The Sony Bravia A80L is a premium OLED TV that boasts a range of Sony’s proprietary image and video processing technologies, enhancing the cinematic experience. This television excels in handling legacy SD content and motion, ensuring amazing performance. Moreover, the HDR10 and Dolby Vision experiences are also mostly impressive, though we noticed that highlights don’t get bright enough to pop. Acoustic Surface Audio+ technology adds realism and further elevates the overall viewing experience.
It is worth noting that the Sony Bravia A80L lacks a colour-accurate Filmmaker mode. Additionally, with numerous technologies dynamically optimizing picture quality, it becomes challenging to determine if the original intent of the content creators is faithfully preserved.
Panel Size: 65-inch (also available in 55, 77 and 83-inch as well)
Panel Type: OLED (WRGB), 100Hz native refresh rate
Panel Resolution: 3840 x 2160 – 4K
Panel Refresh Rate: 120Hz
Supported HDR Formats: HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, Dolby Vision
Speakers: 50W Acoustic Surface Audio+ (3 Actuator + 2 Subwoofer)
Audio formats supported: Dolby Audio, Dolby Atmos, DTS Digital Surround
Software: Google TV
Weight (with stand): Approx. 24.3kgs
HDMI Ports: 4 (2 full bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports – HDMI 3, HDMI 4)
HDMI 2.1 features – 4K@120, eARC, VRR, ALLM
Other connectivity options: 2 USB ports, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 4.2, Ethernet, RF connection input, Headphone out, Digital audio out
Built-in storage: 16GB
Price: MRP: 3,49,990; Best Price: Rs 2,84,990
Sony continues to follow its minimalist design approach, and the A80L is a sleek and stylish TV that also feels solidly built and extremely premium. The aluminium slim-wedged stand of the TV can be mounted in three positions, with each successive angled-in position raising the TV a bit higher. With the feet set straight, the TV can accommodate most conventional soundbars at the front without blocking the display view.
The power cord is detachable and should be easy to replace. All ports are placed toward one side. The HDMI ports are properly spaced, and of these, HDMI 3 and HDMI 4 are full bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports (HDMI 3 supporting eARC). HDMI 1 and HDMI 2 are based on HDMI 2.0. There are two USB-A ports on the rear positioned back to back, so it might be a tad inconvenient if, for some reason, you need to use both simultaneously.
The remote is quite ergonomic and has 6 hotkeys for popular apps. The buttons are sensibly laid out, and we got used to the layout in no time. However, they are not backlit, and we wouldn’t be fussing about this if we hadn’t experienced the luxury with the Sony Bravia A95K.
The Google TV interface on the Sony Bravia A80L ran perfectly smoothly during our testing. The TV further integrates Google Assistant, Chromecast Built-in, Apple AirPlay, and HomeKit, so you will be able to easily cast from all popular mobile devices.
To start with, the Sony Bravia A80L uses the WBE OLED panel (WRGB) sourced from LG displays without any heat sink. While this is a good quality OLED panel supported by Sony’s deft image processing algorithms, it must be mentioned that the panel falls below the QD-OLED panel that Sony uses on the A95K or the latest MLA OLEDs available in this year’s LG G3, both of which can achieve significantly higher brightness.
If this is your first experience with an OLED TV, the Sony Bravia A80L will definitely wow you. The deep blacks, high contrast, wide viewing angles, and fast response times are advantages that make watching good-quality OTT content truly amazing. Sony TVs are also renowned for their expertise in upscaling low-quality content, smoothing gradations, and handling motion in a balanced manner.
The Sony Bravia A80L does not include a Filmmaker mode to accurately reproduce the creator’s intent. The most colour-accurate profile on the TV is Custom, but most people will understandably use Standard, Vivid, and Cinema modes that enhance colours and contrast to make the content look pleasant.
Since the Custom mode is the closest to a colour-accurate profile, that is what we tested using the Spectracal C6 HDR2000 colourimeter and Portrait Display’s Calman Ultimate software. Sony has a number of custom settings enabled by default, and we disabled power-saving and light sensor adjustments before our testing.
