Sony A90J OLED TV Review

The Sony A90J looks similar to other high-end Sony OLEDs but with a newly designed stand that offers more adjustability. With its thin bezels and metal accents, it looks sleek and premium and is sure to make an impression in any living room.

Update 08/09/2023: The brightness of the TV has increased considerably in the 8-month measurements. This TV doesn't seem to have received any firmware updates that would explain this difference, and the settings used are the same as the previous measurements, so we're not sure why it's increased.

The stand can be set up in one of two ways, either with the feet flat, bringing the TV flush against the table, or raised up to give you space for a soundbar. There's also a third configuration where the feet face inward to make a smaller footprint, but it's only available on the 83 inch variant.

Footprint of the stand: 51.1"x12.5" (standard position) or 45.3"x12.5" (soundbar position)

The Sony A90J doesn't have much in the way of cable management except for some paneling that covers a portion of the cables and an included cable tie, but overall it looks fairly clean. The back of the panel itself is metal while the rest is plastic with vertical ridges.

The Sony A90J is quite thin overall and should look great when wall-mounted, although not all of the inputs are side-facing and may be hard to reach.

The build quality of the A90J is superb. It feels incredibly sturdy in either of the stand positions, with no wobble or flex. All in all, it's a very solid-feeling TV, as expected from a high-end model like this.

The Sony A90J has a near-infinite contrast ratio thanks to its OLED panel, which can produce perfect blacks. They look deep and inky, especially in a dark room, ideal for movies.

Update 04/23/2021: We retested the brightness after warming up the TV for 100 hours; it was at 193 hours of uptime when we retested it. Once again, warming up our unit of the A90J doesn't significantly impact the HDR brightness. We also measured the brightness in the 'Vivid' Picture Mode. It reached 777 nits in the Real Scene Highlight and 976 nits in the 10% window. These are our results, using the same settings as originally tested in the 'Custom' Picture Mode:

• Real Scene Highlight: 710 cd/m²
• Peak 2% Window: 804 cd/m²
• Peak 10% Window: 833 cd/m²
• Peak 25% Window: 615 cd/m²
• Peak 50% Window: 326 cd/m²
• Peak 100% Window: 178 cd/m²
• Sustained 2% Window: 771 cd/m²
• Sustained 10% Window: 776 cd/m²
• Sustained 25% Window: 595 cd/m²
• Sustained 50% Window: 324 cd/m²
• Sustained 100% Window: 175 cd/m²

The Sony A90J has decent HDR brightness. It’s better than most OLEDs we’ve tested thus far, although it doesn't come close to the brightest LED TVs like the Samsung QN90A QLED. Still, the overall brightness of scenes is on-target and can bring out most highlights. As with SDR, however, there isn’t much consistency across scenes with different luminance levels. Very large areas of brightness are dimmer. It performs similarly to the LG G1 OLED, which has the new evo panel, but it's not as bright as the LG G2 OLED.

We measured HDR brightness before calibration, using the 'Custom' Picture Mode, with Brightness set to max, Contrast at '90' (by default), Color Temperature set to 'Expert 1', and using the 'Gradation Preferred' setting in the HDR Tone Mapping menu.

In 2021, there’s a new settings menu called HDR Tone Mapping. Our measurements use the 'Gradation Preferred' setting, but it may be helpful to note that while the 'Gradation Preferred' setting results in a more accurate EOTF, the 'Brightness Preferred' setting lets you get a brighter image without having to make too many other adjustments. If you want to see the difference these settings make, you can see the 'Brightness Preferred' EOTF here and the EOTF with HDR Tone Mapping disabled here.

To make HDR brighter, set Advanced Contrast Enhancer to 'High', Peak Brightness to 'High', set Brightness, Contrast, and Gamma to max, and 'Brightness Preferred' in the HDR Tone Mapping menu. These settings result in this EOTF. We should also note that we were able to adjust the settings to achieve a peak HDR brightness measurement of 1291 nits in the 2% window, which is close to the 1300 nits that early reviews claimed. However, the screen got very hot and quickly dropped back down to a lower luminance level, so while the TV is technically capable of hitting an exceptionally high peak brightness for an OLED, realistically speaking, you won’t get that kind of brightness with real content using ideal settings.

