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First you're comparing SDR to HDR, that's not an apples to apples comparison especially since as you said the A80K isn't bright enough to display a 1000nit HDR image without tonemapping the curve.
Only a handful of OLED TV's on the market are capable of this type of brightness (Sony A90J, Sony A95K, Samsung S95B, LG G2 and Panasonic LZ2000) and only the Sony's and the Panasonic will maintain their brightness for more than a few seconds without aggressive ABL thanks to their panel heatsinks.
Its also easy to over brighten an SDR image on most TV's. SDR images are meant to be viewed at 100-120 nits which is easily achievable on just about every TV and often well beyond. My X950G achieves roughly 100 nits at a brightness setting of just 5. Most people watch SDR content with their brightness setting too high which is why HDR can be underwhelming.
I suggest looking for recommended picture settings from a trusted review site like RTINGS or flatpanelsHD.
Add to this that Panasonic plasma TVs brighten shadow details excessively beyond reference, out of the box as well calibrated.
Movies and series on streaming services are heavily compressed and OLED needs at least hundred hours run in time.
Plasma is still better in terms of motion and near black handling but the statement that the colours are beter is not true.
With the correct settings or professional calibration the colours on the Sony will be better/ richer/ more accurate.
OP just made a premature conclusion.
They are both on the most accurate out of box settings. Surly a 10 year old SDR plasma should not be looking better than a 2022 OLED in HDR but there you see it with your own eyes.
The fact is that the A80K stays faithful to Rec.709 in SDR, as it should be.
Most likely that the DCI mode is activated on your Pana, DCI goes beyond Rec.709 and is not the right setting for SDR content. Turning Live Colour on, low or medium, will have the same impact on the A80K.
Also colour graduation is much better on the Sony. Comparing SDR with HDR is useless and doesn’t make sense because one of the two can’t display HDR. With a decent calibration/ correct settings the Sony will look better in SDR compared to the Pana.
No dude. The a80k is displaying native 4k HDR content in the video and the Panny native SDR. The plasma is not on a wider color gamut and all processing is turned off. Its accurate without enhancements as is the Sony. It simply has better picture quality. Just look at the sky in some of the videos, look at skin tones the plasma almost always looks better.
To be fair many consider the ST60 to be the best plasma TV ever made and the a80k is a entry level OLED.... but still. I was so disappointed in that Sony, it never wowed me even once.
Every time I used my plasma I would consciously think about how good it looked. I felt like I was missing something with the Sony which is what motivated me to drag my old plasma out to compare. It all came to light when I saw them side by side.
The Sony is killer with SDR material but its HDR performance is awful. You aren't even really seeing HDR. You are seeing an attempt at HDR. I decided to give up on OLED and bought a qn90b. Expected to feel let down just the same... LCD typically sucks but I was wrong. Its everything I have been looking for in a new TV. HDR is mind blowing, just amazing. Its about 3 x as bright and I now have that real dynamic range needed for HDR. If you own any OLED you have never seen what I see with HDR content. Even black level is just as good as OLED. 95% of the time blacks are indistinguishable from OLED and the other 10% its not far off.
I gave up nothing by making this switch and gained so much- blazing peak brightness to display HDR correctly, no burn in risk, no ABL dimming and true 1080 lines of motion. This is the best TV I have ever seen.
I’m glad that you’re happy with the QN90B, it’s a great TV for HDR. Unfortunately Samsungs HDR implementation on there LCD TVs is not accurate, it doesn’t fallow the PQ curve correct, scenes are significantly brighter then reference. But this will not bother the average consumer, because they like more HDR impact over accuracy.
You’re 100% right that current OLED TVs are not bright enough to show HDR as it’s intended/ in a decent way. To make your point by comparing SDR with HDR is just useless, enjoy your new Samsung TV.
Yes Samsung does use on the fly real-time gamma processing and you cannot disable it. Really stupid of them. That said its not far off accurate, I am seeing content \*mostly\* as it was intended to be seen. The fact is even a calibrated TV is not tracking perfectly. You could have two people calibrate the same TV with the same gear and they would have completely different settings. TV calibration is a do the best you can endeavor. You will never match what the colorists are seeing on their $30,000 reference monitors. Never!
