Meet Maggie, PCMag'sSony’s latest flagship TV embraces RGB LED technology to offer a bright picture with an impressively wide color range. It’s full of features, including Google TV with hands-free Google Gemini, Wi-Fi 6E, ATSC 3.0, and a built-in 2.2.2-channel spatial audio system. That said, it’s very expensive at $3,599.99 for the 65-inch model I tested, and it suffers from the increasingly common drawbacks I see in RGB LED TVs, such as light bloom, poor off-angle viewing, and inconsistent color performance. So while the Bravia 9 II is the best RGB LED TV I’ve tested, you can do better with models that use more well-established technologies. The Samsung S95H ($3,299.99 for 65 inches) is an OLED TV that looks fantastic from any angle, with vivid colors and no light bloom. It's also especially good for gaming, earning it an Editors' Choice award and a PCMag Lab award for lowest input lag.
The Bravia 9 II is dark, thin, and unassuming, with a single narrow black bezel running along the bottom edge of the screen and a thin metal band framing the top and sides. It stands on a flat, rectangular metal foot that holds the TV up on two thin legs with chrome accents. The space between the legs appears empty, but a reflective, lenticular panel between them helps conceal any connected cables (I missed installing the panel when I set the TV up on its stand for testing). You can also mount the TV on the wall.
The included remote is a long, narrow black rectangle with volume and channel rockers in the middle and a circular navigation pad right above them. It has five thin dedicated service buttons for Amazon Prime Video, Crunchyroll, Disney+, Netflix, and YouTube, plus a sixth shortcut button that can open a Google TV app or control a smart home device of your choice.
One more dedicated service button is near the top, and it’s the worst part of the remote. Sony Pictures Core, Sony’s on-demand movie streaming service, is the largest and most prominent button, easy to find under the thumb, while the Home button for the entire smart TV platform is a tiny nub to the lower-right of the navigation pad. I can guarantee that any user will want to access the home screen more often than they will access Sony Pictures Core. The big round button should have been Home, with Sony Pictures Core placed alongside the other apps, each of which has a much larger scope and more content.
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Despite the frustrating button placement, the remote has some good aspects, including a built-in battery you can charge through a USB-C port on the bottom, so you don’t have to look for new batteries every few months. In addition, the buttons are also backlit, lighting up when you pick up the remote so you can see what you’re pressing in the dark.
Sony uses Google TV as its smart platform of choice, giving the Bravia 9 II a robust streaming system. All major streaming services are available, including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Crunchyroll, Disney+, Netflix, Twitch, and YouTube, as well as Apple AirPlay and Google Cast for local streaming.
Google’s Gemini AI assistant is also present, with a far-field microphone array for hands-free voice commands. Gemini can provide general information, search for content to watch, control both the TV and any compatible smart home devices, and perform a variety of other tasks.
The Bravia 9 II’s built-in 2.2.2-channel spatial audio speaker system delivers an impressively large, detailed sound field. The Death Star trench run in Star Wars sounds loud and full on the TV, with strong directional imaging that really gives the feeling of TIE Fighters screeching across the room, made especially immersive by height channels that add a sense of verticality to the sounds. Explosions and blaster shots are powerful, and dialogue can be clearly heard.
The 4K Sony Bravia 9 II is an RGB LED TV, which means it uses clusters of red, green, and blue LEDs to illuminate its LCD panel and expand the range of colors it can display. It has a 120Hz refresh rate and supports high dynamic range (HDR) content in Dolby Vision, HDR10, and hybrid log gamma (HLG). It has Wi-Fi 6E for wireless connectivity, and an ATSC 3.0 tuner for 1080p and 4K over-the-air broadcasts.
I use a Klein K-10A colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays’ Calman software to measure the light and color levels of TVs, and the Bravia 9 II is among the brightest. Out of the box, with an HDR signal in HDR10 Cinema mode, the Bravia 9 II shows a peak brightness of 848 nits with a full-screen white field, 2,588 nits with an 18% white field, and 3,654 nits with a 10% white field. That’s actually a bit brighter than the TCL QM8L ($2,499.99 for 65 inches), though the TCL shows higher luminance when it’s not uniformly lighting up the whole panel (773 nits full-screen, 3,504 nits 18%, 3,956 nits 10%), so it retains our Lab Award for brightest TV.
The Bravia 9 II shows impressive colors in testing, with a few caveats. The above charts show the TV’s color levels with an SDR signal in Cinema mode compared against Rec.709 broadcast standards, with an HDR10 signal in Cinema mode compared against DCI-P3 digital cinema standards, and with a Dolby Vision signal in Dolby Vision Bright mode compared against DCI-P3. In both SDR and HDR10, the Bravia 9 II’s whites consistently run a bit cool, even at the TV’s warmest color temperature setting. They aren’t the outright bluish whites most TVs’ Standard and Vivid modes get, but they aren’t quite as warm as they should be. Fortunately, this coolness doesn’t drag cyans or magentas down toward blue, and all of the colors seem balanced and accurate.
As for color range, the Bravia 9 II has an incredibly wide reach. The above charts show color levels relative to the BT.2020 color space, which has a much wider gamut than DCI-P3. Both charts use the same data, but the left one displays it with the CIE31 map, which depicts color as measured across the full range of human vision, while the right chart uses CIE76 to better show how we perceive differences between colors. The Bravia 9 II covers 87.44% of BT.2020 in CIE31 and 90.34% in CIE76, comparable with the TCL QM8L (86.96%/91.34%) and falling slightly short of the Samsung R95H (91.3%/93.7%). So far, no TV has actually covered the full BT.2020 space in my tests, but hitting 90% is impressive.
