Sony A95L (XR-65A95L) Review | Trusted Reviews

Introduction

Every flagship Sony TV is one I look forward to seeing, none more so than the A95L QD-OLED.

The A95K that preceded it was a corker of a OLED TV, and the A95L proved to be every bit as impressive as this model. However, time waits for no one, and with this TV out for almost 18 months, its successor waits in the wings in the form of the Bravia 8 II.

The Sony A95L remains an impressive TV, but is it still worth a buy in 2025 with the Bravia 8 II around the corner?

Price

The Sony A95L went on sale in 2023 for £3699 / $3499 for the 65-inch model, while the 55-inch model sold for £2999 / $2799 and the 77-inch model was priced at £5999 / $4999.

The 65-inch model which is being reviewed has dropped down to £2799 / $2999, which is still a hefty amount considering that the 2024 65-inch Samsung S95D is £1999 / $1999.

Design

• New feet
• Wide footprint
• Minimalist looks

A few tweaks have been made to the Sony XR-65A95L’s design that incorporates feedback from the A95K.

Instead of the stand that acted as a counterweight to keep the TV upright, Sony has switched to blade feet. These feet can be positioned in one of two ways for the 65-inch screen: towards the edges or in the ‘lift’ the screen to position a soundbar beneath.

Which means that you’ll need a wide surface to accommodate this screen. The stands I used to test are made for 65-inch TVs, and the A95L still ends up hanging off the sides.

Annoyingly, feet for the 77-inch model has a centre position. It’d more useful if all sizes had the central position too.

Otherwise, the rear panel doesn’t jut out as much as previous Sony OLEDs, looking slimmer and more discreet. That’ll suit those looking to wall-mount. The rear also uses Sony’s Sorplas material that it says reduces the use of virgin plastic. The box the TV comes in has been reduced in size by 15%, plastic materials reduced by 35%, and ink usage down by 90%.

The design has a minimalist aluminium bezel, and in its ‘One Slate’ orientation (feet out towards the edges) it takes on a massive, all-encompassing, room-dominating feel.

The screen features a heat diffusion sink to manage and distribute energy and heat more efficiently, and avoid image retention. The A95L also comes packaged with the Bravia Cam that connects to the top of the screen.

User Experience

• Google TV interface
• Tweaked Sony menu settings
• UK catch-up apps support

The interface remains Google TV, but there’s a revised menu system part of a new platform that Sony rolled out to its 2024 TVs.

This new menu system has a more fluid look and bigger icons that get bigger when hovered over. It can be edited to add features for quicker access such as audio settings, ambient optimisation, picture settings, and expert panel settings.

Google TV puts personalisation and recommendations at its core, so the more you put in the more you’re likely to get back in terms of useful content, especially if you give it access to the streaming apps you frequently use. There’s no Freeview Play but UK catch-up apps are included.

Visually it’s an upgrade over Android TV with more useful information (such as Rotten Tomatoes ratings) that may influence what you decide to watch. I like Google TV – it’s swift, responsive, and mostly intuitive.

The new remote is backlit – helpful in a darkened room – with a nice aluminium finish. You’ll find menu keys, a key for Google Dashboard, an app key for direct access to the Sony-owned Crunchyroll anime streaming service. A conventional remote with more buttons is packaged with the TV too.

Gaming

• Dolby Vision Gaming support
• PS Remote Play feature

The Sony A95L’s gaming specs have been revised with the introduction of Dolby Vision Gaming, though the PS5 does not (as yet) support this HDR feature, which currently leaves this an option only for the Xbox Series consoles.

4K/120Hz is possible as the A95L supports a suite of Perfect for PlayStation 5 features. That refers to the (useful) Auto HDR Tone Mapping that automatically senses the TV’s HDR performance and calibrates accordingly. Auto Genre Picture Mode is a fancy term for the TV’s auto low latency mode for the TV’s fastest performance.

I measured that latency at 16.2ms, which is good but short of the likes of Samsung and LG. Even at 120Hz (at 1080p) and the Sony A95L records 7.9ms, which is slower than the Philips OLED908.

The A95L has HDMI VRR support, but there’s no room for PC gamers with any AMD or Nvidia VRR.

The PS Remote Play feature makes it possible to play games on the PS5 (or PS4) regardless of where you are – you don’t even have to be on the same Wi-Fi network. There’s no 4K support and ideally you wouldn’t use this feature with a game that requires fast twitch responses like an first person shooter.

Game Menu sees Sony take a leaf out of other TV brands’ playbooks to make it easier to change game settings on the fly. There are specific modes to choose from to enhance the performance for FPS, real-time strategy games, or Standard.

Depending on the mode, it’ll improve the brightness/adjust the gamma to give you a peek into those OLED black levels to spot an enemy.

Connectivity

• Two HDMI 2.1 inputs
• Bravia Cam

Connectivity ranges four HDMI inputs, two of which are HDMI 2.1 inputs. Others include an RF terrestrial cable, two satellite inputs, digital audio output, two USB inputs, and Ethernet for a hardwired connection to the Internet.

Wirelessly there’s Wi-Fi (naturally), Chromecast, AirPlay 2, and Bluetooth 5.2.

The BRAVIA Cam also comes with the A95L as standard. It can dim the screen’s brightness by sensing when you’re in front of the TV or away, and with its Ambient Optimization Pro feature it can optimise the picture for where you’re sitting (as well as angling the output of sound).