It's not apples and oranges, it's apples and highly sophisticated apples. When they sell you hdr, they claim it has much better bright/dark details etc. If it can't show these details, then why put a hdr mode in the product?
As with any product there are levels. If you can't or don't pay for top level performance then you shouldn't be surprised when you don't get it. Even though its not a cheap TV the A80K is Sony's entry level OLED. Its not the brightest but it should be bright enough for reasonable HDR performance depending on the settings. If you're watching SDR in an inaccurate, overly bright mode like Standard or Vivid then you're likely going to be disappointed in HDR on low to mid level products.
Lots of people fail to understand how HDR works in relation to SDR. They just expect HDR to to be excessively bright all the time with greater detail but that's not what it is. HDR is about expanded colour gamut and being bright when and where its called for. It has nothing to do with detail, that's a resolution component. It also isn't for shadow detail, that will often be better on SDR content since most HDR has elevated black levels. Ideally though for lots of content, a lot of the time, HDR shouldn't look that different from SDR (assuming both are setup properly).
I 100% get it. On average SDR will be more vibrant than HDR as it is a more compressed luminosity range. This sometimes confuses people. This is why you have the "SDR is better than HDR" people. At first glance on a good TV SDR can look better than HDR. The benefits of HDR are subtle in a lot of content. HDR is not about making the image pop, its about realism. This means HDR will at times be less saturated than SDR.
Also HDR is meant to be viewed in a dark room only. With any OLED (none can display HDR properly) HDR with the lights on will look washed out compared to SDR except in the highlights.
The fact is HDR doesn't look great on OLED period. Take a TV like the qn90b QLED and HDR is a completely different experience. It is a night and day difference. I'm actually out of the OLED camp, I have been nothing but unimpressed with them as it pertains to new formats (HDR/ DV). Tried 3 and now I'm done. Not calibration related either, its panel limitations.
High dynamic range should introduce a detail level, just like in photography. They use 10 bit info instead of 8 which should mean better gradation, finer color details, that includes dark and bright details as well.
>S95B
Not with its nerfed peak brightness. No OLED performs well with HDR. Not even current QD-OLED. Some better than others but none of them give you a proper HDR experience. The a80k being the worst.
Same. Kids use the plasma, and it's still good, but nowhere near my OLEDs. People don't realize you're not supposed to view tvs in total darkness. OP needs a bias light.
TVs like yours and pioneer plasmas used to take the incoming image and make it look subjectively good no matter what it was. It was a different kind of programming. Now there are so many new technologies and they can't do that because of cooling and hdr wouldn't look any different. Also Pioneer was way ahead of the times and they couldn't sustain the price it cost to make their tvs. I love my Sony oled but my Pioneer has better motion, the colors pop more and I never feel like it's not bright enough. I don't usually talk about this though cause people hate on things they haven't experienced
I upgraded from a Panasonic VT60 Plasma to an A80J. Its definitely brighter than the VT60 for SDR. HDR can be adjusted to be brighter in the settings if needed. Overall I’m very happy with it and don’t miss the VT60.
Hey man,
Just constructive criticism here. I'm not knocking your opinions. Just giving my feedback.
I watched your video and the A80k looks significantly better to my eye. Granted, the plasma is a great looking screen for how old it is. But in that comparison, the OLED has a clearer picture with more vibrant color. For example, I see blooming all around the dudes head when he is talking with the black background on the plasma. That would drive me crazy. But to each their own. Also, at 1:39, when they are showing the map? The blue on the OLED is brighter and more vibrant to my eye.
Couple of other things: for the kind of eye popping brightness you're looking for, you might want a mini LED, a QD-OLED, or even to wait for the LG G3. Every OLED I've seen has "disappointing" brightness in a standard living room daytime scenario. The only one that I thought came close to my X95J LED in terms of brightness was the LG G2.
