Sony BRAVIA 7 QLED TV Review

The Sony BRAVIA 7 has a sleek, premium design that looks great in any room. It has thin bezels on three sides, with a slightly thicker bottom bezel that has a brushed metallic finish.

The slim metal feet hold the TV very well, and there are four mounting options depending on your needs. The feet can be set in either a wide or narrow position depending on your cabinet, and both options offer a low or high setting, so you can place a soundbar in front of the screen without blocking it.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand in the narrow, low position as shown: 18.8" x 13.6" x 1.7". The wide position increases the width of the stand to 47.8 inches, and setting it to the high position increases the height between the table and the screen to 3.8 inches, so almost all soundbars fit in front of the screen without blocking the image.

The back of the TV has a nice, clean look, with the typical checkerboard pattern found on all other recent Sony TVs. Sadly, there's nothing for cable management, so it's hard to get the clean look you could achieve with other recent Sony TVs like the Sony X93L/X93CL.

The build quality of this TV is excellent. The plastic panels feel solid and well-built, and there's a good mix of premium materials, with the metal feet and the metal border around the TV.

The Sony BRAVIA 7 has fantastic contrast thanks to its Mini LED backlight. The native contrast with local dimming disabled is good, but bumping Auto Local Dimming to 'High' delivers the best results overall, with deep blacks and very bright highlights.

There's some noticeable blooming around bright highlights, but it's great overall. It's especially noticeable around subtitles or bright lights in fairly dark scenes. Note that the larger sizes have more local dimming zones, but we don't know how many as Sony doesn't provide this information. They likely have even better local dimming performance, with less blooming than the 55 and 65-inch models.

The local dimming zone transitions are good overall, but there are a few distracting issues. There's no flicker, which is great, but there's a noticeable halo effect as bright objects move across the screen. The halo effect gets worse the quicker objects move, as the local dimming can't quite keep up with it.

After firmware 112.626.140.1, there's pretty much no difference in local dimming performance, as seen in this video comparison. On the top left is the old result in the Professional picture mode, and on the top right is the old result in Game Mode. The bottom left is with the new firmware in the Professional picture mode, and on the bottom right is the new result in Game Mode.

Unfortunately, there's a bit more noticeable blooming around bright objects when you're in the low-latency 'Game' mode with Auto Local Dimming on 'High.' Zone transitions are also slightly more noticeable, but it's still excellent overall.

The peak brightness in HDR is incredible. It's bright enough to bring out the brightest highlights and flashes of light in most HDR content.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Professional
• Brightness: Max
• Contrast: 90
• Color Temperature: Expert 2
• HDR Tone Mapping: Gradation Preferred
• Peak Luminance: High
• Auto Local Dimming: High

Switching to the low-latency 'Game' HDR Picture Mode results in slightly brighter small highlights, but it's not noticeable with most real content.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Game
• Brightness: Max
• Contrast: 90
• Color Temperature: Expert 2
• HDR Tone Mapping: Gradation Preferred
• Peak Luminance: High
• Auto Local Dimming: High

As is typical for Sony TVs, the Sony BRAVIA 7 has fantastic PQ EOTF tracking. Blacks aren't quite true black, but other than that it's nearly perfect. There's a slow roll-off for content mastered up to 4,000 nits, but it clips anything above that.

The peak brightness in SDR is superb. There's some variation in brightness with different content, but it's not noticeable with most content.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Professional
• Brightness: Max
• Contrast: 90
• Color Temperature: Expert 1
• Peak Luminance: High
• Auto Local Dimming: High

The Sony BRAVIA 7 has an excellent color gamut. It displays nearly all of the DCI-P3 color space used by most HDR content. Coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space commonly used for nature documentaries and animated content is decent. The color mapping in both spaces is good, but highly saturated colors in Rec. 2020 tend to blend together, and there's not much gradation.

The color volume is fantastic. Colors are bright and vibrant, and dark tones are displayed well, thanks to the high contrast ratio.

With just a few quick settings changes out of the box, this TV has excellent accuracy. The overall white balance is great. Gamma in SDR is slightly above the target, so bright scenes are slightly crushed. Color accuracy is fantastic, with no noticeable issues.

The calibration system on this TV is extremely effective and easy to use. Although it already has excellent accuracy out of the box, it's even better after calibrating it, and there are no noticeable issues after.

You can see the full settings used for our calibration here.

The gray uniformity on this TV is good. There are a few darker splotches across the screen and a bit of vignetting in the corners, but it's not too bad.

The black uniformity is nearly perfect. With Auto Local Dimming enabled, there's no noticeable backlight bleed or bright spots across the screen.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest downsides of the Sony BRAVIA 7 is its viewing angle, which is significantly worse than that of both the Sony X93L and the Sony X95L, as it lacks Sony's 'X-Wide Angle' technology. Only the step-up Sony BRAVIA 9 QLED has that feature in 2024. This TV is unsuitable for a wide seating arrangement, as anyone sitting off-center will see a faded, washed-out image.