There are other features such as gesture control, which works better than you’d expect, even if it’s not as quick as simply using the remote.

Features

• Dolby Vision HDR
• IMAX Enhanced support
• Sony Pictures Core streaming

Sony has also added screensavers in a similar way to Samsung’s Ambient Mode, whereby you can have a selection of screenshots when the screen is idle.

AV support offers HDR10, HLG, and Dolby Vision HDR (for films and TV), along with IMAX Enhanced (which is compatible with Sony Pictures Core) and Netflix Adaptive Calibrated mode returns. Dolby Atmos is supported, as are DTS variants that include DTS:X.

The Sony Pictures Core feature offers 5, 10 or 15 credits to redeem movie purchases (you can pay for more), and up to 24 months of streaming. It’s effectively a store and streaming service put together, but requires an 80Mbits connection to get up and running.

Since 2023 , Sony has placed an emphasis on making customers aware of their energy consumption. The Eco Dashboard presents a picture of a tree, and as you change settings to reduce energy it gets bigger.

Picture Quality

• Colourful image across all modes
• Impressive motion processing
• Not the best near-dark performance

Let’s start with its brightness. The Sony A95L’s peak brightness has gone up in some picture modes: 1573 nits and 1669 nits in Professional and Vivid mode respectively on a 5% window. However, I recorded both Cinema and Standard modes at 525 and 507 nits on the same window. Sony did a similar thing with the Bravia 8 OLED, raising brightness in some picture modes but reducing it in others.

On paper, the A95L is capable of great HDR brightness but it’s not interested in the razzle dazzle of the Samsung S95C or LG G3 OLED TVs.

The extra brightness provides headroom for improvements in colour volume. Blues are slightly brighter and more luminescent, green tones have more depth, yellows have more shades to them – the differences can be subtle, but they add up to an impressively colourful picture.

The Sony A95L does still produces a red push to skin tones and colours in general, colour tuning that’s also evident on the A80L and X85L models. It makes for a rosier looking image, especially with skin tones, but I wonder whether it’s accurate to the filmmaker’s intentions.

White tones are purer on this QD-OLED than on WOLED panels, where they appear richer but the Sony A95L makes them stand out with strong sense brilliance in a film such as Midsommar and The Marvels.

Detail levels with 4K content are impressive, as the Sony A95L puts in a performance that looks very naturalistic with a film like Oppenheimer or The Marvels without producing a picture that looks over-sharpened or heavy-handed picture processing.

The highlights are the area where the A95L doesn’t quite stand out compared to the Philips OLED908, looking a little dimmer to my eyes.

Like the 1st gen QD-OLEDs, black levels in a bright room can look grey, but turn the lights off and they’re much stronger. However, I do think its near-dark black level performance could be improved.

The Philips is much more forthcoming in giving viewers a peak into its deep blacks (in a bright room at least) whereas the Sony seems to lack detail.

And blacks can either look a little crushed in Blade Runner 2049. With SDR content the A95L conjures up impressively deep and rich blacks along with bright highlights to create images full of contrast.

And Sony’s Motion Clarity XR continues to be the best among 4K TVs , mainly because it doesn’t introduce as much Soap Opera Effect. Pushed to its maximum settings and there is judder, instability and blurriness with movement, but the Sony A95L keeps a steadier hand than most.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World is a film that’s full of motion and movement and I cannot stress how naturally the Sony deals with the whip camera cams, speed ramps, and quick martial arts action. With tricky content the Sony A95L can stumble, but not as much as other flagship TVs.

With regards to the Vivid mode, I disagree with my colleague who reviewed the XR-55A95L – the Vivid mode isn’t bad, and I’d say it takes a much more conservative approach compared to LG and Samsung TVs.

Brightness is upped, but it’s not as bright as the LG G3. With Cinderella, the A95L puts the emphasis on saturation and colour volume without looking garish or unnatural, with better shadow detailing and less noise than the G3.

Upscaling

• Natural, colourful upscaling

Slip down resolutions to a Blu-ray of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and there’s no obvious artefacts that I can see, with a sharpness to how the A95L outlines its edges but the image is free from noise.

Watching SDR content in Professional mode looks accurate, but isn’t too bright – swapping to Cinema mode brings out more in the blues and reds of the Time Square sequence where Spider-Man battles Electro – like the A95K, the A95L looks fabulously cinematic at times.

And a fall to DVD resolution of Inglorious Basterds and the Sony continues its impressive upscaling performance.

In the test room the Sony A95L looked natural enough, edges handled well with enough detail wrung from the image without looking unnatural.

Sound Quality

• Firm sense of definition
• Good clarity with voices
• Punchy low frequencies

The Sony XR-65A95L sports the same Acoustic Surface Audio technology where the entire screen acts as a speaker. The actuators ‘vibrate’ the screen to produce the sound you hear.

The A95L sounds a little warmer than the A95K sounding, but dialogue is delivered firmly and clearly while low frequencies are punchy and surprisingly big in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. It’s not a substitute for a subwoofer, but if you don’t already have a soundbar it’ll do for the meantime.

The set’s levels of dynamism, intensity and overall loudness are better than most TVs on the market, which helps with action movies, and the scale and width of its output is impressive.

The LG G4 is clearer with voices, while the Philips OLED908 is an even better all-round proposition: clearer, with more bass impact and a weightier sound compared to the Sony’s slightly thinner sense of expression. Still, this is one of the better TV sound systems on any TV.

Should you buy it?

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