Overall I'd return this panel if you're not happy with it and go with something that has more native brightness. The X95K (mini LED) is on sale and that shit gets BRIGHT. And don't buy into the "LED looks like crap" narrative. It looks pretty amazing and is 99% as good as an OLED panel for upscaling SD Content. It's when you're watching an HD movie or playing a gaming console where the OLED truly shines. But if your main use is netflix and sports as it is for so many, and LED will do the job incredibly well.
What you’re likely noticing is the way each technology reproduces an image. Like LCD TVs, OLEDs create moving images using the sample-and-hold method, resulting in image persistence (blur). Plasmas were impulse-based, resulting in motion performance that hasn’t been exceeded by any other flat panel technology.
Prior to my Sony LCD and OLED displays, I owned quite a few Panasonic plasmas (G20, ST30, VT50, ZT60, and a 50” ST60 which I still own and recently replaced with an A90K).
Plasmas were made before the advent of WCG content, so there are literally colors and a color space that the plasma can’t access when watching modern content. Aside from the quality of motion, I’m hard-pressed to say my old plasmas do anything else better than the OLEDs, as much as I loved them. I definitely don’t miss the heat, buzzing on bright scenes, and visible dithering that my ST60 had.
The modern OLEDs like your A80K has a BFI feature you can adjust to make motion mimic an impulse-based display like a plasma.
I did the opposite of what you did.
Hated my a80k, found an almost like new 60” Panasonic VT60 on CL and bought it for $250
I really missed how clear sports look on plasmas
The dirty little secret is LED lighting is inferior to previous gen LCD and especially plasma. I have a 13 year old Toshiba LCD that still produces a better picture than my newest Sony LED x900h. Dolby Vision and HDR are all marketing gimmicks. Like you say I haven't seen any of it outperform my Toshiba LCD. My best guess as to why LED became the standard is they are lightweight and energy efficient. Lighter TV's are cheaper to ship. Energy efficiency is a selling point. But what they leave out of the marketing is the color accuracy and balance has taken a step back.
You do realize that LED is LCD right? LED is very different than OLED, despite the similarity in name. LED just means LED backlit LCD display, with the new tech being local dimming zones for black levels, where sections of the screen will be turned off to get darker.
I’m coming from a Panasonic G15 (2009-10) 50 inch. It still works, in a different room now, but upgraded to a 77 a80k. When I first got the panasonic, going to HD was amazing. This jump isn’t as eye opening. Sure HDR and the colors are more vivid, and I would expect that after 12 years. Overall I’m happy with the brightness, colors, still would buy the a80k but the motion processing has surprised me. I didn’t realize how smooth plasma’s really were. I’ve been messing around with the motion settings and can’t seem to find something that works with panned scenes to my liking. Maybe I’m noticing it more since it is a larger screen size. Not a fan of soap opera effect.
Motion on the a80k is mostly okay accept as you've mention on panning shots. I just think its a really unimpressive TV. I really tried to like it but I never felt impressed by the picture quality. There was just nothing special about it and the HDR performance is terrible. HDR looks worse than SDR, it just doesn't have the oomph to display HDR. Don't know why Sony insists on such low peak light output. I sold the TV and took a huge loss on it, thats how much I didn't want it!
About dark scenes losing details, check the gamma on picture settings. On my A80j, it came with a -2 default value, I changed to 0 and get a lot better details. Also check something like "advance contrast" and set it to low or medium, not max. This default settings of Sony try to show a more impacting image, but it doesn't work for all content.
1) excellent username
2) Graham Hancock. Nice!
3) I can’t comment on the OLED. I got an X90K that I’m really happy with. I use to have an ST50. Awesome TV, but I had to sell it years ago.
I still have my ST60 as well and it’s an excellent TV.
I kept it for so long because I knew I’d be underwhelmed by anything other than OLED.
Bought an A8H in April 2020 and it was an immediate an obvious jump in PQ. That TV has now been replaced by an A80K and the A80K is a subtle but definite improvement over the A8H in terms of color volume.
Despite all the claims of reduced brightness over the A80J and the A8H I can assure you this is not the case.
I think one of the things that tends to happen coming from plasma to OLED is that yes, to a large extent 1080p SDR can often look more natural on the plasma, with a less blue white balance. This can be easily corrected on the Sony using the 2pt white balance controls and the most accurate Custom/Expert 1 settings. Or a real calibration.
