Sony Bravia 9 II

Design

• Weighs plenty
• Matte screen
• Central stand

Like the Hisense UR9, the 65-inch Bravia 9 II is built like an M4 Sherman tank, weighing 30.6kg (slightly heavier than the Hisense). Sizes start at 65 inches and go up to 115 inches, so if you have small space and a bad back, maybe have a look at the Bravia 7 II instead.

It takes about five minutes to assemble the TV, and once it comes together it feels like an imposing monolith – not quite as sleek as the Bravia 8 II –, but unlike that model this screen comes with a central stand and not a pair of maddening feet that sit at the edges. This TV is more function than style but when it starts functioning, you won’t worry so much about its looks

The stand is a ‘floating’ design, giving the impression of the TV being lifted by invisible forces. There is a cover you can slide through the back which masks any cables straggling around the back like it’s the curtain around your bathroom tub.

There’s a microphone switch placed on the left-hand side to mute the mics. The rear of the TV is uniformly flat so if you’re considering hanging this TV on a wall, it should sit flush.

Viewing angles are strong thanks to Sony’s proprietary X-Wide Angle Pro technology, though they’re not quite up to OLED standards.

From a head-on position the screen manages blooming well aside from when subtitles are on screen. At an angle, colours and brightness slightly fade but I find it’s fine as long as you’re sitting down.

As soon as I stood up and walked around, I noticed some issues. Blooming becomes more obvious but more distracting is the slight red/green hue at an angle and discolouration that becomes evident. It’s a little odd.

The anti-reflection screen might just be the best implementation I’ve seen on a TV. Reflections and glare simply aren’t an issue. While Samsung’s OLEDs and Sony’s Bravia 8 II are good at preventing reflections, black levels are affected. Even LG’s G6 OLED, which is good at maintaining black levels, isn’t as good as this. Nothing gets past the Bravia 9 II’s screen.

Features

• RGB Backlight Master Drive Pro
• My Cinema mode
• Calibrated modes

Technology-wise, Sony doesn’t dish out details on its backlight, but it is powered by Sony’s RGB Backlight Master Drive Pro, which offers granular control over the individual red, green and blue diodes that make up the backlight.

The backlight can be switched from its White mode (through which blooming is more obvious) or RGB mode, where light leakage takes on the colour of the object on screen to make it harder to see.

Other technology includes Luminance Booster Pro to RGB Triluminos Max but the intent of them all is to create a bright but colour accurate representation that can match the HDR mastering monitor used to grade Hollywood films and TV series.

The Bravia 9 II covers Dolby Vision HDR, HDR10, and HLG but not HDR10+. There’s no adaptive version of Dolby Vision though.

Picture modes include IMAX Enhanced and Sony’s own Professional, which sits in place of Filmmaker Mode present other brands (to be fair, Sony knows a thing or two about movies).

Professional is the brightest mode on the TV, though it’s tuned to be watched in a darker room. On a full-screen HDR window it gets close to the Hisense UR9 1000+ nits.

Even with its 4000+ nit peak brightness, making the Sony Bravia 9 II one of the brightest TVs I’ve ever tested, don’t take to mean that the TV is a flashy HDR performer – it’s very much about reproducing the look of a film mastering monitor in terms of colour, punch, tone, black levels and shadow detail.

This stance is further evidenced by Sony’s introduction of its My Cinema feature. It offers an in-depth optimisation for picture and sound presets, automatically optimising when, say, the TV detects Dolby Vision being played.

There are three options to play with: Director’s Cut, which presents content as the creator intended it (Professional or Dolby Vision mode), and settings in this mode are locked. There’s Daytime for viewing in a bright room, and a Dialogue preset to boost dialogue. I am slightly disappointed there’s no Game mode preset, but then again, it is called My Cinema for a reason.

And just to add to wave for ‘studio’ calibrated modes, there’s Netflix Calibrated Mode, Prime Video Calibrated Mode and Sony Pictures Core – no other TV puts as much effort into that than the Bravia 9 II (though I’m sure other brands will disagree).

The Bravia 9 II firms up its home cinema credentials with support for both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X immersive audio (and all other Dolby and DTS formats).

The built-in sound system features eight speakers (two subwoofers, two tweeters, two full-range, and two beam tweeters) with 80W of power at its disposal, to project sound out wide and up high. The Voice Zoom 3 feature is there to boost dialogue, and the sound system can be calibrated during the set-up phase – I’d highly recommend you do this.

Picture Quality

• Varied, colourful image
• Impressive black levels
• Excellent dark detail

So, is the Sony Bravia 9 II the OLED-beater some believed it to be? No, but beating OLED at its own game was never, I think, the intention. As an LCD TV, there are things that it can do better than OLED and there are areas that OLED can do better than the Bravia 9 II.

