Sony Bravia 8 review: high-end performance without the price

Sony Bravia 8: Two-minute review

Sony consolidated its TV lineup for 2024 with fewer models and a naming convention that was easier to follow. Perhaps what was most interesting about this move was that a mini-LED TV – the Bravia 9 – was spearheading the charge as the new flagship Sony TV, effectively demoting OLED to the next rung down. Enter the Bravia 8, a pure WOLED screen that replaces the excellent A80L. 

If you want the absolute pinnacle of Sony’s OLED prowess, the A95L released in 2023 is still available to buy, complete with its much higher price tag. But you may not feel the need to stretch that high, since the Bravia 8 (on review here) takes the A80L's winning formula and makes a few notable improvements.

Sony claims this latest mid-range OLED model is brighter than its predecessor, yet manages to do without some of the brightness-boosting tech we’ve seen applied to other OLED TVs in the past couple of years. Instead, the Bravia 8 relies on Sony’s new Bravia XR processor to do the proverbial heavy lifting and stake a claim as one of the best OLED TVs you can buy.

This processor harnesses the power of AI to better understand the image on screen and make adjustments to ensure it’s delivered at its absolute best. And it does (for the most part) improve over the A80L where brightness is concerned to deliver a gorgeous picture no matter if you’re watching TV or movies, or playing games.

Sony’s Acoustic Surface+ audio system makes a return, maintaining the brand’s position as being one of the best TVs for sound thanks to actuators placed behind the screen to physically vibrate it – a feature that’s exclusive to Sony TVs. It means the Bravia 8 can go loud, is dynamically impressive and is capable of placing objects within a soundfield better than many other flat-screen TVs. When connected to one of Sony’s latest Bravia Theater soundbars – the Theater Bar 8 is a natural pairing – an Acoustic Center Sync feature can be used to turn the TV into a dedicated center channel speaker.

The Bravia 8 is a great option for gamers thanks to its support of all the major gaming features, including 4K support at 120Hz, an auto low-latency mode (ALLM), variable refresh rate (VRR) and Sony’s ‘Perfect for PS5’ tech that automatically adjusts picture settings to their optimum – for both games and movies – when a PlayStation 5 console is detected in either of its two HDMI 2.1 inputs. Yep, the Bravia 8 still only supports 4K/120Hz across two of its four HDMI inputs and you’ll need to use the one marked ‘eARC’ if you plan to connect an external soundbar. Sony isn’t alone in offering support across only half of its TV’s inputs, but it’s a shame that it’s still happening in 2024.

The main caveat at the time of writing, however, is that in some territories the A80L is still readily available and for a more affordable price. While there’s no doubt the Bravia 8 makes improvements over its predecessor, some customers either won’t notice, or won’t care for the admittedly incremental upgrades. The Bravia 8 is indeed Sony’s best mid-range OLED, but it’s not quite the generational leap we’ve seen between some other TV series – see the improvements Samsung makes each year with its S95 QD-OLED series as an example.

Sony Bravia 8 review: Price and release date

• Announced in April 2024 for July 2024 launch
• Pricing starts at $2,799 / £2,699 / AU$3,495 (55-inch)
• No 83-inch model in 2024

The Sony Bravia 8 was announced in April 2024 and released in July 2024 in 55-, 65- and 77-inch sizes. The A80L predecessor was available in a larger 83-inch size, but that has seemingly been dropped this time around.

Pricing has remained relatively consistent compared to the A80L, with the 65-inch model I’ve reviewed setting you back $2,799 / £2,699 / AU$4,495. That’s $200 / £200 more expensive than the A80L in the US and UK and the same as the A80L’s launch price in Australia. Since launch, we’ve already seen small price drops in all markets, so it’s unlikely you would need to pay the full suggested retail price if you decide to buy.

The 55-inch Bravia 8 has been priced at $2,799 / £2,699 / AU$3,495 while the range-topping 77-inch retails for $3,899 / £3,499 / AU$6,995. The Sony Bravia 8’s pricing once again puts it squarely up against the LG C4 (the A80L and LG C3 were similarly priced in 2023) and in most cases, LG’s mid-range OLED comes out the more affordable, and it’s available in a greater variety of sizes.

