 This is absolutely outrageous. Who in their right freaking mind would pay this much for a 65 inch TV when they could have literally 10 of them for the same money? And then be happy with their purchase. A lot of people apparently. Everyone from the media to enthusiasts on AVS forum is absolutely raving about the Sony A90J, a TV that costs $3,800 US dollars for the 65 inch model. I thought we were past this. I thought TVs were cheap now. Well, apparently not. If you want to build one with LG's second generation OLED panel and Sony's unparalleled image processing. Boy, does this thing ever have a lot to live up to. Like our sponsor, ESR. ESR's new Halo lock system gives you convenient and stylish ways to wirelessly charge your phone using MagSafe. Learn more and enter to win an iPhone 12 by watching until the end of the video or clicking the link in the video description. What does all that money get you? At first glance, the super thin bezels of the A90J will please all but the strictest minimalist wannabes. At just 4.1 centimeters thick, it looks great mounted to the wall. Or if a cabinet is more your style, you get two options elevated for soundbar integration or full Van Damme style for a nearly bottomless look. There's three USB ports here and here, Ethernet, optical audio and a headphone jack alongside an array of HDMI ports, four in total. But this is where we hit our first speed bump. Only two of the A90J's HDMIs are full fat 48 gigabit per second HDMI 2.1, which is a real shame since Samsung and LG are offering 2.1 support across every port in this price tier. But it makes sense at a hardware level. The reason LG and Samsung are ahead of the pack is because they bit the bullet and developed their own SoCs to process HDMI 2.1. Sony, on the other hand, uses a MediaTek SoC. A cost savings for sure, but one that has changed them to the features or lack thereof of a third party solution. Of course, no one buys a TV to look at the back anyway. And from the front, it's easy to forget that whatever I was just talking about. I mean, look at it. It is hard to believe how far we've come in quality, price and performance in just a few short years. I mean, inky blacks as always. But the star of the show here is the stars. LG boasted that their second generation panels were so named for their huge leap forward in brightness, then proceeded to tell us to expect about a 20% uplift, which to me sounded more like an incremental step than worthy of being called second gen. Then I got to experience them side by side and yeah, between the more precise color and increased brightness, it looks a lot better. But awkward thing, LG has their own product based on this panel coming soon, the G1, and for a lower cost. Why would anyone buy a Sony? Sony's image processing for starters. Historically, it's been the best in the biz and the A90J is no slouch either, with some tweaks. You got just an emotion, your motion flow, your random and digital noise reduction, and why not some smooth gradation? I mean, I'm grateful all these dials exist, but reality creation Sony? Reality creation. Why not just call it AI assisted sharpening? Because it's actually really good. So it can be a little exhausting, trial and erroring all the dials, but thankfully, once you've got it just right, it looks amazing and your settings will be saved and synced to their respective inputs. Dolby Atmos also makes an appearance here alongside HDR10 and Dolby Vision Dynamic HDR. So these are more top tier features that are expected from a flagship OLED. But there's one glaring omission. The lack of variable refresh rate support is something I just can't skip over. It is promised, apparently by winter 2021, but the thing is Sony, this same company, is now six months behind Microsoft on variable refresh rate for the PlayStation 5, which is a great reminder that when you buy something, you have to evaluate and purchase what it offers now and not go based on what's promised. So what that means is that LG C10 or C1 lineup is still the go-to for gaming on the big screen. Once that update drops, however, Sony will have a very strong contender here. Because here's the thing, Sony has another trick up their sleeves. LG's second gen OLED TVs actually lack a key feature that Sony has built into the A90J, an aluminum sheet lamination layer. That is why 20% brighter look by so much, because it's way more than 20% thanks to that extra cooling. Sony is actually driving this thing as high as 1300 nits. Bloody hell, that is right up there with last generation quantum dot LED backlit TVs. And in practice, it makes for a fantastic viewing experience with 4K content, especially in HDR. Of course, a lot of our content isn't HDR or even high res for that matter. But the A90J shows its strengths here too. Bad upscaling can be worse than no upscaling. And most upscaling, honestly speaking, is bad. But Sony's algorithms put in work here and really do make a big difference. The Bravia XR processor is able to take what little information it's given and dynamically