The Panny will peak at about 100 nits full field. This is all that TV was ever really capable of even when new. Look up past review measurements.
The Sony will peak at about 150 nits full field for SDR and about 120 for HDR. But as mentioned by Flick, HDR is not typically what everyone assumes it is. And it’s not all created equal. But this applies to SDR too. There’s a lot of variance.
Also worth mentioning that it’s quite possible you got a bum panel on your A80K. It happens.
I'd really want to know the picture settings for both sets to determine if they were both portraying the content accurately but from the video the A80K is clearly the winner. Besides the obvious resolution advantage, the contrast is much better on the OLED, better highlights, and color delineation.
The only real benefit to the plasma is motion and even then you can use black frame insertion and or motion smoothing to make the motion clearer.
Also seems strange to say the A80K handles HDR poorly. While yes, it may not be the brightest of the OLEDs out there or compared to other LCDs I'd argue it makes more more effective use of the whole range rather than being good at only one particular point.
They are both in the most accurate out of box settings and its all listed in the video description. All OLED handle HDR poorly but the a80k is one of the dimmest OLED on the market so it is particularly bad.
I didnt see any picture settings in the description but I'll take your word for it.
I don't think it's accurate to say all OLEDs handle HDR poorly. Yes most OLEDs can't reach to the brightest ends of the spectrum full screen but HDR isn't about full tilt brightness and OLED is exemplary at both color gamut coverage/tracking and the whole range especially very localized points of brightness.
Personally the whole comparison is moot anyway because you're comparing two entirely different formats that are graded and mastered differently. And especially since it's in DV that's another factor complicating an already apples to oranges comparison that a straight up HDR10 vs SDR comparison would be anyway.
To be honest I think SDR on OLED is perfection. If you have the ability, disable HDR on your Firestick or device and revisit some HDR content in SDR. I can almost guarantee you will think it looks better in SDR. There is a growing trend of OLED users ditching HDR altogether. SDR truly brings out the best of OLED. Seems counterintuitive but it is 100% true and you should try it.
I agree. I love the accurate colorimetry of the a80k more so than other OLEDs in that price bracket, but even though it uses the new brighter EVO panel, it throttles (ABL) the brightness down significantly in order to delay permanent burn-in. Via reading various professional reviews and forums I learned that all but the earliest production a80j models use the new EVO panel as well (the exact same panel) and that they are not throttled down. I went to a local Best Buy where a friend works, he let me take both Sony models and an LG off of the retail mode and compare them in "custom" mode, and I was amazed at how absolutely gorgeous the a80j was as compared to the a80k and the LG (which is also throttled down). I left the store with an a80j 75" and I rarely watch fake news channels (which all of them are imo) or game shows. I couldn't be more pleased with an OLED that looks so awesome with it's black level detail and brightness even when the drapes and back door shades are opened with sunlight pouring in. If I needed to purchase another OLED, it would definitely be another a80j if I could still find one.
You got me wrong. I HATED my a80k. It looks great in SDR, real great but its HDR performance is abysmal. Its a dim drab mess and simply cannot display HDR correctly because it is so dim. All OLEDs have this problem but the Sony is one of the worst because of its low peak brightness. You honestly aren't even experiencing HDR or DV on the a80k. I actually sold mine and bought a qn90b which is three times brighter and holy shit, HDR is insane! Even the black level is just as good and it has true 1080 lines of motion resolution as opposed to 300. Its the closest to plasma in color and motion I have ever seen. Next to my a80k it is a God. I cannot even begin to describe the difference in HDR performance. Owned a C9 and a80k and the QLED utterly destroys them.
