Review on 📺 Reviewing the Sony XBR55A8F 55-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart BRAVIA OLED TV (2018 Model) - A Comprehensive Analysis by Drew Gengler

This 65 inch TV was ordered directly from Revain through Revain Prime. Unfortunately, Revain sent the TV via UPS, not the white delivery service you'd expect from a TV this expensive and big. The UPS delivery man did not want to deliver the TV. My wife saw him check the box and then left... On the third day of this horrible treatment, as the truck was about to leave, my tiny wife physically blocked the truck and demanded a TV. There was a horrible hole in the delivery box and the courier was very angry/aggressive but we took a chance and signed anyway. Luckily the TV wasn't damaged! It was a horrible experience (not at all what I imagined) and I would have thought twice before ordering this way. The hardware design of this TV feels very good. It's not too fragile and I like that there are no obvious speakers (which I wouldn't use). The view from the front and from all other directions is very clean without any problems. I would say that the design tasks were solved perfectly. This TV produces a very bright and clear picture. Out of the box, the picture mode (the main setting to change) is set to "Standard", which adds high-contrast texture processing to make the grains of sand and pores on the faces more visible, and to make whites a bit bluish ("Bright" is more blue). It's a very intense and (soon) tiring experience with over-the-top colors and textures, which is definitely not what the director intended. The picture is very revealing. After changing the picture mode to Custom or Cinema Pro, the colors and contrast appear correct with no additional contrast/color processing, and the white is correct. The image is still very bright, so I set it to half brightness (25 out of 50/max), which is still too bright to see in a darkened room. A professional review I read suggests setting the brightness to 9 out of 50/max when viewing in a completely dark room. OLED might not be able to deliver the extreme brightness required for HDR, but for normal viewing this TV feels like a light weapon. I haven't noticed any sign of burn-in yet, or even a faint afterimage. I also didn't notice the annoying light gray texture when the entire image is almost entirely black (like 5% black) as some have pointed out. The grayscale is excellent and the color decoding is excellent according to Blu-Ray calibration and the corresponding color filter. If the input signal quality is good, no banding or posterization is observed. The TV is connected to an Integra DHC 80.2 processor via HDMI ARC to send sound/control from the TV to the processor and through the amplifiers to the speakers. It works well. Some HDMI devices work better with the TV than others as they are recognized and can be selected as an input via the TV's input selection menu instead of using the Integra remote. I can select Roku and Chromecast from the TV input selector, but TiVO DVR and Oppo Blu-Ray player are not listed there and I have to use the CPU remote to select those inputs. I like that when I turn on the TV the Integra processor and amps turn on and then turn off when I turn the TV off. The TV remote control must be pointed straight at the white LED indicator on the bottom of the TV. , or aim at a reflective white ceiling or it won't work reliably. It's annoying. A strange problem I've noticed is that a network "ping" from a computer on the network loses half the packets, while all other components connected to the same switch don't lose any packets at all. It's not clear if this is a hardware or Android issue. Network apps like Netflix and YouTube work well when the TV is on and deliver a very clear picture so it doesn't seem like the hardware is at fault. Android TV takes some getting used to. It is not possible to disable/delete the Android apps that come with the TV. It's probably possible to change the position of the applications on the screen, but I haven't figured out how to move them yet. Additional apps can be added via the Google Play Store, but many of them cannot be used without an additional Bluetooth (or USB) keyboard due to text input. Many of your favorite Android apps are not available for Android TV. Make sure you use the search engine to find apps, otherwise many of them won't show up. In particular, the voice recognition is really very good and helps a lot when entering a search query. Unlike some others who have commented on Android TV in the past, I haven't noticed any particular sluggishness or lag when using the Android TV menus or apps. It seems fast enough to me. I still haven't figured out how to enable the Cast feature (ChromeCast built-in). The TV is hardwired over ethernet and seems confused when trying to use both ethernet and WI-Fi. The YouTube app provides a way to pair your phone with that app via WiFi or (obviously) a LAN-based pairing mechanism. I haven't tried any of the methods yet. Perhaps this will reveal Cast's hidden functionality. Note that while the TV comes with documentation on how to assemble it and turn it on, there is no documentation on the Android TV software or the Sony settings for it. There is a built-in help system that provides documentation on some items in the settings menu.