Update 04/23/2021: We retested the brightness after warming up the TV for 100 hours; it was at 193 hours of uptime when we retested it. Warming up the TV made the Real Scene Highlight brighter, but it didn't impact the test windows by much. These are our results in the 'Game' Picture Mode with the Brightness Preferred setting enabled:

• Real Scene Highlight: 667 cd/m²
• Peak 2% Window: 804 cd/m²
• Peak 10% Window: 769 cd/m²
• Peak 25% Window: 511 cd/m²
• Peak 50% Window: 293 cd/m²
• Peak 100% Window: 193 cd/m²
• Sustained 2% Window: 763 cd/m²
• Sustained 10% Window: 723 cd/m²
• Sustained 25% Window: 499 cd/m²
• Sustained 50% Window: 293 cd/m²
• Sustained 100% Window: 192 cd/m²

The HDR brightness in 'Game' mode is very similar to the HDR brightness outside of ‘Game’ mode. It’s hard to even tell the difference when switching between the two. That said, the brightness measured slightly less bright than outside of 'Game' mode, especially the real scene brightness. As with SDR, you can set HDR Tone Mapping to 'Brightness Preferred' to get a slightly brighter image, though we expect that this will depend highly on the content.

We took these measurements using the same settings as our regular HDR brightness test, except in the ‘Game’ Picture Mode.

Update 04/23/2021: We retested the brightness after warming up the TV for 100 hours; it was at 193 hours of uptime when we retested it. We also checked the brightness with other Picture Modes. 'Cinema' isn't as bright as 'Custom' because it has a Real Scene Peak Brightness of 248 nits. 'Vivid' is also still brighter as we measured a peak of 780 nits in the 10% window. Overall, it doesn't seem that warming up the A90J has a significant impact on the brightness. These are our results, using the same settings as originally tested in the 'Custom' Picture Mode:

• Real Scene Brightness: 271cd/m²
• Peak 2% Window: 450 cd/m²
• Peak 10% Window: 468 cd/m²
• Peak 25% Window: 466 cd/m²
• Peak 50% Window: 304 cd/m²
• Peak 100% Window: 181 cd/m²
• Sustained 2% Window: 435 cd/m²
• Sustained 10% Window: 448 cd/m²
• Sustained 25% Window: 451 cd/m²
• Sustained 50% Window: 302 cd/m²
• Sustained 100% Window: 179 cd/m²

The Sony A90J has okay SDR brightness. It’s a bit dim in real scenes compared to an LED TV, for instance, and the Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL) causes scenes with large areas of brightness to dim overall, so the brightness isn’t the most consistent across different scenes. It's a bit brighter than the new, smaller sizes of the Sony A90K OLED.

We measured SDR brightness after calibration, using the ‘Custom’ Picture Mode, the ‘Expert 1’ Color Temperature, Peak Luminance set to ‘High’, and Brightness at max.

To get the brightest possible image, you can set the Picture Mode to ‘Vivid’ and keep all of the default settings. We were able to measure 680 nits in the 2% window using these settings, but we don’t recommend it because it may negatively affect picture quality. If you want a high-end TV that gets much brighter, check out the Samsung QN900A 8k QLED.

The Sony A90J has an excellent color gamut. It's wide enough for HDR content and has near-perfect coverage of the commonly used DCI P3 color space. Its coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 is only decent, though.

The color volume is decent. It only really struggles a bit with very bright colors, which aren't as bright as QD-OLED displays, like the Samsung S95B.

The Sony A90J has amazing out-of-the-box color accuracy, though this can vary between units. Colors and white balance are both excellent with few inaccuracies. The color temperature is quite close to our 6500K target, but it’s on the cooler side. Lastly, gamma follows the target very well, with only the brightest scenes appearing a bit brighter than they should.

Update 05/19/2021: We downloaded the Calman for Bravia app to see if it works for calibration. Having the app on the TV itself doesn't do anything and you need Calman downloaded on a PC. Also, only the 2018 version of Calman and newer works. With it, you can access a 20-point calibration and Custom Pro Picture Modes.

After calibration, the Sony A90J has exceptional color accuracy. Any remaining inaccuracies shouldn’t be noticeable to the naked eye, and the color temperature is very close to the target. Gamma is practically perfect. The TV was also very easy to calibrate. You can see our recommended settings here.

The Sony A90J has excellent gray uniformity, but this may vary between units. The screen looks very uniform overall with almost no dirty screen effect, and we didn’t notice any banding or issues in near-dark scenes, although this can occur with more extensive use.

Note: A few owners have reported seeing a grid-like pattern on their TV in uniform scenes. It's usually not noticeable with real content, but this is a manufacturing defect; if you see it on yours, you should exchange it.

