The Sony X93L is a 4k TV with a Mini LED backlight. Released in 2023, it occupies a strange place in Sony's 2023 lineup. It's almost an exact copy of the 2023 Sony X95K, but it's only available in North America in 65, 75, and 85-inch sizes. It sits above the Sony X90L/X90CL and below the Sony X95L, which is only available in an 85-inch size in North America but is available in other sizes in Europe and other regions. Like Sony's previous flagship X95K, it offers a great selection of extra features, including hands-free voice control, the S-Center speaker input, and an ATSC 3.0 tuner for up to 4k broadcast support. It's powered by Sony's Cognitive Processor XR, which is designed to improve overall image processing and upscaling. For gamers, it has HDMI 2.1 bandwidth and variable refresh rate (VRR) support, so you can take full advantage of the latest consoles. Like past Sony TVs, it's powered by the Google TV smart platform, which is user-friendly and has a ton of apps available to download.
Our Verdict
The Sony X93L is an excellent TV overall. It's great for watching shows or sports in a bright room thanks to its high peak brightness and excellent reflection handling. Thanks to its high peak brightness and Mini LED backlight, it looks great in a dark room, resulting in deep blacks with minimal blooming around bright objects. Finally, it's an amazing gaming TV with low input lag, a quick response time, and many additional gaming features, including variable refresh rate support to reduce screen tearing.
- Local dimming helps it display deep blacks.
- Bright enough to fight glare.
- Excellent reflection handling.
- Mediocre off-angle viewing experience.
The Sony X93L is a great TV for watching shows in a bright room. It has excellent reflection handling and high peak brightness, so you don't have to worry about glare. It has a great selection of streaming apps, so you can quickly find your favorite shows, and it upscales older content extremely well. The only downside to this TV when watching shows is that it has a narrow viewing angle, so it's best enjoyed directly in front. If you like to walk around with the TV on or have a wide seating arrangement, it doesn't look as good when viewed at an angle.
- No upscaling issues.
- Bright enough to fight glare.
- Excellent reflection handling.
- Mediocre off-angle viewing experience.
The Sony X93L is a great TV for watching sports in a bright room. It gets extremely bright, and combined with its excellent reflection handling, glare isn't an issue in a bright room. It has a quick response time, so fast action is smooth and easy to make out, and it has very good gray uniformity, with very little dirty screen effect in the center. Sadly, it has a narrow viewing angle, so it's not as good for watching the big game with a large group of friends or having a wide seating arrangement, as the image degrades when viewed off-angle.
- No upscaling issues.
- Bright enough to fight glare.
- Excellent reflection handling.
- Great motion handling.
- Mediocre off-angle viewing experience.
The Sony X93L delivers an amazing gaming experience. It has superb low input lag, ensuring a responsive gaming experience with little delay between your actions on the controller and what you see on the screen. Its fast response time makes motion smooth and fluid, and it supports advanced gaming features like a variable refresh rate. It's especially good for PS5 gamers thanks to a few extra Sony features, including Auto HDR Tone Mapping and Auto Genre Picture Mode.
- Local dimming helps it display deep blacks.
- Great motion handling.
- HDMI 2.1 bandwidth and VRR support.
- Low input lag.
- Noticeable black smear.
The Sony X93L is an excellent TV for watching movies. It has excellent contrast, so dark areas of the screen are deep and uniform, with very little blooming around bright highlights. It has a great HDR color gamut, ensuring your favorite movies look how the creator intended. Sony TVs are well-known for their processing features, and this one is no exception, as it has great gradient handling in HDR and impressive low-quality content smoothing, which is great if you prefer streaming movies.
- Local dimming helps it display deep blacks.
- Removes 24p judder.
- Displays a wide range of colors.
- Makes highlights pop.
The Sony X93L is an amazing TV for gaming in HDR. It delivers an amazing gaming experience with low input lag and a quick response time, and it supports a wide array of gaming features like VRR. HDR looks incredible thanks to its excellent contrast ratio and superb peak brightness. Bright highlights in games are punchy and stand out well, with minimal blooming in darker areas of the scene. It also has a great color gamut in HDR, so games look vivid and lifelike.
- Local dimming helps it display deep blacks.
- Great motion handling.
- HDMI 2.1 bandwidth and VRR support.
- Low input lag.
- Displays a wide range of colors.
- Makes highlights pop.
- Noticeable black smear.