Despite their high numbers, these color levels don’t truly represent the viewing experience, which is an issue I’ve found with all RGB LED TVs so far. I take these measurements using test patterns with flat blocks of color, which a TV’s backlight system can enhance by brightening or dimming its red, green, or blue LEDs. When the panel has to show a more complex image with a wider variety of colors, it must tamp down that activity to avoid color bleed, where edges between different hues can tint or skew due to the RGB LEDs. This means the TV will err toward gentler colors or flat white, preventing most video content from actually showing the full range of color it’s technically capable of.
The “Islands” episode of the BBC’s Planet Earth II looks very good on the Bravia 9 II. The greens of plants and the blues of water and sky are vibrant and saturated. Animal fur and tree bark show fine textures under both sun and shade. The result is a lifelike picture.
The Bravia 9 II shows fairly strong contrast in the party scenes in The Great Gatsby, but the backlight seems to play it a bit safe to avoid light bloom. White shirts, lights, and balloons stand out well against black jackets and dark hair and retain plenty of highlight detail, though they don’t shine as brightly as the test numbers would indicate. The cuts and contours of suits are usually visible, though at times their finer details can be obscured by darkness.
Brightness is no issue with the demonstration footage of snowy landscapes on the Spears & Munsil Ultra HD benchmark disc. The Bravia 9 II puts out plenty of light while showing loads of highlight detail like cloud wisps and snowflakes against white skies and ground. The TV can be much more aggressive with its backlight when it isn’t dealing with a mostly dark frame. Even clips with large dark sections, like woods and cliffs at sunset, can show bright highlights.
Color looks very good on most of the demonstration footage, but the Bravia 9 II seems to err toward desaturating and balancing the RGB LEDs rather than pushing colors further with color backlighting when many different colors are clustered together. This prevents color bleed, but it also limits when the TV can really show off its full color range. A green lizard with big, bright red eyes taking up most of the frame can look vibrant, while varied landscapes of evergreen trees, yellow-red ground, and blue water won’t appear as saturated. The colors still look very good, but for a lot of content, an OLED TV like the LG C6 ($3,399.99 for 65 inches) or the Samsung S95H will look more colorful despite showing a narrower color range.
Torture-test shots of brightly colored objects against black backgrounds bring out a light bloom on the Bravia 9 II, which isn’t surprising. A gentle light haze can be seen along the edges of vibrant flowers in these clips. The light bloom is primarily visible along vertical edges, and I saw very little vertical bloom in the black bars of the anamorphic letterboxing of The Great Gatsby, fortunately. Light bloom increases significantly when viewing the TV off-angle, which is a common occurrence with RGB LED TVs, but general contrast and color saturation don’t shift too wildly as you move to the side.
Sony proudly describes the 120Hz Bravia 9 II as “Perfect for PlayStation 5,” and it can automatically sync with a PS5 system to enable features like automatic gaming mode and automatic HDR tone mapping. For PC gaming, it’s Nvidia G-Sync compatible, but doesn’t have AMD FreeSync.
Using a Leo Bodnar 4K Video Signal Input Lag Tester, I measured a latency of just 9.8 milliseconds with a 4K60 signal. That’s excellent, less than two-thirds of a frame. Results with a 1080120 signal were a different story, showing an input lag of 31.6ms. That's unusually high, and after speaking with Sony about it and comparing notes with colleagues, I’m going to chalk it up as a testing aberration. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to retest the TV with a 1080p120 signal. Still, its 4K60 performance is certainly fast enough to be considered good for gaming.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
Sony 65-Inch Bravia 9 II
- 5.0 - Exemplary: Near perfection, ground-breaking
- 4.5 - Outstanding: Best in class, acts as a benchmark for measuring competitors
- 4.0 - Excellent: A performance, feature, or value leader in its class, with few shortfalls
- 3.5 - Good: Does what the product should do, and does so better than many competitors
- 3.0 - Average: Does what the product should do, and sits in the middle of the pack
- 2.5 - Fair: We have some reservations, buy with caution
- 2.0 - Subpar: We do not recommend, buy with extreme caution
- 1.5 - Poor: Do not buy this product
- 1.0 - Dismal: Don't even think about buying this product
Read Our Editorial Mission Statement and Testing Methodologies.
The Sony Bravia 9 II is the best RGB LED TV I’ve tested, and it's brighter than the Samsung R95H. Its colors aren’t as vivid as they look on a high-end OLED TV like the Samsung S95H, however. In addition, the Bravia 9 II has issues with light bloom and off-angle viewing. Based on my testing, these flaws might be fundamental to RGB LED TVs, which makes it hard for me to recommend this or any model that uses the technology. For the best overall viewing experience, the Samsung S95H is our top pick, with a stunning picture and a built-in 4.2.2-channel spatial audio speaker system. If you want to spend less, the TCL QM8L offers a supremely bright picture with incredibly wide colors.
About Our Expert
I’m PCMag’s home theater and AR/VR expert, and your go-to source of information and recommendations for game consoles and accessories, smart displays, smart glasses, smart speakers, soundbars, TVs, and VR headsets. I’m an ISF-certified TV calibrator and THX-certified home theater technician, I've served as a CES Innovation Awards judge, and while Bandai hasn’t officially certified me, I’m also proficient at building Gundam plastic models up to MG-class. I also enjoy genre fiction writing, and my urban fantasy novel, Alex Norton, Paranormal Technical Support, is currently available on Amazon.
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