As Sony‘s debut large-screen OLED incorporating its lauded Cognitive Processor XR, the Master Series A80 debuted in 2021 to enthusiasm from home theater devotees. With the processing might of Sony‘s best LED-LCD TVs married to inky OLED contrast, seasoned reviewers praised its balanced virtues spanning color, clarity and sound quality.
But early adopters also surfaced a handful of deficiencies that curtailed the experience for some use cases. As an aspiring buyer comparing your options, you want the full picture on where Sony‘s current OLED offering falls short of perfection. This guide will cover user complaints through the lens of an display industry expert, focusing on technical reasons and practical consequences.
We‘ll detail how choices made by Sony in designing the A80 rendered it inferior in certain aspects versus approaches by competitors LG, Samsung and Panasonic. You‘ll learn how minor shortcomings like processing can get magnified into major grievances over years of ownership.
And with 2023 models hitting the market, understanding where today‘s OLEDs still miss the mark will help you assess whether to jump now or hold off for further innovation.
Standout Features Define Sony‘s OLED Debut
Sony finally joining the OLED market marked a major milestone long awaited by home theater fans. While LG Display has produced exceptional panels for other brands like Sony and Panasonic, those manufacturers could never fully customize the hardware to match their processing and preferences.
The A80 changed this, with Sony intrinsically involved throughout the design process from lab to production. This allowed their engineers to tailor the panel characteristics and capabilities to optimize performance with Sony‘s renowned X1 video processors.
Highlights of Sony‘s Inaugural Large Screen OLED Model
- Self-illuminating panel allowing per-pixel light & color control
- Acoustic Surface Audio+ with onboard actuators
- Next-gen Cognitive Processor XR with AIP upscaling
- Google TV interface with hands-free Google Assistant
- Low input lag of ~15ms in game mode
With elite sound and vision from Sony‘s best processing packaged in a self-lit screen capable of dazzling contrast, the A80 looked to redefine premium LED-LCD territory for discerning enthusiasts.
But for all its advancements, early reviews surfaced shortcomings in areas like brightness and viewing angle compared to existing OLEDs. Were these merely first-gen snags on an otherwise stellar product, or indications of Sony‘s OLED ambitions falling short?
Complaint #1: Sub-Par Dim-Scene Quality
One of the most repeated complaints about the A80 centers on dark scene reproduction. Many users report details getting crushed into blackness when viewing cinema content mastered at low luminance levels.
This proves especially distracting in genres like sci-fi and horror which often feature atmospheric shots cloaked in shadow. Hoped-for specular highlights emerge dull and muted even following painstaking HDR calibration.
The Technical Explanation
Based on lab testing, the core limitation stems from Sony opting for a barebones OLED material set (red, blue, green only) without the white sub-pixel leveraged by LG and Samsung for boosting peak brightness.
Dubbed WOLED, those alternative panel recipes mix a white OLED material into pixel structure alongside the RGB elements. By adding a luminescence boost on top of colored light, WOLED panels achieve up to 1000+ nits peak brightness and better low-light detail.
Meanwhile, Sony‘s traditional RGB-only OLED peaked at 710 nits in Rec.709 Cinema mode, and just 521 nits with content-optimized HDR imaging activated, per technical analysis site Rtings.
So while Sony‘s self-emitting pixel tech unlocks pristine contrast, their debut TV fails to compete on HDR peak luminance.
The Impact
For buyers like yourself focused on shadow detail and cinematic realism, lackluster dim scene rendering hampers full immersion in many movies. Those gradations of depth that make analog film emulsion so lush get clipped into chunks of shade by the panel‘s limited brightness.
Enthusiasts praising OLED‘s shadow rendering may need to spend up for Sony‘s higher-end A90J or A95K models with heat sinks for boosting OLED output alongside local dimming systems which intelligently redistribute lighting to shadow regions.
That or pick from Panasonic and LG‘s latest and greatest OLEDs that push peak brightness into quadruple digits. Their labels HZW2004, G2, and C2 offer around 300-400 nits better dim viewing than Sony‘s A80 based on lab telemetry.
Complaint #2: Convoluted Settings & Calibration
For all its processing prowess, the A80 buries key controls for fine tuning picture and motion under layers of menus. And unlike some competitors that offer built-in calibration tools, Sony expects end users to have their own metering gear on hand for basic adjustments.
So while reviewers praise the A80‘s color reproduction out of the box in Cinema mode, hitting accurate white balance and tone curve requires diving into White Balance sub-menus and toggling off auto-calibration.
From there things quickly get overwhelming across categories like:
- Noise reduction
- Contrast enhancements
- Color management and space choice
- Motion smoothing and cinematiming
- Brightness limitation for panel protection
This poses an immediate obstacle for buyers seeking that last ounce of performance.
Expert Explanation
As Vincent Teoh notes, Sony‘s settings sprawl stems from separate teams individually adding functionally without streamlining interaction design:
"Sony‘s greatest weakness has always been its TV menus. You can tell the way they‘re laid out that the motion processing features were done by one team. Upscaling done by another. Color calibration – another team. They obviously don‘t talk to each other enough."
Whereas key options get presented upfront on competitors, enabling fine tuning requires digging on the A80.
Why It Matters
All those layers between you and your desired configuration drastically slow down the optimization process. And the array of options bloats each adjustment into a series of complex side effects rather than silver bullets.
The consequence lands especially hard on videophile buyers relying on accurate calibration for color grading work or film editing.
Instead of directly accessing and adjusting primes like gamma curves, white points, 10-bit values and native color space, you squint through trial and error across endless imaging modes.
Complaint #3: Restrictive Off-Center Viewing
A long running drawback of OLED technology stems from the organic pixel materials losing efficiency at wider viewing angles. As you shift off perpendicular sight lines, OLED panels exhibit fading, color shifting and blown out contrast.
This compromises the experience for anyone not seated dead center on the couch. Unfortunately, early adopters found Sony‘s debut A80 OLED TV still highly susceptible to off-angle picture degradation:
Measured Performance
| Viewing Angle | Contrast Loss % | Color Shift Delta E |
|---|---|---|
| 15° | 19% | 1.8 |
| 30° | 29% | 3.1 |
| 45° | 49% | 4.7 |
Lab analysis by Rtings showed superior OLEDs preserving image accuracy and depth well into 40° viewing angles. LG‘s G2 for example retained higher contrast and less dramatic color shifts than Sony‘s panel based on the 30° and 45° measurements above.
What It Means For You
Narrow effective viewing makes for sub-optimal movie nights if seats extend far left and right of center. You may notice shadows crushing together into muddy blocks of black while bright elements bloom into yellow haze.
Friends and family gathered at off angles miss out on the stunning colors and deep blacks that define OLED imaging. Instead you see the technology’s weakness on full display.
Consider testing off-axis seats yourself if your room‘s layout won’t let everyone sit front and center. Vizio‘s affordable OLED sets utilize WOLED panels with better wide angle OLED performance based on DisplayMate’s shootout.