When Sony releases a television, it's usually an immediate competitor for best in whatever price segment it sits in. The A80J is a high-end OLED display that is the more approachable of Sony’s OLED lineup in terms of price and competes right up next to the LG C1 as one of the best 4K TVs for gaming. And while LG comes in just slightly less expensive, the A80J makes several strong arguments that it should be considered the superior choice side-by-side.
Since the actual quality of the OLED panel is going to be negligibly different, if at all, Sony instead competes on its software and design. But is that worth the extra $200 when you’re already spending more than $2,000?
Sony A80J – Design and Build
Like most modern OLED televisions, the actual display of the Sony is stunningly thin. The bezels are near invisible, and Sony created a stand that sits the A80J just barely above my media console. Sony chose this particular design philosophy to bring as much emphasis on the display itself and make the other parts of the television fade into the background.
When watching the A80J, I can attest that while I like the innovation of some stands on competitor displays – like the dramatic swoop found on the Vizio OLED – forcing my eye to just enjoy what’s on display with no distractions does make sense. Stands can look cool, but that’s not why I buy a television.
The downside of this philosophy is that the feet of the A80J are so close to the platform on which it sits that there is no room to include any kind of cable management. Because the display is so low set, you probably won’t notice the cables unless you are intentionally looking for them, but they are there and they can be seen. If I’m going to ding other display manufacturers for not addressing cable management, I have to hold Sony to that same standard.
Of course, if you plan to wall-mount the television none of this matters and the A80J will just melt into your wall, blending in almost seamlessly.
The A80J is loaded with connectivity options. Digitally, it supports WiFi, Apple Airplay 2, Bluetooth, and Chromecast. Physically it offers a composite video input, a digital audio input, and an ethernet port. It also packs four total HDMI ports, two of which are the latest 2.1 standard and one of those is designated for eARC (which is the port I used to connect my HDMI audio device). There are also two USB ports.
The HDMI 2.1 ports support up to 120Hz in 4K HDR and are compatible with variable refresh rate (VRR), but there is a catch: like all Sony displays right now, VRR is only promised for an undefined “future” firmware update and is not currently enabled. If you’re planning to game with a PlayStation 5, this isn't a big deal since the PS5 doesn’t support VRR yet either. But if you’re using an Xbox, it certainly bears consideration.
Sony A80J – Remote
Moving on to the remote control, let’s address the elephant in the room: it’s huge. It’s obnoxiously large and a lot of it is taken up with buttons you will likely never touch. Unlike Vizio, Samsung, or TCL, Sony continues to create remotes that offer buyers the ability to control just about everything, and as such have a button to do just about anything. The company still includes the number pad, for example, and there is a giant blank space at the bottom that is likely included as a grip which expands the height of the controller even further.
It’s easily twice as large as any other remote I’ve held since the last Sony remote I used. Still, it has a lot of options on it, which some people might appreciate. Me? I wish it was a quarter as big.
Sony A80J – Software and UI
The Sony A80J is powered by Google TV and it works perfectly. For years I detested using Google’s previous operating system – Android TV – on any display, but Sony’s processor plus the updated Google TV is a snappy experience that exhibits no lag and is an overall lovely experience.
Google TV on the A80J works like it does on any other television. There's a wide selection of apps you can install at setup, or later at any time. Every app I could ask for is available and they all work flawlessly.
Sony A80J – Picture Quality
The Sony A80J uses an OLED display, which means that each pixel of the television can be controlled individually and even turned off entirely. That means that blacks can be true black, which makes for stunning picture quality when contrasted against any pixels that are lit.
Rich blacks and beautiful colors are rendered beautifully on this display, and support for various HDR formats including Dolby Vision means streamed content from Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and Sony’s own Bravia Core looks spectacular. Bravia Core, which has a good but somewhat limited selection of movies, is a movie streaming service from Sony that offers a bitrate of up to 80 Mbps, much higher than any of the other streaming platforms. If your internet can handle that kind of data throughput, picture quality through Bravia Core is outstanding and near Blu-Ray quality.
OLED displays of this size are all theoretically capable of the same quality, but Sony ups the ante with some of the best – if not the best – picture processing available on the market.
When watching lower bitrate content from streaming providers like Disney+, banding and artifact “blocking” can sometimes be visible in scenes. For example, during the desert scenes from the first season of The Mandalorian, the bright sky can appear to have lines on it as there isn’t enough data to create a smooth transition among those graduated colors.
