Sony Bravia 8 II Review

Sony spent a generation arguing that processing matters more than panels, and then went and bought a better panel. The Bravia 8 II swaps white OLED for quantum dot and gains a large amount of brightness over both the A95L above it and the Bravia 8 beneath it, and the company's tone mapping turns that headroom into something that looks like a graded film rather than a shop demonstration. Colour accuracy out of the box is as close to reference as consumer television gets, motion is handled with the subtlety nobody else matches, and the speakers that vibrate the panel itself are genuinely good rather than merely acceptable.

The complaints are structural. Only two of the four HDMI inputs run at full bandwidth, which is hard to defend at this price when a cheaper LG gives you four, and there are two sizes only, so anyone with a wall bigger than 65 inches is out of luck. Google TV is capable and slow. Buy it for film, not for a console shelf.