Back in March of this year, Sony invited a ton of media to Los Angeles to the Sony Pictures Lot, where we were able to go on a tour of the lot, and also see Sony’s new TVs and soundbars on display. It was a pretty interesting 3-day event, and the one thing that Sony was driving home during this event was the new TVs and soundbars that were bringing “Cinema Home”. Typically brands have their own message that they want to get out during events like this, but that doesn’t always translate to when you get to spend some meaningful time with the product. That’s not the case with Sony.
After spending almost a month with the Sony Bravia 8, I can assure you that Sony has indeed brought Cinema Home.
The Bravia 8 is the only OLED model in Sony’s new lineup, and it’s just a hair below its flagship that is the Bravia 9. The Bravia 8 comes in 55-, 65- and 77-inch models starting at $1,799. The model that we have here is the 65-inch option, which is likely going to be the most popular model of the three.
OLED (Organic Light-emitting Diode) TVs are some of the best-looking TVs on the market. However, they tend to have a few drawbacks. The two major ones are brightness and burn-in. These days, burn-in isn’t that big of a deal. Though you might still be able to notice it at airports and doctors’ offices where they are playing CNN all day. But at home, you likely won’t see it. Screen brightness can be a bit of a problem, though. The Bravia 8 has over 8 million self-lit pixels that are able to provide pure black with high brightness.
This also explains why OLED TVs are typically pretty pricey. Some of the biggest competitors to the Bravia 8 include the LG Evo G4 OLED, which is priced at $3,399 for the 65-inch model, which makes Sony’s option a really good price. Before we start this review, keep in mind that Sony’s main objective with its TVs is to make its own movies and TV shows look great. They aren’t looking to be the brightest or most color-accurate but to make their content look the way the director intended. Hence the “Bringing Cinema Home” slogan for 2024.
Sony Bravia 8 Design: Slim, Sleek and blends in
The design of a TV matters. Both the front and the back. On the front, Sony has some super slim bezels, and when watching some darker content like Ruthless, the bezels blend right in with the content. Which says more about the color reproduction here than the actual bezels. But it does look amazing.
The bottom bezel is a bit thicker, which, to be honest, I don’t mind at all. The reason for it being thicker is because of the infrared sensor and far-field microphone used to turn the TV on and off as well as Google Assistant.
On the back, Sony is using a checkerboard-like pattern, which is cool and all, but what I like the most is that there are panels to hide the cords. Giving you a pretty minimal design here for your living room. Sony also has two options for the legs, depending on If you are placing a soundbar right in front of it or not. If you put it at the lowest setting and then put the Bravia Bar 8 in front of it, it’ll affect the power signal. Making it impossible to turn the TV on or off. I found this out the hard way and had to adjust the feet. So I could keep the Bravia Bar 8 below the TV.
Unlike some TVs, where they keep all of the processing power and other internals in the bottom half, and makes the top half as thin as possible, Sony has kept the same thinness across the entire back panel. While it’s thicker than some other TVs, it’s still pretty thin. Hitting a max thickness of 1.4 inches in the center. That means it can still be mounted quite nicely, without any issues. Since I live in an apartment, I opted not to mount my Bravia 8.
Speaking of mounting, all of the ports are recessed on the side, so they are still reachable while the TV is mounted. For the ports, there are four HDMI ports (two of which are HDMI 2.1 and one is HDMI eARC), there’s a LAN port for wired internet, two USB-A ports (one is USB 3.0), along with an optical and coaxial port for those that haven’t cut the cord just yet. For me, I’v really only used two of these HDMI ports, since I’m only plugging in the Bravia Bar 8 and the PlayStation 5.
The Remote is actually good
This might sound like sarcasm, but the remote that is included with the Sony Bravia 8 is actually pretty good. It’s the typical skinny, rectangular design, but it does have black plastic with blue speckles, which is different. This is made from recycled material, and because its using Sorplas, it means that no remote is going to look the exact same.