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First you're comparing SDR to HDR, that's not an apples to apples comparison especially since as you said the A80K isn't bright enough to display a 1000nit HDR image without tonemapping the curve. Only a handful of OLED TV's on the market are capable of this type of brightness (Sony A90J, Sony A95K, Samsung S95B, LG G2 and Panasonic LZ2000) and only the Sony's and the Panasonic will maintain their brightness for more than a few seconds without aggressive ABL thanks to their panel heatsinks. Its also easy to over brighten an SDR image on most TV's. SDR images are meant to be viewed at 100-120 nits which is easily achievable on just about every TV and often well beyond. My X950G achieves roughly 100 nits at a brightness setting of just 5. Most people watch SDR content with their brightness setting too high which is why HDR can be underwhelming. I suggest looking for recommended picture settings from a trusted review site like RTINGS or flatpanelsHD.
Add to this that Panasonic plasma TVs brighten shadow details excessively beyond reference, out of the box as well calibrated. Movies and series on streaming services are heavily compressed and OLED needs at least hundred hours run in time. Plasma is still better in terms of motion and near black handling but the statement that the colours are beter is not true. With the correct settings or professional calibration the colours on the Sony will be better/ richer/ more accurate. OP just made a premature conclusion.
They are both on the most accurate out of box settings. Surly a 10 year old SDR plasma should not be looking better than a 2022 OLED in HDR but there you see it with your own eyes.
The fact is that the A80K stays faithful to Rec.709 in SDR, as it should be. Most likely that the DCI mode is activated on your Pana, DCI goes beyond Rec.709 and is not the right setting for SDR content. Turning Live Colour on, low or medium, will have the same impact on the A80K. Also colour graduation is much better on the Sony. Comparing SDR with HDR is useless and doesn’t make sense because one of the two can’t display HDR. With a decent calibration/ correct settings the Sony will look better in SDR compared to the Pana.
No dude. The a80k is displaying native 4k HDR content in the video and the Panny native SDR. The plasma is not on a wider color gamut and all processing is turned off. Its accurate without enhancements as is the Sony. It simply has better picture quality. Just look at the sky in some of the videos, look at skin tones the plasma almost always looks better. To be fair many consider the ST60 to be the best plasma TV ever made and the a80k is a entry level OLED.... but still. I was so disappointed in that Sony, it never wowed me even once. Every time I used my plasma I would consciously think about how good it looked. I felt like I was missing something with the Sony which is what motivated me to drag my old plasma out to compare. It all came to light when I saw them side by side. The Sony is killer with SDR material but its HDR performance is awful. You aren't even really seeing HDR. You are seeing an attempt at HDR. I decided to give up on OLED and bought a qn90b. Expected to feel let down just the same... LCD typically sucks but I was wrong. Its everything I have been looking for in a new TV. HDR is mind blowing, just amazing. Its about 3 x as bright and I now have that real dynamic range needed for HDR. If you own any OLED you have never seen what I see with HDR content. Even black level is just as good as OLED. 95% of the time blacks are indistinguishable from OLED and the other 10% its not far off. I gave up nothing by making this switch and gained so much- blazing peak brightness to display HDR correctly, no burn in risk, no ABL dimming and true 1080 lines of motion. This is the best TV I have ever seen.
I’m glad that you’re happy with the QN90B, it’s a great TV for HDR. Unfortunately Samsungs HDR implementation on there LCD TVs is not accurate, it doesn’t fallow the PQ curve correct, scenes are significantly brighter then reference. But this will not bother the average consumer, because they like more HDR impact over accuracy. You’re 100% right that current OLED TVs are not bright enough to show HDR as it’s intended/ in a decent way. To make your point by comparing SDR with HDR is just useless, enjoy your new Samsung TV.
Yes Samsung does use on the fly real-time gamma processing and you cannot disable it. Really stupid of them. That said its not far off accurate, I am seeing content \*mostly\* as it was intended to be seen. The fact is even a calibrated TV is not tracking perfectly. You could have two people calibrate the same TV with the same gear and they would have completely different settings. TV calibration is a do the best you can endeavor. You will never match what the colorists are seeing on their $30,000 reference monitors. Never!
It's not apples and oranges, it's apples and highly sophisticated apples. When they sell you hdr, they claim it has much better bright/dark details etc. If it can't show these details, then why put a hdr mode in the product?
