Sony X85K TV Review

The Sony X85K Series has a simplistic design that's not very premium, but it doesn't look cheap either. The bezels have a textured plastic finish, while the back is matte plastic.

The brightness of this TV has varied considerably since the start of our long-term test. It's unclear why, and there's no apparent pattern to the brightness changes. It's not always decreasing, either, so this isn't a sign of the backlight failing.

The wide-set plastic feet support the TV well, and there's minimal wobble for a 65-inch model. The feet raise the bottom of the screen about 3.3 inches off the table, so placing a soundbar in front likely won't block it unless you have a large soundbar.

Footprint of the 65-inch TV: 48.1" x 13.2".

The Sony X85K has a plastic back with a checkerboard pattern typical of Sony TVs. The inputs are side-facing and set into the TV, so they're difficult to reach with the TV wall-mounted. It has basic cable management with hooks on the feet to guide the cables to the inputs.

The bezels are slightly larger than on other mid-range and premium TVs, but they aren't distracting.

The Sony X85K has good build quality. It's well put together with stable feet and good-quality plastic. There's a bit of flex on the back panel, but it isn't something to be concerned about. However, there's one issue with our unit as there are a couple of spots near the center of the screen. We couldn't clean them off, and they seem to be dirt or smudges that are caught between the panel and some layers beneath it. It's more of a quality control issue, and we don't expect it to be a widespread problem, but let us know if you experience the same thing.

The Sony X85K has a great native contrast ratio, so blacks are deep and uniform in dark scenes. It lacks a local dimming feature, though, so bright highlights increase the brightness of the entire screen, including dark areas, so blacks look more washed out.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so there's no blooming around bright objects or subtitles in dark scenes.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so it can't adjust the backlight of individual zones to brighten up highlights without impacting the rest of the image. But this means that there's no distracting flicker or brightness changes as bright highlights move between zones.

Switching to Game Mode makes no noticeable difference in dark scene performance, as shadows still look washed out.

The Sony X85 gets decently bright in HDR. It delivers a satisfying HDR experience, but without a local dimming feature, bright specular highlights don't pop against the rest of the screen.

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

• HDR Picture Mode: Custom
• Brightness: Max
• Contrast: 90
• Color Temperature: Expert 2

The HDR brightness in Game Mode looks nearly identical to outside of Game Mode.

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

The EOTF follows the target curve incredibly well, meaning that most content is displayed at the correct brightness level in HDR. Shadow details are raised, as the lack of a local dimming feature prevents the TV from displaying near black perfectly. Midtones are slightly brighter, but it's not a noticeable difference, and there's a fine roll-off near the TV's peak brightness, ensuring that fine details in bright scenes are preserved.

The Sony X85K has great SDR peak brightness. It easily gets bright enough to fight glare, and the brightness remains consistent across different scenes.

These measurements are after calibration, with the following settings:

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

This TV has a great color gamut. It has fantastic coverage of the commonly-used DCI-P3 color space, but it's not future-proof because it has limited coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space, and more content will start to use that color space.

Sadly, its tone mapping is off, and colors are inaccurate. These results are with a 75% stimulus, but the tone mapping is much better with a 50% stimulus, as you can see below. The coverage doesn't change much, but this means darker colors look more accurate than brighter ones.

• DCI-P3 with 50% stimulus
• Rec. 2020 with 50% stimulus

The Sony X85K TV has good color volume. It displays some colors nearly as bright as pure white, but it's limited by its incomplete color gamut.

With just a few changes out-of-the-box, this TV's accuracy is fantastic in SDR. There are minimal inaccuracies to most colors and the white balance, and the color temperature is nearly spot-on with the 6500K target. Gamma follows the 2.2 target for moderately-lit rooms well, but some brighter scenes are slightly too dark.

This TV is very easy to calibrate, and any remaining inaccuracies can't be spotted by the naked eye.

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

The gray uniformity of this TV is good. The screen is mostly uniform, and there aren't any distracting areas. There's an issue with our unit with dirty spots towards the center, which are likely smudges or dust caught in the panel. It's different from the dirty screen effect some TVs experience, which is due to the panel's performance and not quality control issues like this one.

This TV has impressive black uniformity. Blacks look deep and incredibly uniform, even without a local dimming feature.

This TV has a disappointing viewing angle. The image looks washed out as you move off-center, so it isn't ideal for a wide seating arrangement or if you like to move around with the TV on.