LG’s telly offers full 4K/120Hz support across all four HDMI inputs, making it a better prospect for gamers and those with multiple external devices, but as was the case in 2023, LG’s TV has weaker built-in sound.

Sony Bravia 8 review: Specs

Sony Bravia 8 review: Benchmark results

Sony Bravia 8 review: Features

• New Bravia XR processor
• Voice Zoom 3 for improved vocal clarity
• New eco-friendly remote control

The Sony Bravia 8 uses a standard WOLED panel as found in its A80L predecessor, but the key metric Sony is keen to advertise with the Bravia 8 is that it's capable of going 10% brighter, thanks to the aforementioned XR Processor. There’s no Micro Lens Array (MLA) or QD-OLED tech to be found here, so it is strictly the power of the new chip and its ability to better understand how to manipulate lighting that is going to result in that brightness boost.

Indeed, Sony says its new XR chip can better detect objects in scenes with greater accuracy and will then automatically optimize the picture to get as close to the creator’s intentions as possible. Also new in the Bravia 8 is a dedicated Prime Video Calibrated Mode (also a feature of the flagship Bravia 9) which will automatically adjust picture settings when you’re watching a raft of content on Amazon’s streaming service. This is in addition to the Netflix Calibrated Mode and Sony Pictures Core Calibrated Mode, both of which work in similar ways and have been carried over from the outgoing A80L.

Voice Zoom 3, also taken from the high-end Bravia 9, is integrated into the Bravia 8, which can be used to boost (or decrease) voices and dialogue in whatever content you’re watching.

Elsewhere, there is little to separate the Bravia 8 and A80L from a features perspective. Both support Dolby Vision, HDR10 and HLG HDR formats (no HDR10+) and the Bravia 8 once again gets Google TV as the operating system of choice. Sony’s second iteration of its Eco Dashboard makes an appearance too, allowing you to adjust various energy-saving features and view their effects in a neat bar graph-style chart.

Sony also ships the Bravia 8 with a new Eco Remote that has a slight speckled appearance. This remote is made from 80% recycled materials, is backlit and recharges via USB-C.

• Features score: 4.5 / 5

Sony Bravia 8 review: Picture quality

• Wonderfully natural colors
• Slightly increased brightness for improved HDR performance
• Performs at its best in darker rooms

Sony’s claims of the Bravia 8 benefitting from a 10% brightness increase over the A80L certainly carry some weight, with its latest OLED TV recording a 149.5 nits measurement in HDR Filmmaker Mode on a full screen, compared to the A80L’s 139 nits based on our measurements.

There are noticeable differences in the 10% window brightness measurements in both HDR and SDR Standard modes, too. HDR Standard returned a result of 816.7 nits on the Bravia 8 (compared to the A80L’s 741 nits), while SDR Standard saw the Bravia 8 improve upon the A80L’s 247 nits with a measurement of 287.9 nits. Interestingly, measurements taken for SDR content in Filmmaker mode (or rather, Sony's own version called Professional) returned vastly different results and not in the Bravia 8’s favor, with a measurement of 99.4 nits compared to the A80L’s 224, indicating this is a picture mode you’ll want to avoid when watching SDR content.

Outside of this, it should mean the Bravia 8 will take everything that we loved about the A80L but throws in a helping of improved contrast and, with the new XR Processor acting as the brains of the operation, finer control of light for improved HDR performance.

As for color performance, the Bravia 8 does well against some of its closest competitors, covering 99.1% of the UHDA-P3 color gamut and 75% BT.2020. The LG C4, by comparison, returned results of 98.7% and 72.7%, respectively.