In SDR, the greyscale has a significant blue bias, thus impacting white-point accuracy. As you can see, the gamma over tracks the standard in the shadow region, resulting in some compromise in shadow details.
As for colours, the average delta error is below the humanly perceptible value of 3, with the maximum error occurring at 100% white. Skin tones felt natural in both SDR and HDR content.
Also Read: Best Smart TVs in India
The Sony Bravia A80L supports HDR10, Dolby Vision, and HLG. It does not support HDR10+ and Dolby Vision IQ. However, we don’t believe that is a deal breaker. Overall, the nuances of the HDR experience are handled really well.
Dark scenes with some bright objects thrown in are rendered beautifully.
Like all White OLED panels, it struggles in the near-black region. For example, you can notice a lot of artefacts in scenes where a meteor shoots through a grey sky.
The overall peak brightness of the Sony Bravia A80L is on the conservative side, which is at times noticeable in less-than-dazzling highlights in bright HDR scenes.
We measured a peak brightness of 1080 Nits on a 1 per cent window using our lux meter in the vivid mode. In the custom mode, we measured around 700 nits on a 10% window measured and full field brightness measured 140 nits. This is better performance than last year’s Sony Bravia A80K.
As seen in the chart above, greyscale in HDR content is still skewed toward blue. The Sony Bravia A80L accurately tracks the EOTF curve in HDR content, although it slightly undertracks the reference in dark scenes.
Colours in HDR are once again quite accurate, with maximum error at the white point. We measured an average delta error of 3 which means that the colour inaccuracies will not be easily discernible to users.
As for colour coverage, we recorded 72.04% of BT2020 colour space in the XY terms and 73.67% in the UV term, which is again standard for the White OLED panels.
With fast response time, fluid motion and VRR support, Sony Bravia A80L is quite good for gaming. The TV has two HDMI 2.1 ports, supports ALLM, and 120Hz VRR (NVIDIA G-Sync, AMD FreeSync Premium). Dolby Vision gaming is capped at 4K@60Hz. It also has a dedicated game mode where you can pull up a game bar to quickly enable or disable VRR and access a few other settings.
High-end TVs from Samsung and LG come with some additional perks like 4 HDMI 2.1 ports and HGiG mode for accurate tone mapping in game mode.
Sony Bravia A80L uses Acoustic Surface Audio+ technology where the screen becomes the speaker and this adds a lot of realism to the experience. The 50W audio system includes three 10W actuators and two 10W sub-woofers.
This is certainly one of the best TV audio systems that we have experienced so far. Movie dialogues are crisp and clear, while the soundstage feels impressively expansive, occasionally simulating convincing surround sound effects. Additionally, the TV offers an auto-calibration option that employs a microphone in the remote control to gather data and optimize audio settings based on your typical viewing distance.
The Sony Bravia A80L is a premium OLED TV that boasts a range of Sony’s proprietary image and video processing technologies, enhancing the cinematic experience. This television excels in handling legacy SD content and motion, ensuring amazing performance. Moreover, the HDR10 and Dolby Vision experiences are also mostly stunning, though we noticed that highlights don’t get bright enough to pop. Acoustic Surface Audio+ technology adds realism and further elevates the overall viewing experience.
It is worth noting that the Sony Bravia A80L lacks a colour-accurate Filmmaker mode. Additionally, with numerous technologies dynamically optimizing picture quality, it becomes challenging to determine if the original intent of the content creators is faithfully preserved.
The Sony A80L lies in the middle of the stack and costs a premium, but it justifies its price for cinema buffs who watch a lot of legacy content and for users who like how Sony handles and enhances content. Its main competitor, the LG C3, is a similarly priced OLED TV and might have a stronger appeal to gamers. When considering other OLED options, both the LG G3 and the Sony A95K are expensive but offer a brighter OLED panel. However, if you’re looking for a more affordable OLED option, last year’s Sony A80K provides a comparable experience and is currently available at a better value price.