Review: Sony Bravia 8 II OLED TV

If you’re looking for a premium 2025 TV, the latest round of the best OLEDs has you spoiled for choice. With LG and Panasonic using LG’s new breakthrough four-stack panel, and Samsung and Sony sharing Samsung’s most advanced QD-OLED panel yet, there are four tantalizing top-tier OLED TVs hitting stores this year, each one offering a notable brightness boost to go along with OLED’s many other talents.

What Sony has done with Samsung’s new display is, in a word, beautiful. The awkwardly named Bravia 8 II, which replaces 2023’s gorgeous A95L (9/10, WIRED Recommends), is brilliantly balanced with punchy brightness, expressive and natural colors, and Sony’s sweet image processing for a picture so clear that some images seem almost three-dimensional.

For all its talents, the Bravia 8 II has some downsides compared to the phenomenal LG G5 (9/10, WIRED Recommends) it replaced on my console, including lower peak brightness and a backdrop that’s more deep charcoal than pitch black, leading to less impactful contrast and perceived image depth. For gaming, Sony continues to skimp on connectivity with just two HDMI 2.1 ports.

Persnickety as these complaints sound, they’re elevated by pricing: the 65-inch Bravia 8 II model I reviewed lists as high as $700 more than the G5 stateside at launch (though discounts already exist). Make no mistake: This is still a fabulous TV for the right buyer, offering sights (and sounds) worthy of a front-row spot on 2025’s stunning mantle of premium screens. As usual, if you want the best processing that money can buy, this Sony is a clear winner.

On the Wall

Unlike most TVs in its class, Sony’s top OLED again opts for legs at the panel’s far sides instead of a pedestal stand. This can be helpful for soundbar placement where big pedestals cause trouble, but unless your console is 60 inches wide, you’ll need to wall-mount the TV as I did. The 8 II’s mount screws are placed rather low, meaning the TV sat higher than I wanted, which is something to note if your mount is already in place.

The TV is subtly stylish, with familiar plastic checkers at the back panel, and paper-thin bezels out front. There’s some recency bias here, but I couldn’t help noticing how much milkier the panel looks compared to the LG G5’s black void, which I kept noticing throughout my evaluation. On the bright (or rather dark) side, the TV’s reflection handling is among the best I’ve seen, diffusing nearly everything but direct lighting, without the full matte look of Samsung’s latest models.

Software setup is a relative cinch with Google TV’s plug-and-go layout, letting you adjust most parameters with your phone and G Suite credentials. I’m a fan of Google TV’s overall ride, especially the ability to use Google Photos as screen savers, about the only time I take to reminisce on past adventures. Sony’s implementation has improved with each iteration, and apart from Google’s overly zealous ads, I had virtually no complaints over weeks of smooth streaming and navigation.

That includes zoomy channel surfing through 50-odd channels via my HD antenna with the Bravia 8 II’s compact remote. The remote is simple but intuitive, especially compared to the oddly oriented G5 remote, though it would be nice if it were backlit, considering that the 8 II—like all OLEDs—does its best work in lower lighting.

I did have one frustrating hardware hiccup, ironically when firing up my PS5 for the first time to play my latest obsession, Split Fiction. The game said my TV didn’t offer HDR, even though it obviously offers it (with HDR10, HLG, and Dolby Vision support). Each potential fix seemed to make things worse, until no HDMI input would play at all. After unplugging the TV for a minute and firing it up the next morning, it seems to be working fine.

Quirks aside, this brings up one of my biggest pet peeves with Sony TVs: Only two of the Bravia 8 II’s four HDMI jacks support gaming in 4K at 120 Hz. The TV is otherwise well optimized for the PS5, including a handy gaming menu, but the inputs are miserly in 2025, especially considering that LG’s baseline B-series OLED provides four full-bandwidth ports. I found myself unplugging my SVS Prime Wireless speakers to see if the PS5 would work in the backup gaming port, though all four support 4K HDR at 60 Hz, good enough for casual play.

Speaking of speakers, the 8 II sounds very good for a thin panel, even offering some decent upper bass. I almost forgot I’d disconnected my bookshelves at first, though some screechy dialog eventually gave things away. Still, this is one of the few TVs I’d be OK watching without a good soundbar or speakers in a pinch.