Like all OLEDs, the Sony A90J can completely turn off individual pixels to achieve perfect black uniformity.

The Sony A90J has excellent viewing angles, but they're not quite as good as the LG A1. They're wide enough that the image won't look washed out or inaccurate if you watch at an angle.

The Sony A90J has fantastic reflection handling. It diffuses both direct and indirect reflections very well, so glare shouldn’t be an issue, especially in more moderate lighting conditions.

No issues upscaling 480p content like DVDs.

Like all OLEDs, the Sony A90J uses a WRGB sub-pixel layout, where the pixels are never all on at the same time. While this TV is said to be able to brighten all four pixels at once to achieve a higher peak brightness, we never saw all four sub-pixels lit at the same time, even when we recorded 1291 nits. You can see some of the blue sub-pixels lit up in this photo.

The Sony A90J has a near-instantaneous response time, like all OLEDs. For the most part, motion looks smooth with very few artifacts. Nevertheless, you may still notice persistence blur caused by the way our eyes track movement. This is also why our photo is blurry despite the fast response time.

Because it's an OLED, the Sony A90J doesn't have a backlight, but it can still emulate the Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) of LED TVs by turning its pixels on and off. For that reason it isn't flicker-free; the slight dip in brightness that you can see in the chart every 8 ms is due to the TV's 120Hz refresh rate.

The Sony A90J has an optional Black Frame Insertion (BFI) feature, which can help reduce motion blur by inserting black frames into content at regular intervals, typically matched with the frame rate of the content. For a BFI frequency of 120Hz, you should set Motionflow to 'Custom' and set Clearness to '1' or '2'. For 60Hz, set Clearness to '3' (max).

The Sony A90J can interpolate lower frame rate content up to 120fps to make motion look smoother, which is also known as the 'Soap Opera Effect'. It performs fine during slower scenes, but there's a fair number of artifacts in busier scenes or panning shots. To use it, set Cinemotion to 'High' and Smoothness to max.

Due to the TV's fast response time, low frame rate content can appear to stutter since each frame is held on longer. Motion interpolation can help if stutter bothers you.

Update 05/14/2021: We retested the TV to see if there's judder with BFI enabled via a 60p source. With the Clearness setting at 'Max' the BFI flickers at 60Hz and there's judder; setting it to '2' makes the BFI work at 120Hz and reduces the judder, and '1' removes it completely.

Unlike the LG A1 OLED, the Sony A90J can remove judder from all sources. You don't need to enable any additional settings for native 24p content. For 24p content via 60p/i or via native apps, set Cinemotion to 'High' and Motionflow to 'Custom' but leave the sliders at 0.

Update 08/30/2022: With firmware version PKG6.5942.0698NAA released in July 2022, there aren't any issues with 1080p signals using VRR below 120 fps. There were some issues with the screen going black before this firmware version, so if you notice anything, just make sure to update the TV to the latest firmware.

Update 03/04/2022: Sony released an update to include VRR support with firmware PKG6.5660.0668NAA.

The Sony A90J has VRR support after a firmware update, and it works without any issue on the Xbox Series X for a tear-free gaming experience. However, it doesn't support FreeSync at all, and because the Xbox Series X supports both HDMI Forum VRR and FreeSync, it's confirmed that it supports HDMI Forum VRR natively.

It's also G-SYNC compatible, but there are some issues with it. It removes tearing with 4k @ 120Hz signals from the NVIDIA RTX 3060 graphics card, but at first, the screen flickered until the TV and PC were both reset. Still, there wasn't any screen tearing or flicker in Destiny 2 with a 4k @ 120H signal. Despite there being a few issues depending on the signal, VRR reduces screen tearing when it works properly.

Update 03/04/2022: Sony released an update to include VRR support with firmware PKG6.5660.0668NAA. However, like other TVs, we couldn't get proper VRR input lag readings because the TV kept crashing. We experienced the same issue with the Sony X90J and the Sony X85J, and we're looking into it.

Update 07/08/2021: We retested the input lag with the latest firmware, PKG6.3770.0471NAA. The 4k @ 120Hz input lag has increased by about 3ms.

The Sony A90J has a low input lag, although it's slightly higher than competing high-end models and rises significantly outside of 'Game' mode. To get low latency, you can use either the 'Game' or 'Graphics' Picture Mode, though we recommend 'Game' mode to get the lowest latency for gaming.