The remote is easy to use, with all of the buttons you’d expect. Even a dedicated button for Live TV listings. As someone that uses YouTube TV and Fast Channels like Tubi TV and Pluto TV, this is really useful. There is a button for the Google Assistant front-and-enter too, because of course this is running on Google TV. And then there are the six dedicated-app buttons at the bottom. While I’d like to have these customizable, Sony picked some good ones here. Since I use 5 of the 6 buttons here. These include Sony Pictures Core (more on that later), Netflix, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video, Crunchyroll and YouTube.
This TV and remote uses IR only to turn the TV on and off. Otherwise, it just needs to be pointed in that general direction to work. This means that the Bravia 8 is not simply sitting in standby the entire time you’re not using it, but it’s actually turned off. That makes sense, given all of the talk Sony has about making their TVs more eco-friendly and keeping your electricity bill down.
Speaking of the eco-friendliness of these new TVs from Sony, there is also a set of eco modes available. By default it is set to “Low” which does dim the display a bit. I’ve set it to off, and you can see the results of that in the eco-dashboard above. Keep in mind, especially for the Bravia 8, that OLED TVs are typically darker than Mini LED models like the Bravia 7 and Bravia 9. So you likely won’t want to keep the eco-mode on High; Low would likely be okay in most rooms that don’t have a ton of natural light, however.
This TV does use drastically less power than my Amazon Omni Series does, which was in this exact place before receiving the Bravia 8. That’s rather impressive, considering this is a much more powerful TV. It’s good to see Sony looking to keep the environment in mind while also providing some stellar picture quality. Not only that, it allows the user to control how eco-friendly they want to be. And in the end, it will help save the user money on their electric bill, which is already sky high for no reason.
Sony Bravia 8 Software: Google TV doesn’t lag, nor slow down
I’ve used my fair share of Google TV and Android TV products over the years, and one thing I’ve always complained about was how slow the software was, especially after a couple of months of use. The Chromecast with Google TV is unbearably slow, and so is Android TV built into a TV. The main reason for this? Inferior hardware. While TV makers use top-end processors for the actual TV and picture quality, they save very little computing power, RAM, and Storage for the actual software.
That was one of the main questions I had for Sony at their launch event. Is Google TV responsive and fast on these new Bravia TV units? Sony said it was, and I can saw after using the Bravia 8 for right about a month, it’s still far faster than pretty much any other platform I have – besides Apple TV, but that hardware is kinda overkill.
This is by far my favorite feature of this TV, and I know that probably sounds stupid, but having to wait 5 minutes from turning the TV on to actually opening an app – like I often have to do with Amazon’s Fire TV and Chromecast with Google TV – is absurd. With the Bravia 8, that is down to seconds, and not minutes.
Browsing through the OS is as simple as you’d expect, and fluid. Sony has also included a good amount of storage here. There’s 32GB of storage available, which solves another issue with Google TV, thankfully. I’ve installed plenty of apps, and still have about half the storage available, which is really good. Since a lot of apps will store Cache and take up additional space.
Of course, with this being Google TV, that means that you’re getting access to thousands of apps and all of your favorite streaming services. Including Netflix, YouTube, YouTube TV, Hulu, MAX, Discovery Plus, Disney Plus, ESPN Plus, and much more. There’s also support for Google Assistant and Google Cast.
The cool thing with this TV is that it is not always-listening. Instead, you press the microphone button on the remote to talk to the Google Assistant. Sony does also have AirPlay 2 included, allowing you to use both ecosystems with this TV.
Sony Pictures Core
Sony Pictures Core is built into Google TV on the Bravia 8. This is Sony’s own streaming app for its own movies – don’t forget, Sony does own a movie studio. It’s a really good idea by Sony, though I do wish it was available on more than just Sony TVs and PlayStation. Every Bravia 8 buyer will get five credits to buy five movies on Sony Pictures Core, there are also a number of movies available to stream without using credits.
This app does support Dolby Atmos as well as IMAX Enhanced, and watching an IMAX Enhanced movie on this TV is simply breathtaking.
Sony Bravia 8 Picture Quality: One of the best on the market
Here at AndroidHeadlines, we don’t get the opportunity to review every single TV that hits the markets. So we don’t have any benchmarks we can run and compare to the competition. But PCMag has done some testing here for peak brightness, which shows that the Sony Bravia 8 is not the best. And I can believe that from my experience. In their testing, the Bravia 8 hit a peak brightness of 587 nits, whereas the LG Evo G4 OLED hit 1,103 and the Samsung S95D OLED hit 1,060. So that’s about half as bright as the competition.
