4K TV Reviews

Measurements were made using CalMAN measurement software from Portrait Displays (portrait.com), together with a Photo Research PR-650 spectroradiometer, a Klein K10 colorimeter, and a Fresco Six-G test pattern generator from Murideo/AVPro. The Sony XBR-65A8H is compatible with the auto calibration offered by CalMAN, but I chose to calibrate manually.

HD (1080p)/SDR

Full-On/Full-Off Contrast Ratio: unmeasurable

In Custom picture mode, with the Black level control at 50, Brightness at 40 (Max 50), Contrast at 92 (Max 100), Peak luminance at Medium, and Gamma at -2, peak brightness was 57.7 Foot-Lamberts (198 nits) with a 10% full white window. The post-calibration black level was too low to measure with our Klein colorimeter.

With Expert 1 Color temperature setting active, the pre-calibration grayscale Delta E (white balance) values ranged from a minimum of 0.14 at 100% to 1.23 at 60%. These out-of-the-box results were among the best I've ever experienced—perhaps even the best—so no calibration was really needed. But since the accuracy of Sony's processor-derived HDR calibration depends on the accuracy of the SDR calibration, I attempted to make improvements.

(Delta E is a figure of merit indicating how close the color comes to the D65 HD standard at each point in the brightness range. Values below 3—some experts allow for 4—are generally considered visually indistinguishable from ideal.)

The post-calibration results, using only the 10-point adjustments, resulted in a maximum grayscale Delta E of 0.88 at 40% and 60% and a minimum of 0.36 at 90% and 100%.

Before calibration, the color Delta Es varied from a minimum of 0.5 in green to a maximum of 2.18 in red. Post-calibration, the minimum was 0.5 in magenta and the maximum 1.24 in red. With the Gamma control set to -2, the Sony's gamma, both before and after calibration, correctly followed the BT.1886 standard for SDR sources.

The Sony's image lag, taken with a Leo Bodnar meter at 1080p, measured 110 ms in the Custom Picture Mode and 18.2 ms in Game mode.

The Sony passed all of our standard 1080i and 1080p video tests.

Ultra HD/HDR10

Full-On/Full-Off Contrast Ratio: unmeasurable

In Custom HDR Picture Mode with the Black level control at 50, Brightness at Max, Contrast at 92, Gamma at 0, and Peak luminance on High, the measured peak white level was 596.3 nits with a 10% white window and the black level 0.0004 nits. The latter number was the average of eight readings, and low enough to exceed the ability of our test tools to provide reliable measurements.

After calibration (using Sony's auto adaption of the SDR settings to HDR10) the maximum grayscale Delta E was 3.4 at 70% and no higher than 2.2 at any other level. Its maximum color Delta E values at 50% luminance were 3.8 for cyan and 3.4 for green, but below 2.6 for all other colors. The Sony closely followed the HDR PQ curve though with some minor deviations, primarily below 20%.

As with all OLED TVs, peak white output on the 65A8H, most significantly for HDR, varied with how much of the screen was producing a white image. A 2% full white window produced 660 nits, a 10% window 600 nits, a 25% window 420 nits, and a 100% window 140 nits.

Using the 1976 standards, the Sony's color gamut coverage was 74.4% of BT.2020 and 98.15% of P3.