The Sony A90J supports most common resolutions, including proper 4k @ 120Hz. However, it can't do 1440p @ 120Hz. We also had trouble displaying proper chroma 4:4:4 in 1440p on our test laptop, as text looked blurrier than it should have, but this only occurred on the laptop and not other PCs. Our screen also blacked out when trying to display 4:4:4 at 1440p @ 120Hz on the laptop, so we couldn't confirm if it skips frames or not. For chroma 4:4:4 to work properly, 'Enhanced Format' must be enabled in the HDMI Signal Format menu and Picture Mode set to 'Game' or 'Graphics'. 'Enhanced Format' is also required to achieve full bandwidth signals.

Update 03/04/2022: After a firmware up to version PKG6.5660.0668NAA, the Sony A90J now supports both VRR and ALLM.

The Sony A90J supports most but not all resolutions for the latest gaming consoles since it doesn't support 1440p @ 120Hz. We received comments suggesting that the A90J has more banding issues in HDR at 4k @ 120Hz than in SDR. We retested the TV to check for this. With Destiny 2 on the Xbox Series X, there was a bit more banding in HDR in parts of the sky or the main menu, but you'd have to look for it to notice. On the PS5, we tested with Call of Duty: Cold War, and the visibility of banding depended highly on the map. With some maps, there was noticeable banding in both SDR and HDR, although it was worse in HDR. In others, the banding was more minimal and only noticeable in clouds, for instance, in HDR. With Destiny 2 on the RTX 3070, however, we didn't notice an appreciable difference between SDR and HDR when it comes to banding. It leads us to believe that while there is more banding in HDR than in SDR at 4k @ 120Hz, it's highly dependent on the content.

The Sony A90J supports eARC, which allows the TV to pass high-quality audio formats to an external receiver over HDMI. To use it, enable 'eARC Mode', then set Digital Audio Out to 'Auto 1' and Passthrough to 'Auto'.

Update 07/20/2021: We retested the frequency response and distortion with the feet in the lowered position. The frequency response improved slightly, and there's a lot less distortion.

Update 07/08/2021: We retested the frequency response with the latest firmware, PKG6.3770.0471NAA. The low-frequency extension is a bit lower, resulting in a slightly better overall frequency response, but there's a bit more compression.

Update 05/28/2021: We listened to the speakers again to make sure our testing is correct. With Acoustic Auto Calibration enabled, we listened to a variety of content, including music and movies like Captain America: Civil War and Space Jam. It's nowhere near as good as a dedicated soundbar and there's nothing special about the speakers. If we were to subjectively assign a score, it would be in line with the testing results.

The Sony A90J has a decent frequency response. This is mostly due to its lack of bass. While dialogue should sound okay and the TV gets very loud, there's also a lot of compression at higher volumes, resulting in pumping.

Update 07/20/2021: We retested the frequency response and distortion with the feet in the lowered position. The frequency response improved slightly, and there's a lot less distortion.

Update 07/08/2021: We retested the distortion with the latest firmware, PKG6.3770.0471NAA. The distortion performance is slightly better.

Distortion performance is decent. There isn't much distortion at most volume levels, but it gets quite distorted at max volume.

The Sony A90J runs on Google TV, which replaces Android TV. It's very similar to Android but improves upon it in a couple of ways. For one thing, it's very smooth and fairly easy to navigate, with no bugs or issues. It also streamlines everything by letting you log in to all of your most-used apps from the smart hub, where it then organizes all your content.

Unfortunately, there are ads in the app store and on the home page, which you can't disable. You can opt-out of some suggested content, but you can't get rid of suggested content completely.

The app store has a wide range of apps available to download, and they run smoothly.

Update 05/14/2021: We retested the TV to check if it still works with the Android TV app, even though it now has Google TV. It works perfectly and you get the same features as you did with Android TV, like voice control.

The Sony A90J has a similar remote to other Sony OLEDs like the Sony A9S OLED. It has shortcut buttons to the top streaming apps and YouTube, as well as a dedicated Google Assistant button that activates its voice command feature. You can use voice commands to change inputs, adjust certain settings, search within apps, and more. It can also be used as a universal remote, although it may depend on your country and particular device. The remote also has new, motion-activated backlighting, so you can see the buttons in the dark.

There's a single button on the back of the left side. Press it to move through options and hold it to select.

• Documentation
• Remote control
• 2x AAA batteries
• Cable tie