The Sony X85K has good reflection handling. Combined with its high peak brightness, it performs well in most well-lit rooms.

The gradient handling on this TV is just okay. Its picture processing isn't as powerful as higher-end Sony TVs, and there's noticeable banding in darker shades.

Unfortunately, this TV has very limited processing capabilities when displaying low-quality content. It doesn't smooth out macro-blocking or pixelization well, but on the flip side, fine details are preserved well.

This TV has good upscaling and sharpness processing overall. Fine details in upscaled content are preserved well, and fine lines are straight and detailed without oversharpening. These results are with Sharpness set to '60', and Reality Creation set to '20'.

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 X85K has a great response time. Motion looks smooth in most scenes, but as it has overshoot with dark transitions, there's some inverse ghosting.

The backlight is completely flicker-free with any picture mode and any brightness level, which helps reduce eye strain.

The Sony X85K has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion. It only flickers at 120Hz, which creates duplication with 60 fps content.

This TV has a motion interpolation feature to bring lower-frame-rate content up to 120 fps. Like with most TVs, it works well with slower scenes, but it struggles to keep up in fast-paced content, causing artifacts.

Due to the quick response time, there's some stutter with lower-frame-rate content as each frame is held on longer.

This TV removes 24p judder from any source, which helps with the appearance of motion in movies.

This TV supports variable refresh rate technology to reduce screen tearing. It supports HDMI Forum VRR and G-SYNC but not FreeSync, which is disappointing if you have a PC with an older AMD graphics card.

The Sony X85K has low input lag for a responsive gaming experience, as long as you're using the 'Game' Picture Mode.

This TV supports most resolutions up to 4k @ 120Hz, as long as you're using HDMI ports 3 and 4 because they support HDMI 2.1 bandwidth. It also displays proper chroma 4:4:4 with 1080p and 4k signals, which is important when using the TV as a PC monitor for clear text, but only at 60Hz. Text isn't clear with 4k @ 120Hz signals from a PC, as it can't display chroma 4:4:4 properly in that mode. If you'd like something comparable but with 1440p resolution and chroma 4:4:4 at 4k @ 120Hz support, check out the Samsung Q70C QLED.

This TV supports 4k gaming up to 120 fps on the PS5 with HDMI ports 3 and 4.

This TV supports 4k gaming up to 120 fps on the Xbox Series S|X with HDMI ports 3 and 4. Like most TVs released in 2022 and 2023, Dolby Vision is only supported at 4k @ 60Hz.

As HDMI ports 3 and 4 support full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1, you'll be limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth with HDMI ports 1 and 2. However, because one of the HDMI 2.1 ports also serves as an eARC port, you can't use HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on multiple devices if you have your receiver plugged into the eARC port. Also, the TV's tuner supports ATSC 3.0, allowing you to stream over-the-air 4k channels.

The Sony X85K doesn't have an Analog Audio Output, so you can't connect your headphones or basic speakers that use an analog connection. Unlike the Sony X90K/X90CK, it doesn't have the S-Center speaker input.

The eARC support allows you to pass high-quality audio to a compatible receiver with a single HDMI cable, and it supports both common audio formats.

This TV has a decent frequency response. It has a very well-balanced sound profile at moderate listening levels, but there are more compression artifacts at the max volume. Like with most TVs, it doesn't produce much bass.

The Sony X85K's distortion handling is mediocre. Although it isn't too noticeable at moderate listening levels, it gets much worse at the max volume.

The Sony X85K comes with the same version of Google TV as the Sony X85J. It's user-friendly, and navigating the menu feels smooth without any noticeable bugs.

Like with most modern TVs, there are ads and suggested content on the home screen and in the Google Play Store. You can opt out of personalized ads, which means you'll get non-targeted ads instead.

The Google Play Store has tons of apps available to download. 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 Sony X85K's remote is slightly different from past Sony remotes. It doesn't have a numpad and instead has a '123' button that brings up a virtual numpad. The built-in mic gives you access to Google Assistant, and you can ask it to change inputs, search for content, and open apps. You need to ensure you have Bluetooth enabled on the TV for the voice assistant to work.

There's a single button underneath the center of the TV to turn it on/off, change channels, adjust the volume, or switch inputs.

• Remote
• 2x AAA batteries
• Power cord
• 4x VESA mount adapters
• Cable management clips
• User manual and guides