The upcoming Sony XR TV, Virtual Reality and Vision-S: Where are we going? What will we see at CES?
Sony Electronics won’t be introducing a new TV lineup at CES, the company confirmed to The Verge ahead of the trade show. It is expected to be used as a showcase for the upcoming virtual reality device from Sony. It’s right there in the image for Sony’s CES YouTube stream. Sony has also teased automotive news for the press conference.
So if you were hoping for Sony to unveil the successors to its highly regarded 2022 Bravia XR TVs, it seems you’ll need to wait a bit longer than normal. I wouldn’t expect this to disrupt Sony’s overall TV release strategy, however.
But now the question becomes… if not TVs, what will Sony be shining the spotlight on in Las Vegas? The headset is close to being shipped. We have already tried it, because pre orders are open. It is perhaps Sony’s last chance to give a compelling reason for buying the virtual reality headset.
Sony and Honda recently announced plans to start selling their electric vehicles in the US in six years. Sony Honda Mobility will begin delivery in Japan later that year. The Sony booth is likely to be a representation of how the companies plan to make their presence felt in the EV market. Will we see a final production vehicle? Or just a refreshed Vision-S?
The emphasis on the car is appropriate. Because while CES is still very much a show about big TV screens, it’s also increasingly become an event focused on the future of transportation.
A 10 Years Later: The 2023 Galaxy S95C OLED Smart TVs Revisited for Gamers and Gamers in the Living Room
Though not brand new for 2023, Samsung’s S95C OLED 4K Smart TV is getting a fresh 77-inch size, which retails at $4,500. Last year, we oohed and aahed over the gorgeous colors, deepest blacks and engrossing nature footage we watched on the 65-inch OLED screen — which happened to be Samsung’s first OLED panel in almost a decade. The bigger screen and the vivid colors of Apple TV were just as good as everything else the smaller screen had to offer. Games also looked best on this panel, whether we were playing the super-colorful Hi-Fi Rush or taking down demons in the darker, more cinematic Metal: Hellsinger.
We were able to view the TVs for a short time back in January, but they were only put through a testing procedure before they were officially unveiled. Lucky us.
We discovered that the upgrades are mostly the same as they were last year, based on our time with settings, TV and sports. Yes, you’ll still get the same Samsung Gaming Hub the company announced last year, which lets you stream games from services like Xbox and Amazon Luna without hooking up a console, as well as the sometimes-buggy Tizen-operated Smart Hub. However, if you’ve been waiting to add the latest and greatest to your home theater setup, you will be rewarded with what we consider a promising 2023 lineup, which, according to Samsung, will be rolling out this week from authorized retailers.
Sony is no stranger to making TVs that admirably mimic the theater experience: see the A90J, which has long been our luxury pick for best TV. Perhaps that’s why the company isn’t making sweeping changes to its 2023 television lineup, instead tweaking overall image quality with smart refinements while adding some long overdue upgrades for gamers.
The 2023 Neo QLED line of TVs with Samsung’s Anti-Glare and Ultra Viewing Angle technology are still the company’s brightest Mini LED TVs and are available in both 4K and 8K. For the uninitiated, Mini LED technology is a backlit, superpowered version of a standard LCD display, using a ton of teeny-tiny light-emitting diodes (LED) to offer extra brightness, more contrast and better black levels. QLED is a feature that uses technology called quantum dots along with Mini LED backlights to emit light all on their own. In comparison, a standard OLED panel does not use a backlight at all but rather creates its own light using pixels. Are you sure of it? Good.
The QN900C and the QN800C: Upgrades to 8K and 1080p TVs with an Embedded Soundbar
And though specs promise a brand-new auto remastering feature, we didn’t see a huge leap in picture from last year’s models during our short-term testing. We are looking forward to a more in-depth review when they arrive for testing.
Though 8K sounds fancy and oh-so-exciting, the technology is still something of a luxury for those who have extra cash, have extra space and may want to show off the latest and greatest. With almost no 8K content to watch at this time, what you will be getting is four times the amount of pixels of a 4K TV (and a whopping 16 times of a 1080p HD TV) — which simply means that an 8K TV will internally upscale your current HD and 4K content to what should be a much sharper, brighter picture. Though we did see a slight difference in color, contrast and details on the 75-inch screen when we streamed streaming services and played games on it, it wasn’t until we fired up some 8K content onYouTube that we saw a clear upgrade.