The Sony X93L is an excellent TV for use as a PC monitor. It has low input for gaming, although it's a bit high for cursor movements, so you'll notice some slight delays when on the desktop. It has very good gray uniformity, with very little dirty screen effect. Sadly, it has a narrow viewing angle, so the sides of the screen fade and look inaccurate compared to the center, especially if you're sitting very close to the screen.
- Bright enough to fight glare.
- Excellent reflection handling.
- HDMI 2.1 bandwidth and VRR support.
- Low input lag.
- Mediocre off-angle viewing experience.
- Noticeable black smear.
Changelog
- Updated May 27, 2024: We bought and tested the replacement model to this one, the Sony BRAVIA 7 QLED, and added a few comparisons in the Reflections and Viewing Angle sections of the review.
- Updated Dec 05, 2023: Verified the TV's 1440p resolution support with firmware PKG6.7480.0852NAA; the TV still doesn't natively support 1440p, as it upscales to 4k instead. We updated the 1440p results in the Variable Refresh Rate text box from 'Unknown' to 'N/A' to ensure standardized results across reviews.
- Updated Nov 08, 2023: Mentioned the newly reviewed Hisense UX in the Lighting Zone Transitions section of this review.
- Updated Sep 14, 2023: We bought and tested the Sony X95L and added a few relevant comparisons below.
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
We bought and tested the 65-inch Sony X93L, and these results are also valid for the 75-inch and 85-inch models. The larger sizes are expected to have more dimming zones and slightly better local dimming, but unfortunately, no information is currently available on the number of zones on the larger sizes.
There's also a warehouse variant of this TV, the Sony X93CL, available in 65- and 75-inch sizes. It performs the same but comes with a more premium remote and a longer warranty.
| Size | Model Number | Costco Model |
|---|---|---|
| 65" | XR-65X93L | XR-65X93CL |
| 75" | XR-75X93L | XR-75X93CL |
| 85" | XR-85X93L | - |
Our unit was manufactured in April 2023; you can see the label here.
Popular TV Comparisons
Sony TVs are usually a safe bet if you care about picture quality and accuracy, and the Sony X93L is no exception. It delivers fantastic picture quality and an excellent HDR experience, not to mention its wide selection of extra features. That said, some of its features are a bit outdated, like the fact that only two of its HDMI ports support HDMI 2.1 bandwidth. It's been replaced in 2024 by the Sony BRAVIA 7 QLED, which delivers slightly better picture quality overall, with much higher peak brightness, but it also has worse viewing angles and more noticeable glare in a bright room.
See our recommendations for the best TVs for watching movies, the best smart TVs, and the best 65-inch TVs.
Sony has made some really strange design choices in 2024, so the Sony BRAVIA 7 is better than the Sony X93L/X93CL in some ways, but it's a bit worse in other ways. The BRAVIA 7 has a better Mini LED backlight, with less blooming around bright lights in dark scenes and better contrast. The B7 also gets significantly brighter, so bright scenes are brighter overall, and specular highlights stand out better. On the other hand, the B7 doesn't have Sony's 'X-Wide' viewing angle filter and a much worse anti-reflective coating, so go with the X93L if you're in a bright room or have a wide seating arrangement.
The Sony X93L/X93CL is much better than the Sony X90L/X90CL. The X93L has much better reflection handling, so it's a better choice for a bright living room. The biggest difference is the X93L's Mini LED backlight, which delivers much deeper blacks, significantly less blooming around bright objects, and significantly improved zone transitions with no flicker as bright objects move across the screen.
The Sony X95L is slightly better than the Sony X93L/X93CL. The biggest difference between them is the number of local dimming zones. The X95L has more local dimming zones and higher contrast, resulting in a better dark-room viewing experience, with deeper blacks and better black uniformity. The X95L is also slightly brighter.
The Sony X93L/X93CL and the Samsung QN90C are very similar overall. The Sony offers better processing, so it can smooth out low-quality content better, and upscaling looks better overall. The Sony TV also supports Dolby Vision, a better and more widely supported HDR format than the Samsung model's HDR10+ format. The Samsung is a bit brighter overall, and small specular highlights stand out better.
We buy and test dozens of TVs yearly, taking an objective, data-driven approach to deliver results you can trust. Our testing process is complex, with hundreds of individual tests that take over a week to complete. Most of our tests use specially designed test patterns that mimic real content, but we also use the same sources you have at home to ensure our results match the real-world experience. We use two main tools for our testing: a Colorimetry Research CR-100 colorimeter and a CR-250 spectroradiometer.
Test Results
Older Test Bench: This product has been tested using an older TV test methodology, before a major update. Some of the test results below aren't directly comparable with other TVs. Learn more
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