May 11 Podcast #843: Sony A8F Review from RTINGS.COM
Podcast Tags: Dolby Vision, HDR10, OLED, Sony 
Today we have a review of a Sony A8F OLED TV from RTINGS.com. The A8F is a OLED 4K HDR TV with 4K HDR Processor X1™ Extreme, Acoustic Surface™ technology and Android TV. The Acoustic Surface is supposed to produce deeper bass by vibrating the glass. We’ll see if that is what the reviewers experienced below. It comes in three sizes 55”, 65”, and 77”. Read the full detailed review at RTINGS.com.
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Today's Show:
News:
- Google Assistant rapidly expands connectivity
- The owner of MoviePass is crashing after saying it burns $21.7 million per month — but only has $15.5 million in cash
- Amazon rolls out model smart homes
Other:
- LG TVs that support Dolby Vision
- What is HDR10+? Open source and licence-free dynamic metadata
- The 5 Best 70-75 inch 4k TV - Spring 2018
- Apple/iTunes: Find and watch movies with 4K, HDR, or Dolby Vision
- You can now watch Disney & Marvel films in 4K HDR on the Apple TV with Vudu
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Sony A8F Review from RTINGS.COM
Today we have a review of a Sony A8F OLED TV from RTINGS.COM. The A8F is a OLED 4K HDR TV with 4K HDR Processor X1™ Extreme, Acoustic Surface™ technology and Android TV. The Acoustic Surface is supposed to produce deeper bass by vibrating the glass. We’ll see if that is what the reviewers experienced below. It comes in three sizes 55”, 65”, and 77”. Read the full detailed review at RTINGS.COM.
Highlights below:
The Sony A8F is a 2018 4k OLED TV with excellent performance for a variety of different usages. It has excellent picture quality, with perfectly deep blacks that looks impressive in a dark room. Motion handling is excellent due to the instantaneous response time, but this lack of blur can make low frame rate content appear choppy. Like the Sony A1E and other OLED TVs, it isn't perfect as the brightness changes depending on screen content and there may be risk of burn-in with static content.
Design 9.5
The Sony A8F OLED TV is extremely well designed. The stand has a very small footprint and fits well in any decor. The TV is well built and there are no obvious gaps or loose panels. The TV has a very small frame and delivers an immersive viewing experience, especially when wall mounted.
Picture Quality 8.6
The Sony A8F OLED TV produces excellent picture quality. It is able to produce true blacks and infinite contrast ratio, which combined with the perfect black uniformity, makes for excellent dark room performance. Can produce bright highlights and although the whole screen can't get that bright, it should be good enough to combat glare in most rooms. Color accuracy is good out of the box, and most people won't need to calibrate their set. It also has an excellent wide color gamut. It is prone to temporary image retention and could experience permanent burn-in, although we don't expect most people to experience this.
Motion 8.8
The motion handling of the Sony A8F is excellent. It has a near-instantaneous response time and is flicker-free, so there is very little motion trail and only slight persistence blur. The perfect response time causes stutter, especially with 24 fps content, but this can be helped with the optional Black Frame Insertion feature or by enabling Motion Interpolation, but it is judder-free. It does not support a variable refresh rate, and there are no plans announced by Sony to add support for this in the future.
Inputs 8.2
The A8F supports a wide variety of input formats and resolutions. It has low 4k input lag, but not as good as the LG C8. Like all Sony TVs, only HDMI ports 2 & 3 support full bandwidth, but port 3 is also the audio return channel. If you have a receiver which supports ARC and you are planning on connecting more than 1 full bandwidth device, you may wish to consider connecting your receiver using an optical (Toslink) cable.
Sound Quality 7.4
The Sony A8F has an above-average sound. It gets quite loud and produces a decent amount of bass along with clear dialogs. However, their bass doesn't have any thump or rumble to it, and it doesn't have a room correction system either. For a better sound, a dedicated sound system or soundbars are recommended.
Smart Features 8.0
The Sony A8F runs Sony's customized Android TV interface. The layout is very simple, there are multiple rows used to group similar functions together making it easy to navigate. The TV has performance issues when navigating the menus, as it froze repeatedly and animations were choppy. It is especially slow when accessing the menus from within an app. It has a great voice assistant, although it is not as good as the ThinQ AI found on 2018 LG OLEDs.
Ratings
Mixed Usage 8.7 - Recommended if under (USD) $2,300* Value for price beaten by LG C8
Movies 9.4 - Best Value for Price
TV Shows 8.5 - Recommended if under (USD) $1,660* Value for price beaten by LG C8
Sports 8.6 - Recommended if under (USD) $2,310* Value for price beaten by LG C8
Video Games 8.6 - Recommended if under (USD) $1,200* Value for price beaten by LG C8
HDR Movies 9.1 - Recommended if under (USD) $1,680* Value for price beaten by LG B7A
HDR Gaming 8.6 - Recommended if under (USD) $1,700* Value for price beaten by LG B7A
PC Monitor 8.0 - Recommended if under (USD) $410* Value for price beaten by LG SK9000
* Pricing for 55” version
Reader Comments (3)
I'm tempted to say Braden's theater experience is a California thing. I have never had the level of problems in Pennsylvania.
When I saw the new Avengers movie, somebody brought a baby into the theater with them. It kept crying and it was very disturbing. If you have a baby, can't you wait til it comes out on blu ray or streaming?
RE: Braden's Movie Theater Experience
Ya'll come out here to Austin and central Texas where the Alamo Drafthouse does not put up with kids running around, folks chatting, or non-certified "THX kids".
This movie chain will kick anyone disrupting one's movie experience as explained by this former-customer on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/1L3eeC2lJZs
Cheers, John