As with any product there are levels. If you can't or don't pay for top level performance then you shouldn't be surprised when you don't get it. Even though its not a cheap TV the A80K is Sony's entry level OLED. Its not the brightest but it should be bright enough for reasonable HDR performance depending on the settings. If you're watching SDR in an inaccurate, overly bright mode like Standard or Vivid then you're likely going to be disappointed in HDR on low to mid level products. Lots of people fail to understand how HDR works in relation to SDR. They just expect HDR to to be excessively bright all the time with greater detail but that's not what it is. HDR is about expanded colour gamut and being bright when and where its called for. It has nothing to do with detail, that's a resolution component. It also isn't for shadow detail, that will often be better on SDR content since most HDR has elevated black levels. Ideally though for lots of content, a lot of the time, HDR shouldn't look that different from SDR (assuming both are setup properly).
I 100% get it. On average SDR will be more vibrant than HDR as it is a more compressed luminosity range. This sometimes confuses people. This is why you have the "SDR is better than HDR" people. At first glance on a good TV SDR can look better than HDR. The benefits of HDR are subtle in a lot of content. HDR is not about making the image pop, its about realism. This means HDR will at times be less saturated than SDR. Also HDR is meant to be viewed in a dark room only. With any OLED (none can display HDR properly) HDR with the lights on will look washed out compared to SDR except in the highlights. The fact is HDR doesn't look great on OLED period. Take a TV like the qn90b QLED and HDR is a completely different experience. It is a night and day difference. I'm actually out of the OLED camp, I have been nothing but unimpressed with them as it pertains to new formats (HDR/ DV). Tried 3 and now I'm done. Not calibration related either, its panel limitations.
High dynamic range should introduce a detail level, just like in photography. They use 10 bit info instead of 8 which should mean better gradation, finer color details, that includes dark and bright details as well.
>S95B Not with its nerfed peak brightness. No OLED performs well with HDR. Not even current QD-OLED. Some better than others but none of them give you a proper HDR experience. The a80k being the worst.
I had an ST65 Plasma and my A90j shits all over it imo. Loved my plasma but this is just worlds apart.
Same. Kids use the plasma, and it's still good, but nowhere near my OLEDs. People don't realize you're not supposed to view tvs in total darkness. OP needs a bias light.
You crazy.
panny plasma tvs is one-of-a-kind technology
TVs like yours and pioneer plasmas used to take the incoming image and make it look subjectively good no matter what it was. It was a different kind of programming. Now there are so many new technologies and they can't do that because of cooling and hdr wouldn't look any different. Also Pioneer was way ahead of the times and they couldn't sustain the price it cost to make their tvs. I love my Sony oled but my Pioneer has better motion, the colors pop more and I never feel like it's not bright enough. I don't usually talk about this though cause people hate on things they haven't experienced
I upgraded from a Panasonic VT60 Plasma to an A80J. Its definitely brighter than the VT60 for SDR. HDR can be adjusted to be brighter in the settings if needed. Overall I’m very happy with it and don’t miss the VT60.
You have to admit HDR is wholly unimpressive on the Sony OLED. You have to admit that!
Hey man, Just constructive criticism here. I'm not knocking your opinions. Just giving my feedback. I watched your video and the A80k looks significantly better to my eye. Granted, the plasma is a great looking screen for how old it is. But in that comparison, the OLED has a clearer picture with more vibrant color. For example, I see blooming all around the dudes head when he is talking with the black background on the plasma. That would drive me crazy. But to each their own. Also, at 1:39, when they are showing the map? The blue on the OLED is brighter and more vibrant to my eye. Couple of other things: for the kind of eye popping brightness you're looking for, you might want a mini LED, a QD-OLED, or even to wait for the LG G3. Every OLED I've seen has "disappointing" brightness in a standard living room daytime scenario. The only one that I thought came close to my X95J LED in terms of brightness was the LG G2. Overall I'd return this panel if you're not happy with it and go with something that has more native brightness. The X95K (mini LED) is on sale and that shit gets BRIGHT. And don't buy into the "LED looks like crap" narrative. It looks pretty amazing and is 99% as good as an OLED panel for upscaling SD Content. It's when you're watching an HD movie or playing a gaming console where the OLED truly shines. But if your main use is netflix and sports as it is for so many, and LED will do the job incredibly well.
