Sony's new OLED TV is stunning—but is the picture worth the price tag?
What We Like
The first thing you’ll notice about an OLED TV is its stunning contrast, and the A8G is no exception.
Everything we’ve come to expect from OLED
The A8G might be a slightly lesser version of of the OLED TVs Sony slaps with its “Master Series” stamp of quality, but that doesn’t mean you’re getting a lesser version of the OLED experience with the A8G series—with a couple of caveats aside, this is one of the best pictures money can buy at the moment.
Both HDR and standard look excellent on the A8G, but HDR content (Dolby Vision in particular) is the star of the show. Because OLED displays are capable of the deepest of black levels, dark, cinematic content mastered for HDR is the A8G’s bread and butter, rendering shadow detail with the utmost clarity and avoiding the type of light bloom commonly found on high-end LED TVs that rely on full-array local dimming. If you’re the type of person who insists on watching movies and shows in the dark, the A8G (like most OLEDs) is practically tailor-made for you.
Being an OLED, the A8G’s color output is phenomenal; I measured 98% coverage of the wide P3 color gamut when receiving an HDR signal.
The A8G’s color production is also as impressive as we’ve come to expect from OLED displays. It covers 100% of the Rec.709 standard and an impressive 98% of the wide, DCI-P3/10-bit color gamut. No matter what you happen to be watching, you can expect accurate, voluminous color to be a part of the experience.
Classy, restrained design
The A8G’s design is tasteful and restrained, but still manages to look different than most TVs on the market today. The curved stand combined with the ultra-thin panel is a pleasant looking pairing.
In recent years, Sony’s premium TV offerings have favored the sort of design that, while interesting, ultimately feel too fussy for their own good. The A8G, however, sports a look that keeps things simple without losing all of its weirdness—and I don’t mean “weird” in a bad way.
Rather than propping itself up with the help two wide-set feet like seemingly every other TV on the market, the A8G rests on a thin, C-shaped stand whose rounded side peeks out from underneath the panel. It’s just odd enough to be endearing without calling attention to its uniqueness.
My smartphone is thicker than this panel. It’s absurd.
Of course, the real star of any OLED TV’s design is the signature so-thin-it-looks-bendable panel, which has unsurprisingly elicited “oohs” and “ahhs” from just about every coworker of mine who’s passed through the lab during the testing process.
Fantastic motion handling makes it a good pick for gamers and sports fans
As far as I’m concerned, one of the best things about the Sony A8G is its impressive motion handling. Initially, I sat, transfixed, watching the TV’s store demo (a pinball gliding through an abstract, chrome-plated pinball machine) thinking to myself, “Sure, this looks good, but what about when I’m not watching a highly polished demo produced by the company that made this TV?”
As it turns out, the A8G delivers smooth, judder- and blur-free motion across a variety of content. Its 120 Hz native refresh rate puts it at the top of its class for all TVs. If you’re a sports fan, this TV’s got your back—it delivers all of the action cleanly, right out of the box, and without any tinkering to the TV’s motion settings.
Wide viewing angles are not to be taken for granted
Being the miracle workers that they are, OLED displays are also wide-angle wonders; while the picture on most VA-style LCD panels starts to look questionable after moving just a couple of feet away from the center, OLED panels can maintain picture quality longer when faced with off-angle viewing.
With the A8G, for example, I measured a total viewing angle of ±59°, which means you’ve got several feet of lateral before the picture quality drops off considerably.
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