From The Verge: Sony makes arguably the best OLED TVs that you can buy. They outperform LG’s own OLED sets in picture quality despite the fact that both companies use very similar panels from LG Display. That’s because Sony applies its own image processing to everything that you see on-screen. Even when the company adopts a new display technology, it leans on decades’ worth of TV hardware expertise to fine-tune everything.
And now that Sony’s got a good handle on OLED, it’s time for a new challenge: Mini LED. As part of its 2022 TV lineup, which also features one of the world’s very first QD-OLED TVs, Sony is introducing its first Mini LED LCD TVs. The Z9K series will offer 8K resolution in 75- and 85-inch screen sizes, while the X95K sticks to 4K with 65-, 75-, and 85-inch models.
Like Mini LED TVs from other manufacturers, Sony’s will deliver much more precise local dimming than past models thanks to the backlight LEDs shrinking in size and growing in quantity. This produces improved contrast, higher peak brightness, better display uniformity, and black levels that inch closer to OLED. But even with Mini LED’s many strengths, sometimes you’ll still encounter blooming, which occurs when there’s a visible halo around bright objects (or text) on a dark screen. Sony says it’s put a ton of work into cutting down on blooming with the help of its “XR Backlight Master Drive” algorithms, which dynamically control the backlight to avoid blooming — without affecting brightness of your content.
This year, Sony says it has also worked to enhance the depth of the picture on its TVs, applying different processing to near objects and the background. And all of the premium Sony TVs continue to feature the company’s very impressive Acoustic Multi-Audio speakers, which means you might actually be able to skip a soundbar; the Z9K has an 85-watt audio system, while the X95K comes in slightly lower at 60 watts.
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