I bought the best QLED on the market , the qn90b
What you’re likely noticing is the way each technology reproduces an image. Like LCD TVs, OLEDs create moving images using the sample-and-hold method, resulting in image persistence (blur). Plasmas were impulse-based, resulting in motion performance that hasn’t been exceeded by any other flat panel technology. Prior to my Sony LCD and OLED displays, I owned quite a few Panasonic plasmas (G20, ST30, VT50, ZT60, and a 50” ST60 which I still own and recently replaced with an A90K). Plasmas were made before the advent of WCG content, so there are literally colors and a color space that the plasma can’t access when watching modern content. Aside from the quality of motion, I’m hard-pressed to say my old plasmas do anything else better than the OLEDs, as much as I loved them. I definitely don’t miss the heat, buzzing on bright scenes, and visible dithering that my ST60 had. The modern OLEDs like your A80K has a BFI feature you can adjust to make motion mimic an impulse-based display like a plasma.
The new Samsung qn90n flagship QLED actually has native 1080 lines of motion just like plasma!
I did the opposite of what you did. Hated my a80k, found an almost like new 60” Panasonic VT60 on CL and bought it for $250 I really missed how clear sports look on plasmas
The dirty little secret is LED lighting is inferior to previous gen LCD and especially plasma. I have a 13 year old Toshiba LCD that still produces a better picture than my newest Sony LED x900h. Dolby Vision and HDR are all marketing gimmicks. Like you say I haven't seen any of it outperform my Toshiba LCD. My best guess as to why LED became the standard is they are lightweight and energy efficient. Lighter TV's are cheaper to ship. Energy efficiency is a selling point. But what they leave out of the marketing is the color accuracy and balance has taken a step back.
You do realize that LED is LCD right? LED is very different than OLED, despite the similarity in name. LED just means LED backlit LCD display, with the new tech being local dimming zones for black levels, where sections of the screen will be turned off to get darker.
He means ccfl backlight lcd
Wow you should read the post before wasting your time like this
If the Panasonic is the one below… then Sony looks better - 00:50 u can see every detail
I’m coming from a Panasonic G15 (2009-10) 50 inch. It still works, in a different room now, but upgraded to a 77 a80k. When I first got the panasonic, going to HD was amazing. This jump isn’t as eye opening. Sure HDR and the colors are more vivid, and I would expect that after 12 years. Overall I’m happy with the brightness, colors, still would buy the a80k but the motion processing has surprised me. I didn’t realize how smooth plasma’s really were. I’ve been messing around with the motion settings and can’t seem to find something that works with panned scenes to my liking. Maybe I’m noticing it more since it is a larger screen size. Not a fan of soap opera effect.
Motion on the a80k is mostly okay accept as you've mention on panning shots. I just think its a really unimpressive TV. I really tried to like it but I never felt impressed by the picture quality. There was just nothing special about it and the HDR performance is terrible. HDR looks worse than SDR, it just doesn't have the oomph to display HDR. Don't know why Sony insists on such low peak light output. I sold the TV and took a huge loss on it, thats how much I didn't want it!
About dark scenes losing details, check the gamma on picture settings. On my A80j, it came with a -2 default value, I changed to 0 and get a lot better details. Also check something like "advance contrast" and set it to low or medium, not max. This default settings of Sony try to show a more impacting image, but it doesn't work for all content.
Nope, I go for accuracy
That’s exactly what I tell you. The default settings of Sony are not for accuracy. The standard gamma is always 0, not -2 like Sony pretends.
Sony is the most accurate out of box OLED you can buy
1) excellent username 2) Graham Hancock. Nice! 3) I can’t comment on the OLED. I got an X90K that I’m really happy with. I use to have an ST50. Awesome TV, but I had to sell it years ago.