The reflection handling on this TV is just decent. The screen coating is significantly less glossy than the Sony X93L, so direct reflections are spread out a bit more across the screen. This also makes bright lights and windows more distracting, as significantly more light is reflected back. If you want a Sony TV with much better reflection handling, check out the BRAVIA 7's older sibling, the Sony BRAVIA 9 QLED.

The gradient handling on this TV is great overall. There's some noticeable banding in brighter shades of green and very slight banding in everything else, but it's not very noticeable.

The Sony BRAVIA 7 does a great job smoothing out low-quality content. Compression issues like macro-blocking are smoothed out well without causing any significant loss of fine details.

Similar to low-quality content smoothing, this TV also upscales low-resolution content well. Fine details in low-resolution content like DVDs are preserved well.

These results are with the following processing settings:

• Sharpness: 60
• Reality Creation: Auto

This TV uses a BGR subpixel layout. It doesn't affect picture quality but can cause blurry text in some applications when using it as a PC monitor. You can read more about it here.

The Sony BRAVIA 7 has a quick response time. There's a faint motion blur trail behind fast-moving objects, but it's not very noticeable. Transitions in shadow details are handled well, so there's not much black smearing, and there's very little overshoot.

The TV uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to control the backlight intensity. It flickers at 720Hz in all picture modes, which is high enough that it isn't noticeable, but it can still bother those sensitive to flicker.

With local dimming disabled, the TV is flicker-free at backlight settings between 15 and 50.

There's an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion, which you can enable to improve the appearance of motion.

The Sony BRAVIA 7 can interpolate lower-frame-rate content up to 120 fps, but it's not great. It struggles even in slow panning shots, resulting in noticeable artifacts and stuttering as the frame rate fluctuates.

There's just a bit of stutter in slow panning shots, but it's decent overall.

This TV removes judder automatically from 24p sources, like a Blu-ray player or an external streaming device with a 'Match Frame Rate' feature. For 60Hz sources, like a cable box or the native apps, Motionflow has to be enabled, with both sliders at 'Min' and CineMotion set to 'High' to remove judder.

The Sony BRAVIA 7 supports variable refresh rate technology to reduce screen tearing. HDMI Forum VRR and G-SYNC compatibility work over the entire refresh rate range.

This TV has superb low input lag when in the 'Game' Picture Mode, ensuring a smooth and responsive gaming experience. It's a bit higher than competing models from LG and Samsung but still low enough for non-competitive gamers.

The Sony BRAVIA 7 supports most common resolutions, up to 4k @ 120Hz with HDMI ports 3 and 4. Chroma 4:4:4 and RGB signals are displayed properly with 1080p and 4k signals, which is essential for clear text when using it as a PC monitor. HDMI ports 1 and 2 are limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth and don't support 4k @ 120Hz inputs.

This TV can support almost everything the PS5 has to offer. However, since it doesn't support 1440p @ 120Hz signals, it doesn't work with that format from the PS5. When paired with a PS5, it also offers a few unique features, including Auto HDR Tone Mapping and Auto Genre Picture Mode.

The Sony BRAVIA 7 can take full advantage of the Xbox Series S|X consoles.

HDMI ports 3 and 4 support the full 48 Gbps bandwidth of HDMI 2.1, while HDMI 1 and 2 are limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth. However, because HDMI 3 is an HDMI 2.1 and eARC port, you lose an HDMI 2.1 slot if you connect a receiver, so you can't use HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on multiple devices simultaneously unless the receiver also supports it.

This TV supports eARC, which allows you to pass high-quality, uncompressed audio to a compatible receiver through an HDMI cable. It supports all major audio formats, so you don't have to worry about compatibility with external sources.

The Sony BRAVIA 7 has a decent frequency response. There's very little bass, which is normal with modern TVs, so the low-frequency extension is quite high. Above the LFE, the frequency response is well-balanced at moderate volume levels, but it's a bit worse at max volume. Speaking of, the TV can't get very loud, and there's noticeable compression and pumping at max volume.

There's very little distortion, even at max volume.

The Sony BRAVIA 7 runs version 12 of the Google TV smart interface, with a huge selection of streaming apps and a modern, streamlined interface.

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.

The Google Play Store has tons of apps available to download, and they run very smoothly. It has Google Chromecast built-in, meaning you can cast content from your phone. You can also connect the Bravia webcam for video calls.

The included remote is small, as it doesn't have a numpad. There are mics in the remote and built into the TV, and they allow you to ask it to search for content, change settings, and open apps. The remote has a slightly updated look, with a speckled finish, but it's functionally identical to the 2023 models.

There's a single button on the back left side to turn it on/off, change channels, adjust the volume, or switch inputs. If you're concerned about privacy, there's also a switch to turn off the TV's mic.

• Remote
• 2x AAA batteries
• Power cable
• VESA mount extenders
• Manuals and user guides

Even though it's significantly brighter than the Sony X93L, it draws roughly the same amount of power. Sony has considerably improved their power efficiency without sacrificing picture quality or brightness.