For my real-world performance tests, I streamed the opening fight sequence between Ta Lo and Xu Wenwu in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings on Disney Plus in its IMAX Enhanced version. It's a glorious test of color with various shades of green, yellow and red as the two go head-to-head with their own fighting styles. I was watching in a dark room and so selected the Dolby Vision Bright picture setting, which increases brightness without any sacrifice to detail and found the Bravia 8 reproduced this scene beautifully. Dolby Vision Dark was a little too dim for my preference in this case. 

Sony’s XR Triluminos Pro technology, which aims to reproduce natural and accurate colors, worked to full effect, with the greens and yellows of the forest setting looking incredibly realistic – it was easy to notice the different shades depending on where the light was hitting and the characters’ faces were clear and detailed.

Even the rings around Xu Wenwu’s arms gave off a satisfying blue shine as they were powering up for attack, highlighting the Bravia 8’s – and more specifically, the XR Contrast Booster’s – ability to precisely control the light. What makes this all the more impressive is the fact that there is no MLA technology or Quantum Dot layer, but instead a traditional WOLED panel.

After we meet present-day Shang Chi and he’s speaking with friends in a dimly lit bar, the Sony Bravia 8 flexes its muscles with regard to picking out detail where there’s little to no light. His dark T-shirt is clearly distinguishable from his even darker cardigan, while the stripes on his female friend’s blazer can also be seen. There’s no discernible light blooming around the bright table lamps, both the one at the front and center of the screen, and the numerous others dotted about in the background.

An Ultra HD stream of The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare on Prime Video provided a good opportunity to test out the new Prime Video Calibrated Mode. Switching this mode on and off is as simple as toggling a switch in the picture settings, but in the instance for this particular movie, I noticed absolutely no difference between the Calibrated picture settings and Sony’s own Professional picture mode (the brand’s version of Filmmaker mode). This could potentially be because the Bravia 8 doesn’t support HDR10+, which Prime Video uses, but regardless, in either mode, I was presented with a beautiful, natural image with great depth. I compared the same opening scene on the LG G4 and, while the better-specced TV did have more refined light control, it wasn’t quite the stark difference I was initially expecting – which is kudos to Sony.

I switched the overhead lights on and loaded up Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes on Disney Plus – while there was a fair amount of reflection noticeable in the opening, very dark scene, it wasn’t enough to distract me from my viewing. And that viewing was glorious, with the Bravia 8 managing to pick out the individual strands of fur on the apes, while also handling Caesar's burning funeral pyre without any noticeable signs of blooming.

• Picture quality score: 4.5 / 5

Sony Bravia 8 review: Sound quality

• Accurate placement of object sounds
• Dynamically impressive
• Still lacking in the bass department

Sony has once again employed its Acoustic Surface Audio+ technology here, which sees actuators placed behind the screen to physically vibrate it, turning the entire surface into a speaker. Not a lot has changed in this iteration compared to the A80L, although Sony says its added a new tweeter to help boost higher frequencies and, in particular, dialogue.

It’s a really remarkable system – and the first time I’ve personally heard it in action – as when using the same opening fight sequence from Shang Chi, gusts of wind, flailing arms and attacks using the 10 rings were accurately placed within the soundfield; when an attack was landed towards the bottom left of the screen for example, that’s exactly where it could be heard, as opposed to a full sound coming from all speakers. 

When I began the stream, I received a pop-up asking if I wanted to activate the IMAX Enhanced DTS:X soundtrack (the Sony Bravia 8 is an IMAX Enhanced-certified TV) and there was a genuine effect of height to the audio. These effects were only amplified the louder I turned up the volume and they remained distortion-free.

The Voice Zoom 3 feature works incredibly well, too, for any spoken content that you may have a little trouble hearing. Not only does increasing the level help dialogue become easier to hear, it does so without sounding separate from the rest of the soundtrack or other audio, instead sounding entirely natural. The same feature can be used when connected to an external soundbar or speaker system.