Both the QN900C and the QN800C have a Game Motion Plus feature that pairs with the resolution of the game to improve the gaming experience. It was apparent from the games we saw that they were almost identical to how they did in the 4K model. Unless you’re using a souped-up gaming PC with your TV, you probably won’t benefit much from this kind of panel when it comes to games.
The new Auto HDR remastering feature, which uses AI to create high dynamic range (HDR) effects on standard dynamic range (SDR) content, is optional — meaning you don’t have to add the artificial enhancements. But Samsung claims it will make the picture brighter and more immersive. When we get a chance to do a full review, we are looking forward to getting intimate with the new feature.
Of course, you’ll still get the 8.3 million pixels and a processor, which, like the Neo QLED TVs, uses AI to upscale content to 4K, as well as a sleek design with that handy OneConnect Box to hide those annoying cables. And, though we would expect anyone throwing down the cash for this TV to upgrade to a soundbar, the embedded speakers did just fine.
We didn’t get a full review of the Neo QLED 4K lineup, but we are looking forward to playing with the Artificial Intelligence remastering feature.
We recently got a chance to go eyes-on with Sony’s 2023 Bravia XR lineup — including the new X95L, X93L, X90L, A95L QD-OLED and A80L OLED — not only getting a preview of how the company’s latest sets improve over last year’s models, but also seeing them alongside top competitors from LG and Samsung. And while this might not be an upgrade year for everybody, we were certainly impressed with what we saw.
One of the first sets we looked at was the X95L Mini LED, which was playing The Devil Wears Prada alongside comparable models from LG and Samsung — as well as a Sony reference monitor that displayed the film in its purest, theater-accurate form. The X95L did a great job in upscaling the movie to 4K, even though we were watching it back in 2006 Sony’s Mini LEDs did a better job of preserving certain details when compared to the other sets than it did with the reference monitors, especially Anne Hathaway’s hair.
The Bravia Game Menu is very easy to use, has options such as variable refresh rate for keeping modern console and PC games at their best, and there is an on-screen crosshair. Sony takes things a bit further with its customizable screen size settings, which lets you shrink your game down to a smaller window that doesn’t take up the entire television. This is ideal for competitive gamers — after all, it’s a lot easier to keep tabs on a heated Fortnite or Overwatch match if the action is all within your line of sight, and not spread across a huge 65-inch canvas. Similar to Samsung’s TVs, Sony’s new A95L model has a Multi View mode that lets you play content from multiple sources in a single window. This could be handy for, say, playing a game on one half of the screen while watching a YouTube walkthrough for it on the other.
Everyone wants to help the Earth, right? Right? We are getting Sony’s approach. The Eco Dashboard is a central hub (accessible from the homescreen) that encourages customers to be eco-conscious and mindful of settings that draw more power. As you enable eco-friendly options, the tree grows. The tree will be bare if you turn them off. All of these settings are still found in the usual menus, but Sony wanted to put them together in one place.
Of course, all the new features join Sony’s usual smarts, which also happen to be part of the handy Google TV software that powers every set. Even if you have gadgets from Apple or Amazon, you can use the Google Assistant to control the TVs hands-free. The Sony TV has a library of films that look good on it, and there are versions of popular movies such as Spider-Man: No Way Home and Uncharted that can be found on the Bravia Core app. Better yet, Bravia Core is getting Dolby Atmos support for launch. It seems like every model we saw comes equipped with acoustic center sync technology which allows a Sony soundbar and TV speakers to work together to create a surround-like effect, which was particularly impressive when we watched James Bond do his job.
The four TVs have HDMI 2.1 connections, but two of them are stuck at the lesser-known HDMI 2.0. Some of the features in the new gaming software that extend to the XBOX and PS5 will be covered later.
Like the Samsung S95C it will compete against, the A95L comes in 77-inch, 65-inch, and 55-inch sizes. That means it’s certainly using the same second-generation Samsung Display QD-OLED panel that promises up to 200 percent better peak brightness when compared to the previous A95K. And the big benefit of QD-OLED is that the brightness ramp also applies to color luminosity. This is the year that high-end electronics will find their place in bright rooms.
How fast can you get a picture of a new TV with a HDR frame rate that is not displayed in the game menu?
It is not possible to see the live frame rate with Sony’s game menu; it is just the current resolution and max frame rate that is displayed.
Sony isn’t sharing prices for new TVs just yet. But with competitors already shipping out their 2023 lines, I’d expect those details to arrive sooner than later.