In this review we take a look at Sony’s new flagship: the Bravia XR A95L, the second TV from the Japanese manufacturer with a QD OLED panel. Although Sony announced the TV in the spring of 2023, we had to wait a long time for the device to actually go on sale. This is mainly because Sony is using a completely new chip for image processing.

Since 2022, Sony has been launching OLED TVs with WoLED panels from LG Display and with QD OLED panels from Samsung Display. The latter is used in more expensive product series. In 2022 it was the Bravia XR A95K (review). So its successor is called Sony Bravia XR A95L. Sony has revamped the look of the TV, uses a second generation QD OLED panel, tweaked the interface and uses MediaTek’s new Pentonic 1000 chip. What remains the same is pricing. It’s, as we’ve come to expect from Sony, big. The larger version with a 77-inch screen costs just under €5,700 at the time of writing. For the 65-inch version we’re testing, the lowest price has been between 3,200 and 3,900 euros recently. The smaller 55-inch model is relatively more expensive with prices ranging between €3,000 and €3,300.

The fact that Sony is placing QD OLED TVs at the top of the lineup, above its Woled models, is because QD OLED has two (potential) advantages. Unlike WOLED displays, which use white OLED subpixels with red, green and blue color filters, QD OLED panels consist of blue subpixels, where each pixel is made up of three blue OLED subpixels. One of those three OLEDs emits unfiltered blue light; The other two contain a quantum dot layer that converts blue light into red and green light. The advantage of this is that light conversion by quantum dots is efficient and produces pure primary colours, whereas the color filters on Woled panels are completely inefficient and remove a lot of light. The second advantage is that QD OLED displays are also somewhat brighter than their Woled counterparts.

QD OLED TVs we’ve tested previously, like the Sony A95K from 2022 and the newer Samsung S95C, delivered amazing picture quality. Sony is promising to take another step forward with the new A95L and hints that this could be the brightest OLED TV yet.