The only slight downside is that bass performance still isn’t a strong point of Sony’s audio system. While this will undoubtedly be a blessing to your neighbors, it does mean that despite the Bravia 8 being more impressive than its peers in the sound department, you will want to invest in one of the best soundbars to experience more engaging home cinema thrills. Taking the car chase scene from The Batman as a prime example, there isn’t a deep rumble from the Batmobile’s engine that you would get from an external subwoofer, but is certainly more engaging than most other TV sound systems.

• Sound quality score: 4.5 / 5

Sony Bravia 8 review: Design

• Height adjustable feet in two positions
• Slimmer rear makes it easier to wall mount
• Invisible speakers

As well as the Bravia 8 delivering a 10% increase in brightness, I’m going to also say it’s 10% better looking. For starters, Sony has slimmed the TV down to a depth of just 37mm, making it easier to wall mount in the process. This is due to Sony removing the protruding rear housing for all the connections, subwoofers and processing electronics on the A80L. Instead, the rear is a uniform panel – something Sony calls “One Slate” design – and the grid of etched squares has now been increased in size to cover the entire rear.

You’ll still find a similar set of connections on the right-hand side when viewed from the back, including four HDMI ports (only two of which are HDMI 2.1, and one of these supporting eARC), optical digital audio out, an ethernet port, RF antenna port, two USB type-A and an input S-Center speaker input, which you can use to turn the TV into a center speaker as part of a wider external sound system. If you connect one of Sony’s new Bravia Theater soundbars, you can bypass the need for this connection and still use the TV as a center-channel speaker via Acoustic Center Sync.

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Also new for the Bravia 8 – and the entire 2024 Bravia lineup – is the ability to position the included feet in any of four ways, up from the previous three. You can position them in either a narrow or wide configuration – meaning those with smaller TV stands can place the Bravia 8 on top with little issue – and this time you can raise the screen a few inches in both narrow and wide configurations, to better accommodate a soundbar beneath.

A single remote control comes in the box this time around, which is effectively the same as the one that shipped with the A80L. It’s relatively long and thin, with a central mic button for voice recognition – I figure this positioning is Sony’s attempt to encourage users to interact with the Bravia 8 more with their voice – and direct buttons for six streaming services at the bottom.

What is perhaps more interesting about this remote control, however, is the fact it’s made from approximately 80% recycled plastic, and the way in which Sony produces the speckled design means that each one is ever so slightly different. It’s backlit and rechargeable via USB-C.

• Design score: 4.5 / 5

Sony Bravia 8 review: Smart TV and menus

• Google TV smart system
• Google Assistant baked in and 'Works With' Alexa/Apple HomeKit support
• Eco Dashboard 2 for power saving tips

The Bravia 8 continues Sony’s appreciation for the Google TV platform, which is a smart thing to do. As expected, the full suite of major video and music streaming apps is available, along with (quite literally) tens of thousands of others. The home screen, which Google TV calls 'For You', shows you content you’re currently in the middle of watching across any installed apps, followed by recommended content based on your viewing habits and Google Search history across other devices when you’re logged into the same account. Google Assistant is available for voice commands and to help you find whatever you want faster.

I did appreciate Sony’s implementation of a quick settings menu system, whereby you just press a button on the remote control with the wrench icon to bring up a row of common settings along the bottom of the screen, each with its own set of choices to cycle through. The order of these can be personalized, so if you know you’re going to want to adjust picture and sound settings the most, for example, you can place these at the start of the row.

Sony has installed the second-generation of its Eco Dashboard in the Bravia 8, which presents the TV’s power consumption history in the form of animated graphs. You can also adjust power-saving settings from this screen, with the dashboard indicating how much power in kilowatt-hours (kWh) you’ll save.

Naturally, Chromecast is supported for streaming to the TV from compatible devices, as is AirPlay 2. And, despite using Google TV, Sony clearly doesn’t want to discriminate, as it’s added ‘works with’ support for Amazon Alexa and Apple HomeKit.

This was the first time in a long time I’d personally used Google TV. I’d read and heard good things, so I was keen to experience it for myself. However, in comparison to LG’s webOS TV system, which I’m very familiar with, I found Google TV here to be quite slow and clunky. Button presses on the remote control weren’t received with the immediacy I’d expect for a TV of this caliber.

