Sony X90K TV Review

The Sony X90K has a simple design with thin bezels and black plastic on the back. The metal feet are flat and sit flush on the table.

The Sony X90K has metal feet as the stand, and there are two positions you can put it in. The short position makes the TV sit very close to the table, but you can also raise the feet to place a soundbar in front without blocking the screen. The stand supports the screen well with minimal wobble, even in the raised position.

Footprint of the 65-inch TV: 46.3" x 13".

• Height to the bottom of the screen in lower position: 1.54" (3.9 cm)
• Height to the bottom of the screen in raised position: 3.31" (8.4 cm)

The North American variant has these two stand configurations, but you can also adjust the stand to a narrow position on the Sony X90K, X93K, and X94K models in Europe.

The back of the Sony X90K features textured plastic with some aluminum in the center. The inputs are set into the TV, so they're a bit hard to reach with the TV wall-mounted. Sadly, it doesn't feature any cable management.

The Sony X90K is thick, but it still sits flush against the wall when you mount it because nothing sticks out.

The Sony X90K has good build quality. It's well-put-together and there aren't any obvious issues with it. The bezels are uniformly attached to the screen and the feet hold the TV well. There's some flex on the back panel near the inputs, which isn't much of an issue, and the rest of the back panel doesn't flex as much.

The panel has two dark spots that you can see in the Gray Uniformity photo, which is likely caused by pressure during assembly.

The Sony X90K has an excellent contrast ratio. It displays deep blacks in dark rooms, and the full-array local dimming feature helps further deepen those blacks.

The Sony X90K has decent blooming handling. Due to the relatively large size of each zone, bright highlights create a large zone of blooming around them, especially since the TV seems to be averaging out bright highlights across more zones than necessary to reduce the harshness of the blooming. The amount of blooming also varies considerably depending on the content; you can see a few examples below:

Unfortunately, zone transitions are easily noticeable on this TV. There's a noticeable flicker as bright highlights move across the screen and zones turn on, especially with fast-moving content. It can't keep up with really fast content, either, resulting in a trailing halo behind bright objects, and the leading edge is darker. If you're sensitive to lighting zone transitions, check out the Samsung QN85C/QN85CD QLED, which is much better in this regard. The replacement model to this TV, the Sony X90L/X90CL, has more dimming zones, and the zone transitions are less noticeable.

The local dimming in Game Mode is good, and looks the same as outside of Game Mode.

The Sony X90K has just okay HDR peak brightness. Small highlights pop for a satisfying HDR experience, and even large areas are still bright. Sadly, the peak brightness of test slides doesn't translate well to real content, which appears much darker than it should be. The replacement model to this TV, the Sony X90L/X90CL, gets significantly brighter in HDR, allowing it to display a more impactful image.

These results are from the 'Custom' HDR Picture Mode with the Brightness at its max, Contrast at '90', Color Temperature set to 'Expert 2', Auto Local Dimming and Peak Luminance on 'High', and HDR Tone Mapping set to 'Gradation Preferred'.

The 'Cinema' and 'IMAX Enhanced' modes deliver a brighter image on average than 'Custom', but the peak luminosity isn't much different, and they're less accurate. As for the 'Brightness Preferred' setting, it helps make the screen brighter, but there's a sharper roll-off at the peak brightness resulting in a loss of fine bright details.

The HDR Brightness in Game Mode is great, and it's about the same as in the 'Custom' Picture Mode. Visually there isn't much difference between the modes. The results are the same as the regular HDR Brightness test but in the 'Game' Picture Mode.

The EOTF follows the target curve well, meaning that most content is displayed at the correct brightness level in HDR. There's no black crush, and the TV rolls off gradually as it approaches its peak brightness, so fine details in bright highlights are preserved.

The Sony X90K has excellent SDR peak brightness. It easily gets bright enough to fight glare, even with large areas of bright colors, like on a webpage or sports.

