So I’ve been a Sony A80J OLED TV owner for around two and half years now. I purchased the 65″ model for £1,599 in the Black Friday sales back in 2021. Now we’re in 2024 so I’ve had more than enough time to form an opinion of all aspects of this premium television.
Overall this has been a great purchase for me, the picture quality has generally been fantastic, but there have been a few minor negatives that we’ll come on to. I’ll also discuss how it’s holding up in terms of burn-in and image retention.
Design
First up I still love the minimal industrial design style of the A80J, I have the feet configured at the lowest setting for the cleanest look.
The supplied remote control is ok I guess, but is twice the size it really needs to be. However this isn’t a big deal as I mostly use my Apple TV 4K controller.
On the back of the TV I have a 5M LED light strip from Govee that goes around the edges of the panel. This is controlled via the Govee mobile app and looks awesome when playing games or watching regular TV, but I do turn it off when watching movies.
Specs
Specs wise the A80J is pretty much standard for a premium OLED TV, it’s a 4K panel with HDR, Dolby Vision, VRR and 120Hz refresh rate.
However it only has two HDMI 2.1 ports, one of which is the eARC port, so this isn’t ideal if you have two games consoles.
When I first got this TV I only had a PS5, so it wasn’t really an issue, but I now have a Xbox Series X as well. However as a workaround you can manually switch the HDMI cables, or use a HDMI 2.1 splitter.
Gaming Performance + ABL
Apart from the HDMI limitations, gaming on the A80J has been awesome. Performance has been excellent and games are nice and responsive with input lag coming in around 16ms at 4K/60.
If you have a PS5 the A80J auto-detects the console so you’re straight into game mode when you fire it up. There’s also an auto-HDR calibration feature tailor made for the PS5.
That being said there have been a couple of negatives when gaming, the ABL dimming kicks in sometimes which can be slightly annoying, I’ve mostly noticed this when playing Forza and GT7. Thankfully this doesn’t happen too often, but it does occur from time to time with games that have a lot of graphics.
I’ve also noticed some temporary image retention when gaming on this TV, again from playing games with lots of graphics like Apex Legends. However it always disappears after a short while so isn’t anything to worry about.
I’ve done a tonne of HDR gaming on this TV and after two and a half years there are zero signs of any burn-in, so I don’t think that’s going to be an issue.
Movies + Picture Quality
For TV and movie streaming the A80J has been a fantastic performer. Picture quality is superb with the black levels and contrast you’d expect from an OLED TV.
The XR image processor really does an awesome job, images look detailed yet natural at the same time. Of course you’d expect 4K/HDR video to look great, but the A80J also does an exceptional job with regular 1080P streaming.
Colour accuracy is another strong point of this TV, it looks great right out of the box when using the custom picture mode and expert 1 colour temperature. For regular SDR TV viewing you can just leave it on these settings and not have to worry about it again.
Dolby Vision movies and TV shows look incredible on this TV, you have Dolby Vision Bright and Dark modes to choose from, depending on if you have any ambient light in your room.
HDR Brightness
HDR brightness is good but not great, and is the only minor complaint I have with the otherwise awesome picture quality of this TV.
Before I had the A80J, I had a full-array LCD TV that had that noticeably brighter HDR highlights.
Now don’t get me wrong, I far prefer the OLED, picture quality is significantly better overall and HDR content looks excellent, but I do sometimes wish that the HDR highlights had just a little more impact.
Peak brightness was never the strong point of OLED TVs, however now we’re in 2024 there are much brighter options available with QD-OLED and MLA technology.
Final Thoughts
So to conclude I’d say the A80J has been a fantastic buy for me, even after two and half years I still appreciate the stellar image quality when watching movies or playing video games.
Now I have two games consoles, I do wish it had more HDMI 2.1 ports, and I would like it to a little brighter at times, but really these are the only minor complaints I have about an overall excellent TV.
So whilst there might be better and brighter OLEDs on the market now, I have no plans to upgrade my A80J for another two or three years.
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