Sony Bravia XR A90J Review

The A90J is the television critics reached for when they needed a reference point. Sony's first XR processor does what Sony processors always do, only better: motion handling no rival matches, upscaling that makes ordinary broadcast look deliberate, and tone mapping that keeps highlight detail where LG and Samsung crush it flat. The panel runs brighter than any OLED before it, and the acoustic surface audio, which vibrates the screen itself so the picture is also the speaker, remains the only built in sound in the category anyone defends.

Google TV drives the whole thing and was, for once, quick. The reasons the grades split are concrete. Only two of the four inputs carry full bandwidth and one of those doubles as the audio return connection, so a console, a PC and a soundbar force a compromise a contemporary LG never asks for, and variable refresh rate was promised at launch and arrived by firmware a long year later.

Price is the other problem, and it is why the value grade sits two steps under the overall: Sony asked roughly a thousand dollars more than LG for a set most buyers cannot tell apart across a lit room. For image quality alone, nothing from 2021 beats it.