These results are from the 'Custom' Picture Mode after calibration with the Brightness at its max, Contrast on its default of '90', Color Temperature set to 'Expert 1', and Auto Local Dimming and Peak Luminance on 'High'.

If you don't care much about image accuracy and want the brightest image possible, use the 'Vivid' Picture Mode with Color Temperature set to 'Expert 2', the Brightness, Contrast, and Gamma at their max, and the Advanced Contrast Enhancer, Auto Local Dimming, and Peak Luminance on 'High'. This results in a peak brightness of 1,060 cd/m² with a 10% window, which is a bit brighter than the regular settings, but also results in a less accurate image.

The Sony X90K has a great color gamut. It has fantastic coverage of the DCI-P3 color space used in most HDR content, but although it has decent coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space, it's not exactly future-proof as more content will start to use that color space. Tone mapping is good with both color spaces. However, it struggles with some saturated greens in the Rec. 2020 color space.

The Sony X90K has great color volume. It displays most bright colors well, but some colors like red and blue aren't as bright. It also displays dark colors well, but it's limited by its incomplete color gamut.

The Sony X90K has decent out-of-the-box accuracy. Most colors are accurate enough that you won't see any issues, but the color temperature is a bit cold, giving the image a blue tint. Also, the white balance is off, particularly with shades closer to pure white. Luckily, gamma follows the 2.2 target well, so scenes appear at their correct brightness.

The Sony X90K has incredible accuracy after calibration. There are virtually no noticeable inaccuracies with the white balance, gamma, and color temperature. It still struggles displaying saturated blues, but that's typical of LCD panels.

You can see our recommended settings here.

The Sony X90K has okay gray uniformity. There's a bit of vignetting in the corners, and the center has dirty screen effect that could get distracting during sports. There are two visible spots that you can see in the 50% gray photo, but they're not visible with gray slides above 70% and below 30%. They're not noticeable with most real content, but they're still visible with some content that has large areas of uniform color. However, this issue is likely caused by pressure during assembly, and it's unlikely that every unit has it.

The Sony X90K has decent black uniformity. The screen looks blue without the local dimming feature enabled, and although the local dimming helps deepen the blacks, there's also blooming around bright objects.

The Sony X90K has a narrow viewing angle, meaning it's not a good choice for wide seating areas because you'll see a washed-out image from the sides.

The Sony X90K has decent reflection handling. It's fine if you have some lights around, and it gets bright enough to fight some glare, but avoid using it opposite a bright window because the reflections are distracting.

This TV has excellent gradient handling in HDR. There's some noticeable banding in bright shades of green, but everything else looks great.

The processing features of this TV are impressive, and low-quality content looks great. It's excellent at smoothing out macro-blocking and pixelization, and there's very little loss of fine details.

The Sony X90K does a superb job upscaling low-resolution or low-bitrate content, like DVDs or cable TV channels. The image is sharp and easy to read, and fine details are easy to make out.

The optimal settings for a sharp image on this TV are as follows:

• Sharpness: 60
• Reality Creation: 20

The Sony X90K uses a BGR subpixel layout. It doesn't affect picture quality, but can cause blurry text in some applications when using it as a PC monitor. You can read more about it here.

The Sony X90K has a great response time. There isn't much motion blur behind fast-moving objects, but because it has overshoot with darker transitions, you'll see some inverse ghosting with some fast-moving dark objects.

The Sony X90K uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight at all brightness levels, but it's so high that you likely won't notice it.

The Sony X90K has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion. It's meant to flicker at 120Hz, which causes image duplication, but it has a strange pattern to match the standard 720Hz flicker of the backlight. It doesn't flicker at 60 fps for 60Hz content, which also causes image duplications. Like many displays, the BFI feature doesn't work at the same time as the VRR support.

The Sony X90K can interpolate lower-frame-rate content up to 120 fps. It works well with slow scenes, but like most TVs, it struggles to keep up in busier scenes. It doesn't stop interpolating with busy scenes, meaning there are artifacts throughout the screen.