I have to say, the very first thing I noticed after setting up the Bravia 8 was the brightness. You see, the Bravia 8 is sitting in my living room, next to a sliding door which has a ton of natural light coming in. So the lack of brightness is very noticeable. However, that is really the complaint I have when it comes to the picture quality here.
I’ve kept the picture mode on Vivid for most of the time, as I found that to be the best picture mode no matter what I’m watching. However, when I start watching a movie, I’d switch over to the Cinema, as movies like Bad Boys For Life look great in that mode. However, cinema mode drastically drops the peak brightness.
The black levels are unreal on this OLED TV, of course that should come as no surprise. The colors are also pretty accurate here, in both SDR and HDR content.
Is it the best OLED TV on the market? Not necessarily. Despite Sony’s typically higher prices, the Bravia 8 is still cheaper than the competition which performed better – LG Evo G4 and Samsung S95D – which makes me think that this is a pretty good compromise if you’re not looking to spend $3K on an OLED.
Sony Bravia 8 Gaming Performance: Good, could be better
Since Sony does make this TV, and also makes the PlayStation 5, you’d expect gaming performance to be good, right? Well it is. But it could also be better. One area where the Bravia 8 falls apart is in input lag. The Bravia 8 is measured at about 4.6ms, while other OLED TVs are below 1ms. Anything under 10ms is considered good for gaming, but Sony could do better here.
As you’d expect from Sony, this TV is capable of variable refresh rate (VRR), and it can also do 4K120 gameplay on the PlayStation 5, which I have to say, looks absolutely amazing. I’ve played quite a bit of CFB25 and Rocket League here on this TV through my PlayStation 5, and I have to say it’s a major upgrade from my Amazon Omni QLED Fire TV that I was using before.
Important to note that the Bravia 8 does lack AMD FreeSync and NVIDIA G-Sync certification for gaming.
Sony Bravia 8 Sound: Good, but a soundbar is better
Typically, with TVs, companies will make sound an after-thought. Everyone is trying to make their TVs as thin as possible, and typically sound takes a hit with that move. But, Sony has done the opposite.
Sony is using actuators behind the screen that vibrate and turn into a speaker that is able to deliver clear and immersive sound from he center with the same sound structure as a cinema. It also has new tweeters that bring out the surround feel the provide a cinema-like experience. Sony is also using Acoustic Surface Audio Plus with its new tweeter, which turns every part of the screen into a powerful speaker that emits sound from exactly the right place in the scene.
Without the Bravia Bar 8, it does sound pretty good. It has crystal clear mids and highs, though the bass does lack a bit. If you are looking to add some good bass to your Bravia 8, you will definitely want the Bravia Bar 8. The wireless sub will add more, but I don’t think it’s 100% necessary for some decent bass.
Should you buy the Bravia 8?
The question to buy the Bravia 8 or not is a bit of a tough one. On the one hand, it’s an amazing TV, but on the other it’s an expensive mid-range TV. What has sold me on this TV is the movie-watching experience with Sony Pictures Core, as well as other streaming apps. It’s not just the picture quality but also the sound from the built-in speakers on the Bravia 8. It really makes you feel like you are in a theater watching a movie.
If you want the absolute best OLED picture, then the Bravia 8 isn’t the best option for you. You’d want to check out the LG Evo G4 or the Samsung S95D. But if you want one of the best movie-watching TVs, then the Sony Bravia 8 is a good option, and it’s currently discounted by up to $500, making it an easier pill to swallow. Of course, there are also QLED TVs on the market that are cheaper, have similar picture quality, and are much brighter.
One thing to keep in mind before making your buying decision is, Sony is making their TVs for their movies and TV shows to look good on. They are not looking to be the absolute brightest, best picture quality, and best sound, but to make their own content look the best. Obviously, they want their own content to look good on their own TVs. And this is something that is exclusive to Sony, as no other TV maker has their own movie studio (or record label).