• Smart TV and menus score: 3.5 / 5

Sony Bravia 8 review: Gaming

• 4K @ 120Hz and VRR support
• Dolby Vision Gaming for compatible sources
• Improved 12.8ms input lag

The Bravia 8 presents itself as a great option for gamers thanks to its excellent color reproduction and improved HDR brightness, and is a natural partner for the PlayStation 5 thanks to Sony’s ‘Perfect for PS5’ feature that automatically adjusts the image to deliver optimum results. 

Even if you don’t have a PS5, you can still benefit from VRR and ALLM, while Xbox gamers can take advantage of Dolby Vision Gaming. During my testing, I measured an input lag of 12.8ms, which is a significant improvement over the 16.5ms lag on the A80L, putting the Bravia 8 on par with the likes of the LG G4, although the LG C4 – Sony's closest competitor for this telly – undercuts it further with a figure of 9.2ms.

Loading up Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and it’s clear the Sony Bravia 8’s excellent lighting control when watching video content is carried over to gaming. Spidey’s suit and buildings exhibit clear shine where they’re being hit by sunlight, while the stunning vistas in Grand Theft Auto 5 exhibited fantastic depth, with plenty of detail to buildings and bushland when viewed up close.

Sony’s Game menu pops up at the press of the Menu button on the TV remote control, bringing up quick-select options for game type, toggling VRR on or off and a new, previously promised feature to adjust the screen size. You're also able to toggle on an on-screen crosshair, which could help players of FPS games get an upper hand.

The picture does improve when switching to the LG G4, but this is to be expected with its greater control of light and increased peak brightness. But, for a mid-range OLED, the Sony Bravia 8 will be great for gamers.

The only thing that does continue to hold it back is that only two of its four HDMI ports support the 2.1 standard for 4K/120Hz. If you only have one games console, this won’t be an issue but, if you have multiple, then you'll be better served by a model from LG or Samsung. There's also no support once again for Nvidia G-Sync or AMD FreeSync.

• Gaming score: 4/5

Sony Bravia 8 review: Value

• Small premium over A80L but with improved performance
• Already receiving discounts
• LG C4 can be found for similar money

The Sony Bravia 8 presents itself as good value for money. Its launch price is a little higher than its predecessor in some territories, but you are getting a number of upgrades, such as the new processor and Dolby Vision Gaming mode, to justify it. However, since launch, we've seen its price come down and, at the time of writing, there are savings of up to $900 / £200 / AU$1,100 direct from Sony, with third-party retailers likely price-matching or beating those prices.

While some may have wished for a greater leap in terms of brightness, it’s not a total shock that Sony has continued to omit brightness-boosting technology, such as MLA or Quantum Dot, as these technologies are reserved for the flagship screens – the LG C4 gets the same treatment for example.

But considering what the Sony Bravia 8 can do, such as displaying movies with great detail and light control, and offering up a number of picture modes that work well as opposed to the one or two you sometimes find on competitor screens, it’s a fantastic, affordable option for those with dark rooms.

• Value score: 4/5

Should I buy the Sony Bravia 8?

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How I tested the Sony Bravia 8

While this was my first time using a Sony TV for an extended period of time, I have previously tried and tested a few LG TVs. So the first I did was dive into menus to familiarize myself with the setup, then played a variety of content from streaming apps and via 4K Blu-rays playing on a PlayStation 5 over the course of five weeks.

I streamed content in both SDR and HDR and assessed the available picture mode options for each from services including Netflix, Disney Plus and Prime Video. I found Professional to offer the best results for non-Dolby Vision content, and the Dolby Vision Bright setting for content produced in that HDR format. I also toggled between the calibrated picture modes for Netflix, Prime Video and Sony Pictures Core, and found the settings for Prime Video to be the weakest of the three, in the sense that there was no obvious difference to the overall picture.

You can read in-depth how we test TVs at TechRadar for much more information.

• First reviewed: September 2024
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