticeably better after calibration, the color mapping is actually worse, and it lacks a color calibration system to correct it.

The Sony BRAVIA 6 has fantastic PQ EOTF tracking. Most content is displayed extremely close to the luminance level intended by the content creator, with just a slight variance from the target curve in midtones. Unfortunately, all content cuts off sharply at the TV's peak brightness. While this ensures that all bright scenes are as bright as they can be, the TV's limited peak brightness means that it loses fine details in the process.

This TV lacks Sony's proprietary XR image processor and has noticeably worse low-quality content smoothing than other models, like the Sony BRAVIA 3 II. It smooths out low-quality content streams a bit, but there's a noticeable loss of fine details that gives the image a sort of waxy look.

This TV has great upscaling. Low-resolution content like DVDs is scaled well, with no obvious over-sharping or upscaling artifacts.

This TV has decent gradient handling. There's noticeable banding in most shades, especially in darker shades of gray, green, and blue.

The Sony BRAVIA 6 has excellent low input lag. Games feel responsive, with very little additional delay between your actions on the controller and what you see on the screen.

The TV supports most common resolutions, up to a maximum of 4k @ 120Hz. It also supports chroma 4:4:4, which is important for clear text from a PC.

The TV supports HDMI Forum VRR and G-SYNC, ensuring a nearly tear-free gaming experience from any VRR-enabled source. It doesn't support FreeSync, though, so VRR doesn't work with PCs that have a 5000 series or older AMD graphics card. It works well across the TV's entire refresh rate range and supports sources with Low Framerate Compensation (LFC), which ensures your games remain nearly tear-free even when your frame rate drops very low.

The TV's CAD at its maximum 4k refresh rate of 120Hz is fantastic. Pixels transition almost instantly, so fast motion is very sharp. There's some very minor overshoot in shadow details, but it's hard to notice.

The TV's maximum refresh rate is 120Hz, so these results are the same as the Max Refresh Rate test.

The TV has a fantastic CAD at 60Hz. There's some minor overshoot in shadow details, but it doesn't cause any noticeable inverse ghosting. Motion is crisp and clear, with no blur behind fast-moving objects. There's some noticeable persistence blur, though.

The TV can't quite take full advantage of the PS5 and PS5 Pro. It supports 4k @ 120Hz gaming, but not 1440p. This doesn't matter for most games, though. It supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to worry about switching to Game mode to get the lowest input lag.

The TV can't quite take full advantage of the Xbox Series S|X. It supports 4k @ 120Hz gaming, but not 1440p. This doesn't matter for most games, though. It supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to worry about switching to Game mode to get the lowest input lag.

Unfortunately, there's noticeable stutter in slow and wide-panning shots due to the TV's incredibly quick response time.

Adding low levels of motion interpolation helps reduce the amount of stutter, but it's still somewhat noticeable. It's very consistent, though, with almost no variation in frame timing.

The TV removes judder from the native apps and 24p sources like a Blu-ray player or streaming app with Match Frame Rate enabled. It can't remove judder at all with 60p sources, though, and motion is choppy and uneven. This is an issue if you have a cable box or an older streaming device that doesn't support a 24p output.

There's no micro judder.

The Sony BRAVIA 6 has a nearly instantaneous response time when watching content. There's no noticeable motion blur behind fast-moving objects. There's some minor overshoot in shadow details, but it's very minor and not noticeable.

There are no transition artifacts like edge artifacts or intermediate colors.

This TV doesn't have a traditional backlight and doesn't use pulse-width modulation (PWM) to dim each pixel, but it's not completely flicker-free. There's a slight dip in brightness that corresponds to the TV's refresh rate. This is very different from the PWM flicker on TVs with LED backlights and occurs on every OLED we've tested.

This TV doesn't have an optional black frame insertion feature.

The Sony BRAVIA 6 has sub-par direct reflection handling. Lights and windows facing the screen are clearly visible, and dark scenes are hard to see as they're drowned out by any reflections in the screen.

Ambient light has no noticeable impact on black levels.

The total amount of reflected light is good. Lights reflected off the screen are clearly visible but dimmed a bit by the screen coating. There are also slight diffraction artifacts, but they're very minor.

The TV loses some perceived color saturation in a bright room, especially with lighter colors.

The Sony BRAVIA 6 has an excellent viewing angle. The image shifts a bit as you move to the sides, but it's an excellent fit overall for a wide seating area.

The TV has good gray uniformity. There's very little dirty screen effect in the center of the screen, which is great for watching sports. There's some vignetting at the sides, but it's very minor, and most people won't notice it. Like all OLEDs, there are vertical lines in darker scenes, but they're barely noticeable from a normal viewing distance.

The TV uses a newer WOLED panel called 'OLED SE.' It's not as bright or as colorful as the tandem panel found on the LG C6H OLED or the LG G6 OLED, as it has a weaker separation of colors.

It features a redesigned subpixel structure with an RGWB subpixel order. This subpixel structure helps improve text clarity from a PC, since the red, green, and blue subpixels are in the correct order that a PC expects.

Like all OLEDs, this TV is susceptible to permanent burn-in, which can happen with cumulative 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 risks, including Pixel Shift and Panel Refresh.

All four HDMI inputs support the full bandwidth of HDMI 2.1, so you can take full advantage of multiple gaming devices. It also supports ATSC 3.0 (NEXTGEN TV) for 4k over-the-air broadcasts in the U.S.

The TV has eARC support, which allows it to pass uncompressed high-quality audio from a connected source to your home theater system or soundbar. It supports all major audio formats, so you don't have to worry about compatibility with external sources.

The Sony BRAVIA 6 has a fairly simple design, but it looks nice. It has thin bezels on all four sides and simple blade-style feet.

The blade-style feet support the TV well. They can only be placed in the position shown, with no alternative mounting spots to fit different tables. They're not very tall, though, so most soundbars will block a portion of the screen if they're placed in front of it.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 31.7" x 11.8" x 2".

The back of the TV has a simple design, very similar to the Roku Pro Series OLED, with a larger electronics box that fills most of the screen. The inputs face out to the side and the bottom of the TV, and can be a bit difficult to access. There are clips on each foot to help with cable management.

The Sony BRAVIA 6 has excellent build quality. It's a well-built TV, with no obvious flaws or construction defects.

The TV runs version 14 of the popular Google TV smart interface. It's fast and easy to use, and it has a huge selection of streaming apps.

Unfortunately, like most TVs, the interface contains ads. You can opt out of personalized ads, but this doesn't change the number of ads you'll see; they just won't be personalized to match your search and viewing history.

During the initial setup of the TV, you can opt out of signing in to Google and use the TV as a basic TV instead. This disables most smart features and removes ads.

• Remote control
• 2x AAA batteries
• Cable management clips.
• User guides

This TV was originally tested on firmware 16178747.

The Sony BRAVIA 6 has an okay frequency response. Like most TVs, there's very little deep bass and no thump or rumble, so explosions sound very mild. Dialogue is clear, but it lacks a room-correction feature to remove the room mode at 190Hz.