Other Bravia 8 II benefits include support for both AirPlay and Chromecast, Google Voice Assistant, and ATSC 3.0 for next-gen broadcast channels, something top TVs from LG and Samsung lack.

Picture Setup

Sony offers a ton of picture settings, but if you don’t feel like digging too deeply, the Cinema mode is an easy and relatively accurate choice for SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) content. Professional mode looks even more accurate, but it’s way too dim for most rooms, so you’ll want to raise the backlight and put Peak Luminance on Medium or High.

I went with Professional mode (with Peak Luminance raised) for SDR and HDR, with only minor adjustments like turning off motion smoothing. If you really want to make HDR10 content pop, you can raise the Tone Mapping to Brightness Preferred, though this sometimes got too punchy for me. For Dolby Vision videos, I used Dolby Vision Dark, except for ultra-dim content, where Dolby Vision Bright works better.

3D TV

It’s gotten to the point where every time I review a new flagship TV, I’m seeing images that look the best I’ve ever experienced. For the Bravia 8 II, that’s most readily displayed in the vibrant clarity and colors. Everything looks great on this TV, but high-quality nature scenes and everyday skin tones are particularly fantastic, even over streaming services.

The sea otter scene in Netflix’s Our Planet looked so realistic I almost got seasick as the camera zoomed in on the bobbing waves that seemed to spill out the sides. The TV’s phenomenal detail makes even test scenes like my Spears and Munsil skin tone tests come alive, with faces popping forth like holograms in my living room. The TV’s balanced yet incredibly expressive colors enhance the immersion, casting animated scenes like Moana’s sapphire blue water and champagne skylines in such a natural light I got chills.

It’s hard to choose a favorite between the clarity and colors, but I think the latter was the most transfixing. Moving to cinematic fare like Andor season 2, the wedding party in a recent episode had my wife and me ogling over the costumes, with one autumn-gold dress particularly popping. At my Bravia 8 II preview in Tokyo earlier this year, Sony reps gave color accuracy as a big reason the TV uses a QD-OLED screen, particularly for the advanced BT.2020 spectrum. While content support is still slim, a dash of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse gave a glimpse of the TV’s powers, revealing the surrealistic explosions in kaleidoscopic bursts.

Elsewhere, the 8 II’s screen uniformity is excellent, even with grueling gray-scale tests, while its off-axis accuracy is among the best I’ve seen, topping the G5 that stumbled a bit with some minor color loss from the side. Sony’s model is also better at upscaling, offering among the sharpest and clearest rendering of 720p and 1080p video I’ve tested, though lower-resolution content still tends to look blocky.

The G5 takes back points on brightness that bests many QLED TVs, but the Bravia 8 II is no slouch there, especially when it comes to sharp highlights like the burst of lasers from Andor’s spaceship or the fiery orange and white lightning in Mad Max: Fury Road. Split Fiction on my PS5 offered another great display of fiery punch, though the pop comes in succinct moments like an explosion or the disintegration of your character each time you fall off a cliff. Otherwise, images are subtle yet sweet, with refined rendering of minute details like the gold enamel of a dragon’s egg.

SDR isn’t nearly as punchy. It’s telling that the screen’s Brightness setting is maxed out even in the Cinema mode, a rarity these days. Still, while it’s not as luminous as similarly premium LED TVs or the peppier G5, the TV’s clear shadow detail ensures even dark SDR scenes look clear and natural, especially with Peak Luminance set to High.

The TV’s great shadow detail starts with its excellent reflection handling, though as mentioned, the Bravia 8 II’s milkier screen left me wanting for black levels. I got used to it, but it stuck out whenever scenes went to deep black in even moderate lighting. I also noticed a few issues with stuttered tracking in vertical panning, such as with screen credits. Otherwise, there’s not much this TV gets wrong, offering among the best overall image quality I’ve tested yet.

Dollar for dollar, the G5 takes my money. While some reviewers noted HDR10 banding issues, I didn’t see anything after firmware updates, and LG’s richer depth and zippier punch provides more impact in any room, especially notable given the much higher cost of the 8 II. Note that pricing seems to be in flux, as Sony has listed the 65-inch at both $4,000 and $3,500.

If you don’t need the fieriest screen for a brightly lit room and you value clarity and colors foremost, the Bravia 8 II won’t disappoint. It’s a sight to behold and worthy of serious consideration, even in this incredible season of OLED TVs.