make local adjustments to contrast and gamma to bring pop back to parts of the image on screen. And the addition of the low Cinemotion setting, it was previously only an on and off toggle in the last generation X900H, means that you now have a nice middle ground for low bitrate streamed content enhancement. Essentially, what it does is tries to detect what sort of processing has already been done to your image, then tries to un-it. So cranking it up to high for highly compressed content like Netflix has a profound effect on the experience. Now, something that's plagued OLEDs in the past has been the lack of near blacks in very dark content, dubbed as near black chrominance overshoot by HDTV test. In our viewing of a handful of dark scenes though, we didn't see any blocking or lack of depth to the darks. So thumbs up from me there. Moving along to the other half of the TV experience though, how does it sound? Great. Actually, really great. The surprisingly crisp sound profile comes thanks to dual primary actuators that are mounted directly behind the screen at 10 watts per channel, along with dual 20 watt subwoofers for the low end. And as a result of the well designed audio package, I would actually think twice before outfitting this TV with a sound bar. I mean, a sound bar along with a dedicated subwoofer to bring some low end grunt back? Yeah, there's no replacement for displacement. But even so, I can comfortably say that the sound here is best in class for being integrated. As they say though, good hardware is nothing without good software. And included in the A90J's tool quiver is a super easy automatic room EQ. It leverages the microphone and the remote to measure and adjust the speaker output based on how your space reacts to sound and your seating location. And I can actually show you this. Yay! Pew pew! And that's it. There is no manual EQ, thumbs down for that. But we focused the auto configurator to a couple of different seating positions and I can verify it does make a difference. If you're more of an AV receiver person, you can also use the TV as a center channel over eARC to add to a full speaker setup. But if your other speakers don't match Sony's acoustic timber, you might be better off getting something that's a closer match anyway. Sony's new remote is a breath of fresh air. Everyone else is trying to do simpler, simpler, simpler. And this just has all the features, which personally I prefer. It's larger, longer, there's four shortcuts to the usual bunch of content providers and the aluminized top is a nice touch, pun intended. It's sturdy and comfortable to use with nice grippy backing and this might seem minor, but having the remote light up when it's jostled is so nice when you're looking for it in the dark. All other TV makers, please take note. And as for the software on the TV, Google TV is a really nice improvement over the more dated Android TV and the experience is much better for it. Finding content across all your services is easy with the built-in cross-platform search and menu navigation is snappy with all the Google integrated services that you could wish for. There's also Apple AirPlay 2 if that's your preferred flavor of device, but hey, maybe you don't like flavor at all. You can just take a clean, refreshing sip of flavorless water. LTTstore.com. So where does that leave us? We've got a highly featured, very smart TV that kills it in the image processing department and uses the latest generation of OLED panel, seemingly to its utmost, along with a nice sound package and a sleek aesthetic. Would I buy one? No. Not for what I would want to use it for anyway. Variable refresh rate makes a huge difference for gaming and I suspect that matters to a lot of you as well. But if you're more of a passive content consumer and you play the occasional game and you can stomach the price, the A90J is a great TV as it is now. And when VRR gets added to the mix, it will be scary tempting. Just like I'm tempted to tell you about our sponsor. ESR. ESR wants to help make charging your iPhone 12 easier. Whether you're in the car or at the office, ESR has the product for you. The Halo Lock car charger uses MagSafe to keep your phone firmly attached to your dash while wirelessly charging it. And you can easily rotate your phone between landscape and portrait modes without removing the clamp. It charges it up to 7.5 watts for faster charging. And if you're at your desk, the Halo Lock kickstand charger uses MagSafe to keep your phone propped up for convenient viewing. The Halo Lock system supports any of the new iPhone 12 series phones caseless or you can use any iPhone with a MagSafe compatible case. ESR is also giving three lucky viewers a chance to win a brand new iPhone 12 and four ESR Halo Lock products. So get your Halo Lock chargers today and enter to win an iPhone 12 using the links down in the video description. If you guys like this video, maybe take a look at the other side of the coin with our video using LG C1048 inch as a monitor. That thing is so awesome.