Due to the relatively quick response time of the Sony X90K, some lower-frame-rate content stutters because each frame is held on longer. Enabling the motion interpolation feature can help with this.

The Sony X90K removes 24p judder from any source, which helps with the appearance of motion, particularly with movies.

The Sony X90K supports variable refresh rate technology to reduce screen tearing. HDMI Forum VRR and G-SYNC compatibility work over the entire refresh rate range, and it supports Low Framerate Compensation to continue working with low frame rates. VRR works with 1440p @ 60Hz signals, but the TV is upscaling 1440p to 4k, so it's not a real 1440p signal, which is why we left the 1440p VRR range as Unknown.

The Sony X90K has low input lag in Game Mode for a responsive feel. You can enable the motion interpolation in Game Mode, but it also increases the input lag too much for gaming.

The Sony X90K supports most common signals up to 4k @ 120Hz. Unlike some older Sony TVs, this TV doesn't have any resolution halving issues with 4k @ 120Hz signals, so it displays it perfectly. It displays proper chroma 4:4:4 with 1080p and 4k signals up to 120Hz, which is important for clear text when using it as a PC monitor, but it doesn't with 1440p @ 60Hz signals. Sadly, it doesn't display any 1440p @ 120Hz signal as the screen turns off.

The Sony X90K supports common signals from the PS5 and Xbox Series X without many problems. It has an Auto Low Latency Mode that automatically switches the TV into Game Mode when you launch a game from a compatible device. On the Xbox, Dolby Vision is limited to 4k @ 60Hz so you either get that or 4k @ 120Hz without Dolby Vision, depending on the HDMI Signal Format you choose.

The Sony X90K supports full bandwidth HDMI 2.1 of 48 Gbps, as you can see here. However, because HDMI 3 is an HDMI 2.1 and eARC port, you lose an HDMI 2.1 slot if you connect a receiver, so you can't connect multiple HDMI 2.1 devices unless the receiver supports it. The TV also supports ATSC 3.0, allowing you to stream over-the-air 4k channels.

The Sony X90K doesn't have an Analog Audio Output, so you can't connect your headphones or basic speakers that use an analog connection. However, you can connect your sound system to the TV with the port label S-Center Speaker In and use the TV's speaker as a center speaker.

The Sony X90K supports eARC, allowing you to pass high-quality, uncompressed audio to a compatible receiver through an HDMI cable.

The Sony X90K has a decent frequency response. It gets loud with a well-balanced sound profile, which is important for listening to dialogue. However, it doesn't produce much bass, so get a soundbar or a dedicated surround sound setup for the best sound possible. The 75 and 85 inch models have different speakers, so they perform a bit differently.

The distortion handling is decent. There's minimal distortion at moderate listening levels, but it gets more noticeable at the max volume.

The Sony X90K comes with the user-friendly Google TV smart platform, which runs smoothly without any noticeable bugs.

There are ads and suggested content on the home screen and in the Google Play Store. You can opt-out of personalized ads, but that just means you'll get non-targeted ads instead.

The Google Play Store has tons of apps available, and they run very smoothly. It has Google Chromecast built-in, meaning you can cast content from your phone. You can also connect the Bravia webcam for video calls.

The Sony X90K comes with the redesigned Sony remote for 2022 that doesn't have a numpad. Instead, the '123' button brings up a virtual numpad on the screen. It has shortcut buttons to popular streaming services and has a built-in mic for voice control, and you can ask it to change inputs, change certain settings, and search for content. The TV also has a mic built-in for hands-free voice control.

There's a single button underneath the center of the TV to turn it On/Off, change channels, adjust the volume, or switch inputs. The switch next to it is to turn off the mic on the TV if you're concerned about privacy.

• Remote control
• 2x AAA batteries
• Power cord
• 4x VESA mount adapters
• User guides