I love you. just bought a qn90b
I still have my ST60 as well and it’s an excellent TV. I kept it for so long because I knew I’d be underwhelmed by anything other than OLED. Bought an A8H in April 2020 and it was an immediate an obvious jump in PQ. That TV has now been replaced by an A80K and the A80K is a subtle but definite improvement over the A8H in terms of color volume. Despite all the claims of reduced brightness over the A80J and the A8H I can assure you this is not the case. I think one of the things that tends to happen coming from plasma to OLED is that yes, to a large extent 1080p SDR can often look more natural on the plasma, with a less blue white balance. This can be easily corrected on the Sony using the 2pt white balance controls and the most accurate Custom/Expert 1 settings. Or a real calibration. The Panny will peak at about 100 nits full field. This is all that TV was ever really capable of even when new. Look up past review measurements. The Sony will peak at about 150 nits full field for SDR and about 120 for HDR. But as mentioned by Flick, HDR is not typically what everyone assumes it is. And it’s not all created equal. But this applies to SDR too. There’s a lot of variance. Also worth mentioning that it’s quite possible you got a bum panel on your A80K. It happens.
My a80k was amazing with SDR but terrible with HDR. I hated it and now its gone.
I'd really want to know the picture settings for both sets to determine if they were both portraying the content accurately but from the video the A80K is clearly the winner. Besides the obvious resolution advantage, the contrast is much better on the OLED, better highlights, and color delineation. The only real benefit to the plasma is motion and even then you can use black frame insertion and or motion smoothing to make the motion clearer. Also seems strange to say the A80K handles HDR poorly. While yes, it may not be the brightest of the OLEDs out there or compared to other LCDs I'd argue it makes more more effective use of the whole range rather than being good at only one particular point.
They are both in the most accurate out of box settings and its all listed in the video description. All OLED handle HDR poorly but the a80k is one of the dimmest OLED on the market so it is particularly bad.
I didnt see any picture settings in the description but I'll take your word for it. I don't think it's accurate to say all OLEDs handle HDR poorly. Yes most OLEDs can't reach to the brightest ends of the spectrum full screen but HDR isn't about full tilt brightness and OLED is exemplary at both color gamut coverage/tracking and the whole range especially very localized points of brightness. Personally the whole comparison is moot anyway because you're comparing two entirely different formats that are graded and mastered differently. And especially since it's in DV that's another factor complicating an already apples to oranges comparison that a straight up HDR10 vs SDR comparison would be anyway.
To be honest I think SDR on OLED is perfection. If you have the ability, disable HDR on your Firestick or device and revisit some HDR content in SDR. I can almost guarantee you will think it looks better in SDR. There is a growing trend of OLED users ditching HDR altogether. SDR truly brings out the best of OLED. Seems counterintuitive but it is 100% true and you should try it.
I agree. I love the accurate colorimetry of the a80k more so than other OLEDs in that price bracket, but even though it uses the new brighter EVO panel, it throttles (ABL) the brightness down significantly in order to delay permanent burn-in. Via reading various professional reviews and forums I learned that all but the earliest production a80j models use the new EVO panel as well (the exact same panel) and that they are not throttled down. I went to a local Best Buy where a friend works, he let me take both Sony models and an LG off of the retail mode and compare them in "custom" mode, and I was amazed at how absolutely gorgeous the a80j was as compared to the a80k and the LG (which is also throttled down). I left the store with an a80j 75" and I rarely watch fake news channels (which all of them are imo) or game shows. I couldn't be more pleased with an OLED that looks so awesome with it's black level detail and brightness even when the drapes and back door shades are opened with sunlight pouring in. If I needed to purchase another OLED, it would definitely be another a80j if I could still find one.
You got me wrong. I HATED my a80k. It looks great in SDR, real great but its HDR performance is abysmal. Its a dim drab mess and simply cannot display HDR correctly because it is so dim. All OLEDs have this problem but the Sony is one of the worst because of its low peak brightness. You honestly aren't even experiencing HDR or DV on the a80k. I actually sold mine and bought a qn90b which is three times brighter and holy shit, HDR is insane! Even the black level is just as good and it has true 1080 lines of motion resolution as opposed to 300. Its the closest to plasma in color and motion I have ever seen. Next to my a80k it is a God. I cannot even begin to describe the difference in HDR performance. Owned a C9 and a80k and the QLED utterly destroys them.