SONY XR - 55A90J

PREMIUM POWER

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There’s more to getting great performance than just chucking money at the problem, of course, but in some instances it’s absolutely the right thing to do. Take the Sony XR-55A90J OLED, for example: it is an awful lot of money for a 55in television, even if it does have a fancy-pants integrated audio system. But it’s worth every penny.

Sony has incorporated all of its cutting-edge TV technologies into the A90J: the new, super-fast and deeply intelligent XR processor is on board, with Acoustic Surface Audio+ trickery; the OS is now Google TV, a major upgrade on the Android TV system; Sony’s exclusive Bravia Core streaming service is included too, and it includes some IMAX Enhanced content. The A90J even has feet that can work in a couple of positions, so the screen can sit low or stand high enough to fit a soundbar beneath.

And performance, as the price demands, is profoundly impressive. The A90J is very bright by OLED standards, so contrasts absolutely pop from the screen. It can call on a seemingly limitless array of colours, and can describe minute differences in shade and texture easily. It handles on-screen motion with casual effortlessness, and can bring detail and subtlety to black tones just as convincingly as it can make them inkily deep. And it upscales even quite low-resolution content without having a panic attack.

Even the sound it makes is pretty decent by the standards of most televisions. In fact, Sony’s so pleased with the A90J’s audio that it’s fitted speaker binding posts on the back panel – so the entire screen can be the centre channel in a surround-sound setup. In short, everything the Sony does it does really well… and it does quite a lot.