Sony Bravia 9 TV - Review
Sony Bravia 9 Mini LED TV - Tom's Guide's first impressions on the performance and features. It's the brand's brightest 4K TV ever with an ambitious new backlight driver that other TV makers might have a hard time figuring out how to beat.
Transcript
00:00I'm here with one of your first looks at the Sony Bravia 9 Mini LED TV that's brand new for 2024.
00:06Let's go check it out.
00:07Obviously, this is what you're going to see if you get this TV in your home.
00:11But Sony peeled back some of the filters for us to see what the backlight is really doing behind the screen
00:16and what those major improvements are for this year.
00:19In some ways, Sony's previous-gen Mini LED TVs didn't seem to have the same finesse as some of the brand's other TVs.
00:26It didn't give Samsung's Neo QLED-branded Mini LED TV a real run for its money.
00:31But the Bravia 9 looks to shake things up.
00:34That's all thanks to a new backlight driver developed by Sony's microprocessor division
00:38that the company says is the world's smallest Mini LED driver to date.
00:43By decreasing the size of the Mini LEDs, Sony can increase the number of LEDs and number of local dimming zones,
00:49resulting in 320% more zones than the previous-gen X95L.
00:54We're looking at a beautiful static screen here, but I did get to check out some demo footage.
00:59And in that footage, I think the biggest impact was the spectrum of brightness.
01:03So you get those bright spots and those dark spots.
01:05And in those, because of the control over the driver, you can see a bit more definition.
01:09I would say it has an especially visible impact in bright, bright spots of the scene.
01:14They just look a little bit punchier without causing so much blooming.
01:17The biggest thing you need to know about the Bravia 9 is that Sony is saying it's its brightest 4K TV yet.
01:23We'll have to do our own testing to see if that's true,
01:26but Sony says that the TV is up to 50% brighter than the previous-gen version,
01:31and that there are three times the number of local dimming zones.
01:35So we got some clever cable management going on back here.
01:38The HDMI inputs are back here, but Sony has created this removable panel that conceals them.
01:44That way, the cords are feeding down here.
01:46It just makes for a much cleaner look at the back of the TV.
01:49That would be especially nice if, say, you have your TV set up somewhere where you might have a little bit of space behind it,
01:55or simply if you're wall-mounting it and just need the cords to feed to a convenient location.
02:00Otherwise, in the sound department, the Bravia 9 has features like 3D surround upscaling,
02:05as well as Acoustic Center Sync with a compatible Sony soundbar, and Voice Zoom 3.
02:11Whoa, okay, we're changing to a nighttime scene here.
02:14And the reason that's possible is because we're on Sony's PXO stage.
02:18That's basically made of the company's CLED screens.
02:23It's a custom creation that's made for movie sets.
02:26It's supposed to set up actors in 3D environments.
02:29It's been used for projects like Game of Thrones, Star Trek.
02:34But now, in this space, we're just getting to see what our TV might look like at home.
02:38Now, imagine if you can go to the store with a picture of your living room,
02:41and actually have them put this up this way so you can see what your TV and entertainment setup would look like.
02:47I don't know. Idea right there.
02:50A lot remains to be seen with the Sony Bravia 9, but we'll find out more once we get it in our lab.
02:55Let me know if you think this looks like it'll be one of the most exciting TVs of the year in the comments section of this video.
03:01Otherwise, you can see what we're doing on social everywhere at Tom's Guide.
03:05And as always, I'm at Kate Kozich.
03:07Thanks for watching. I'll catch you next time.
03:11Transcribed by https://otter.ai