The best combination of OLED and mini-LED TV picture quality we've seen yet.

The Mini-LED-based Sony Bravia 9 pulls out all stops to deliver a TV experience nearly on par with what you get from OLEDs, but with better brightness. You’ll have to forsake HDR color vibrancy and wide viewing angles, but not much else.

Overall, the Sony BRAVIA 9 is seriously impressive and easily the best Mini LED TV of 2024. It crushes it with brightness while maintaining excellent accuracy, has surprisingly good viewing angles, and brings some genuinely innovative features like that auto de-judder system that actually works. Plus, Sony's advanced backlight control system gives us contrast that's getting remarkably close to OLED territory, even with fewer dimming zones than some competitors.

The Bravia 9 is an excellent mini LED TV. As Sony demonstrated at the launch event, this TV performs really close to the BVM X3110 mastering monitor in professional mode. The colours are accurate, the whites and panel uniformity are amazing, the TV handles blacks and HDR with expertise, and the Audio is remarkable. When placed next to Bravia 8, the advantages of pixel-level control and higher contrast on OLEDs were quite clear, and not just in dark sequences. However, more often than not, you will be watching your TV in a bright well-lit room and in such settings, Bravia 9 can make everything else look dull. And unlike OLEDs, it can sustain high brightness in extended sequences, such as sports matches, without dimming the panel. And if you are not very particular about colour accuracy and prefer to enjoy content in boosted modes like Vivid and Standard, the scales further tilt in Bravia 9’s favour.

The Sony Bravia 9 is a mini-LED TV that manages to outdo its high-end TV competition when it comes to overall brightness. Its excellent local dimming presents strong competition for OLED TVs, and an anti-reflective screen makes it a great option for sports. Sony’s switch from OLED to mini-LED for its flagship TV seems well justified by the Bravia 9, and it’s also priced lower than other OLED and mini-LED flagships.

The Sony K-65XR90 delivers an outstanding, ultra-bright flat-panel display that closely matches the look of high-end Hollywood grading monitors, setting it apart from most TVs on the market. It can also integrate with Sony's optional Bravia 9 Theater Bar, wireless subwoofer, and wireless rear speakers, offering a seamless 360-degree Dolby Atmos/DTS surround sound experience.

There is no doubt that the BRAVIA9 (XR90) is a mightily impressive Mini LED TV that employs some cutting-edge technology and image processing to push on the performance capabilities of LCD TVs, even for critical movie watching in dim rooms. The image quality on offer is superb when sat directly onto the TV with some of the best HDR image quality I have seen this year, thanks to superb blacks and stunning peak brightness of up to 2800 nits. Colours are accurate with life-like skin tones and, of course, stunning motion and video processing performance from the XR processor.

Incredible brightness without blasting your eyes. Excellent overall picture quality and contrast out of the box. Fantastic clarity and detail. Vivid, beautifully refined colors. Deep black levels with very little blooming around bright objects. Impressive onboard sound. Good motion handling with granular smoothing settings. Solid, versatile design and packaging. Rechargeable backlit remote.

The Sony BRAVIA 9 is excellent for mixed usage. The TV gets very bright and has superb reflection handling, so it's suitable for use in a bright room. It also looks incredible in a dark room due to its exceptional contrast, and HDR content is impactful due to its incredible HDR brightness. It has modern gaming features that make it fully compatible with recent consoles, and its excellent response time delivers fast motion with minimal blur, which is great for playing video games or watching sports. Unfortunately, the TV's viewing angle is mediocre, limiting its usefulness for watching content with a large group of people.

The Sony Bravia 9 has its compromises, but when you see it kick into action with bright scenes, you’ll likely be willing to forgive it.

If you are after Sony's excellent video processing and a large TV without the same high premium price of the significantly better A95L QD-OLED, XR90 is one of the best LCD TVs available today. If your viewing position is well-suited to LCD, Sony XR90 is definitely a model worth considering.

Sony’s unique new LED backlight engine helps its latest top TV range deliver the brightest, most colourful and essentially most all-round futuristic pictures I’ve ever seen