That is, if you’re not watching on a Sony. The A80J software can interpret that lower quality data stream and smooth it out, removing those gradients and making for a smooth, pristine sky.
It makes most streams look better, but it is not a cure-all. Particularly old shows can still suffer from pixels blocking together. For example, when streaming Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which was produced in the 1990s, no amount of software was able to smooth out some of those scenes where there just isn’t enough data for a clean picture, even for the A80J.
The one knock on this display is a problem with all OLED displays: brightness. Overall, the television is noticeably less bright than LCD-style televisions like the Hisense U7G or Mini LED televisions like the TCL 6-Series. The A80J is certainly capable of hitting some very bright peaks, but it is rare to see – as the brighter the object on screen, the more likely it is to experience permanent burn-in.
Speaking of which, a lot of the trepidation folks have when faced with buying an OLED comes from that burn-in fear, but most average consumers won’t have to worry about it. I’ve used OLED displays as my daily drivers for years now and never had an issue. Only if you plan to play a video game with a persistent, unchanging HUD or have a news network with a ticker always showing for eight to 10 hours a day every day for months will the problem start to rear itself. Under normal use cases, software in the television keeps a careful eye on the display’s status to assure that none of the pixels get too worked out and burn in.
Sony A80J – Gaming Performance
Thanks to HDMI 2.1 and the extremely fast response time of OLED displays along with auto-low latency mode (ALLM) that kicks in when tuned to Game mode, the Sony A80J is a gaming dream. HDR games look especially fantastic and playing the few games that can operate at 4K HDR at 120 frames per second results in a top-tier display experience for consoles on a modern television.
As far as performance is concerned, I had no issues at all playing a host of games on the PS5: Apex Legends, Destiny 2, A Plague Tale: Innocence, and Risk of Rain 2 all looked and played great. The majority of those games can’t exceed 60 frames per second in 4K but the visual experience sparkles nonetheless. A Plague Tale in particular looks remarkable.
Destiny 2 is a truly fantastic experience. The PvE portions of the game look absolutely fantastic and really let you sit back and enjoy the work the developers put into the atmosphere of the game. In PvP activities, the 120 frames per second kicks in for a buttery smooth competitive experience.
One knock right now is that, as mentioned, the A80J doesn’t currently support VRR and Sony has not provided any indication of when it might come, though it does promise that a future firmware update will bring it to all of its compatible televisions. This is no doubt frustrating, especially for Xbox owners or even PC players who thought about using this television as a monitor.
One last thing to note about OLEDs is that when something is black on screen – like a cave or a hole – it’s black. While this kind of contrast looks exceptional for movies and TV, it’s less great for gaming, especially competitive. While you can adjust the contrast to be less black and choose not to use HDR, it’s still something to consider. Mixed with this TV’s medium-tier brightness, it can be a challenge at times, especially when gaming during the day or in a brightly lit room. It’s possible to completely miss an opponent hiding in a dark corner in Apex Legends because the TV just can’t come out of black and into the gray very easily. For single person adventures, this is less of a big deal.
Sony A80J – Audio Quality
Audio quality of this television is better than many other thin displays on the market, but it’s still not one I would recommend for those who like quality sound. Audio sounds like it is coming directly at you from the screen – because it is: Sony uses a technology that plays sound through the display itself. With certain Sony soundbar systems, the display can even be used as a center channel in a multi-speaker system.
But alone, sound out of the A80J is really lacking on the low end, which makes a lot of audio sound hollow and without depth. So while yes, it’s better than you might find in a lot of other competitive options, I still don’t think it’s something to rely on. Get a sound bar or better yet, a true sound system. A great display like this deserves that kind of quality audio.
Sony A80J – The Competition
Those in the market for the A80J will no doubt be looking at the LG C1 and the Vizio OLED H1. Sony will likely win on pure picture quality against both when displaying low bitrate content because of its superior processing, and the implementation of Google TV is more approachable than LG’s webOS and less buggy than Vizio’s overall experience, even though Smartcast at its core is still pretty great. But folks using these televisions mainly for gaming might not care about these benefits, and I don’t blame them. If you run your entire entertainment system off your PlayStation, for example, the gap in performance between these televisions closes. I can’t speak more highly to Sony’s picture quality than I already have, but it’s going to be up to you to decide if what Sony does better than the competition is worth the slightly premium price the A80J asks of you.