Sony BRAVIA 9 - Home Cinema Has a New Home; the Old One

Well, I have to say, I didn't see this coming.

I remember when Sony seemed to be at the leading edge of so many consumer electronic devices, starting with Playstation then right across the board. Be it a flat panel TV, a surround sound speaker system or even just a pair of headphones - if it was Sony, it always seemed cooler somehow.

Some of it was down to design. Some of it was about performance. No doubt, a lot of it was hype. Certainly, being inextricably intertwined with the magic of Hollywood movie production only added to the overall effect of the brand. Sony was cool.

Then, more recently, I feel like in some areas Sony sat back on its heels a little. Obviously Playstation keeps doing its thing but particularly with TVs, suddenly other manufacturers seemed to be hogging the limelight, innovating new panel technologies, operating systems and in some cases changing the size and shape of TVs completely.

Sony was still part of the equation but had begun to lose out when shoppers made the all-important in-store comparisons.

This year, Sony has made a powerful attempt at regaining the crown of cool. BRAVIA is back in a big, big way...

Firstly, I mean that quite literally. The flagship BRAVIA 9 I'm reviewing here only comes in 75 and 85-inch variants so if you're looking for anything smaller, you'll need to consider one of the other BRAVIA options.

Luckily for me, I have the perfect wall in my living room for a 75-inch screen. Don't underestimate how much heavier a TV of this size is though. Setting it up will require at least two people, especially when it comes to attaching the feet which slot into the base of the BRAVIA 9, meaning the whole TV needs to be carefully lifted and positioned several times. Maybe get a third person, just in case.

While brute strength is required to attach them, the aesthetic design of the feet is to my personal taste; very minimalistic. They're essentially flat and can be installed at each end of the TV or in a more central position if, like me, your entertainment unit isn't quite as wide as this massive telly.

The rear of the BRAVIA 9 is a look we've seen on previous Sony TVs; a featureless array of black plastic squares, disguising removable panels for the legs and cables. The whole design is slim (without being super-slim) and uniform, prioritising tidy cables and integration with the new BRAVIA soundbars.

The remote control also appeals to my minimalistic tendencies. It's small, without being easy to lose and has about the right number of buttons, including a Google Assistant button for voice commands. (Whether this will morph into a Gemini AI button in future software updates, who could say?) As most TV remotes seem to have these days, there's a bank of shortcut buttons to take you directly to apps like Netflix, Disney Plus and Prime Video. I'm not sure if I would have dedicated a whole button the the anime-centric Crunchyroll service and we'll deal with a thing called Sony Pictures Core shortly.

The best thing about the remote is the backlit buttons light up whenever you grab it, making it far less likely that you'll push the wrong button in the dark.

Turn the BRAVIA 9 on and once you're all set up you'll be confronted with a home screen that'll be very familiar if you've ever used any Google TV or Android TV devices. It's not my favourite. You get giant, changing and worst of all, sponsored viewing recommendations that take up the top half of the screen. These are usually for things I've already seen or are for platforms I don't subscribe too.

Then you have a row of smaller thumbnails... also recommendations... also for things that don't seem particularly relevant to my interests, particularly when most of them I've already watched or decided not to.

There doesn't seem to be any way to customise any of this which is pretty crazy when you consider you've just paid almost $7k for this TV.

Many of these recommendations are for the aforementioned Sony Pictures Core, a kind of Sony-centric movie streaming service that lets you download and keep your own copy of the movies you select... for a price. You get ten free credits when you first sign in along with the ability to stream for 24 months but unless you're really determined to curate your own movie library, I don't quite see the attraction.

Once you scroll past all the recommendations you may or may not appreciate, things get good. There's a row of your installed apps which thankfully IS customisable and because this is essentially a Google TV, you've got access to one of the widest selections of smart TV apps available.

Below that, there's a Continue Watching row. Click on a thumbnail and you'll jump right back into the show or movie you were only halfway through, regardless of which app it was on. Nice.

Confusingly, there are two settings buttons on the remote. One is more specific to the user interface - screensavers, Wi-Fi settings, software updates - that sort of thing. The other, a little spanner icon, brings up a dashboard of quick settings along the bottom of the screen which are more to do with tweaking the panel itself - although, there is some overlap and when you click on any of them enough times you'll eventually end up in the same place.

Overall, I find the UI easy enough to navigate and I like the way I can make some adjustments to sound and picture without stopping my movie or show.

As for the main event, this TV looks brilliant. The Sony XR processor is driving a 4K Ultra HD, Mini LED panel with full HDR that adjusts the picture to the ambient room conditions. What that means is even in a sunny, far-too-bright-for-TV living room like mine, the BRAVIA 9 shines through, quite literally.

Sony's X-Wide Angle and X-Anti Reflection technology mean this huge panel looks perfect from pretty much anywhere in the room. Sony seems to have collaborated with every major streaming service to tweak the picture automatically to make the most of whichever content you're consuming and you can take advantage of Dolby Vision and IMAX enhancement too. In fact, there are at least ten different preset picture modes to enhance whatever your content is; from photos to TV to blockbusters to gaming.

The picture is very bright and always clear, regardless of what you're watching - dark chase scenes, glaring snowscapes, frantic sports action or just the news. Even in Vivid mode, I've found the colours never really get carried away, keeping it real and not oversaturated as is sometimes the case on other displays.

And then we come to the speaker performance which was almost the biggest surprise of all. Somewhere in the BRAVIA 9 there are two tweeters, two mid-range drivers, two beam tweeters and two subwoofers. Although you can't see any of them, once you conduct the Acoustic Auto Calibration, you end up with an immersive, room-filling sound. I wouldn't describe the surround effects achieved by bouncing sound off the walls and ceiling to be distractingly convincing or the bass-response from the woofers to be vibratingly boomfy but it's good enough that I don't think about it when I'm watching something. The only time I've felt the need to tweak anything was watching the mumbling frogmen on Seal Team. Luckily, you can easily boost dialogue and lower surround effects so I could fully appreciate "Bravo One's" existential crisis as he blew up some kind of drug factory in Myanmar.

I could go on and on about how good this TV is. It's so good, I've pretty much much forgotten those things I was complaining about before with the home screen. Now I'm like, who cares? The performance of the BRAVIA 9 is a truly barnstorming return to the top ranks of TVs available today.

        

Click here for more information and pricing on the Sony BRAVIA 9.