But in terms of creating an authentic, cinematic image, I’m not sure there’s a TV that achieves this as well as the Bravia 9 II – this is about as natural and filmic an image as I’ve seen from a TV.

Starting with Soul in the TV’s Professional mode and blooming is minimal from a head on position during the Great Beyond scene. It’s only at an angle that I see blooming and in some cases bleeding in the black bars.

It’s the same with The Green Knight, which, despite the brightness of the highlights in the film, from a seated position there’s no issue with blooming. This is a film that goes very dark, giving contrast, blooming suppression and shadow detail a strong workout and the Sony makes its way through it mostly unscathed.

Black levels are strong, the brightness of highlights gives the film a bold sense of contrast, and even the darkest moments are still visible – helped by that excellent matte screen that fends off reflections and glare. Banding is also well handled with colours are smoothly defined, avoiding looking ‘streaky’ or noisy.

Bravia 9 II handles dark detail with a deft hand in Alien: Romulus. Every dark scene – of which there are plenty – reveals plenty of detail in the darkest depths, scenes that on OLED can be slightly obscured (see the Samsung S90H) but the Bravia 9 II reaches into those dark depths but pulls out the detail.

Colours are very natural looking, the 70s/80s feel to the film’s cinematography that echoes the original Alien feels very present here – the orangey reds, rusty browns and sulphuric yellows stand out, while skin tones are subtle but expressive.

Compared to the Bravia 8 II, I find the Bravia 9 II a little more colour rich with The Matrix Resurrections. The performance is very similar, and you could argue that the RGB LED isn’t a great leap over its OLED sibling, but there’s a little more colour to skintones than I remember on the Bravia 8 II.

Compared to the Hisense UR9 in the scene where Neo wakes up in the construct, the Bravia 9 II maintains high level of brightness without affecting the purity of skintones. There’s been mention of crosstalk with RGB TVs, but I can’t say with real-world content that it’s been an issue. Backlight on this TV looks bright but precise – as good as I’ve seen on any LCD TV.

The colour performance of this TV is one that’s expressive but not ‘flashy’. A 4K Blu-ray of Little Women shows rich, nuanced and colour images, skintones that are expressive and varied – it’s a beautifully precise and balanced image – I love the look of the dimly lit look of firelight scenes in the film.

The Bravia 9 II manages to make films look authentic in a way that I’ve not seen other TVs manage. The image is both natural and effortless in how it looks.

It’s the same trick it performs with Sinners, with dark detail a smidge better than the LG G6 OLED, the RGB colour system unloads the film’s bold sense of colour with rich reds, golden orange skintones of the mostly black cast. And again with One Battle After Another, which has excellent levels detail and clarity, and authentic-looking colours that don’t feel overblown as they are in Samsung’s Movie mode. The LG G6 might look brighter in some scenes, but it’s a matter of degrees Celsius.

Vivid mode is, I feel, better than most; bright and colourful without being over the top. Complexions might come across as ‘hot’ in some scenes, but this isn’t at the expense of detail. Though I’d say LG’s Vivid mode is better for providing that HDR punch to scenes.

It’s also worth noting that Dolby Vision looks brighter than HDR10, and if you are watching in Professional mode, it’s best to watch with the lights down.

Now, there are issues. As good and as convincing as Sony’s motion processing is, there are moments where I’ve noticed some noise with moving objects, and mostly in Dolby Vision. I’ve seen some micro stutter and slight blurriness too.

In The Last Duel, scenes that take place with the glow of a firelight, I’ve noticed a green tone that’s passed the aces of the characters (in Professional mode). There’s also been the red/green discolouration I noted earlier when off-axis.

The oddest issue is the presence of what looks like the backlight in some films, which manifests itself as vertical lines. I’ve played films in both Dolby Vision and HDR10, and it’s only popped up in the former (Ghostbusters: Afterlife, One Battle, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, of Dune: Part One). Watching the same films in HDR10 and there’s been not been issue, which implies a problem with the set’s Dolby Vision processing.

So the Bravia 9 II is not perfect, but in terms of reproducing the ‘feel’ of cinema and TV series, there’s not a TV I’ve as authentic as this.

Upscaling

• Detailed images
• Authentic colours

The curse of 4K TVs is that not many people watch in 4K. Most sources watched are HD or lower, so upscaling has become an important weapon in a TV’s arsenal.

The Bravia 9 II’s upscaling with SDR content is similar to its performance with HDR. Blu-rays of Tomorrowland and Mad Max: Fury Road are convincingly clear, detailed and not overly sharp.

Where the Hisense UR9 drew the orange tones of the wasteland in slightly inaccurate terms, the Bravia 9 II gets the rich orange tones right – SDR brightness looks accurate and the TV doesn’t oversaturate colours either, with varied tones that capture the subtlety but also punchiness of the wasteland.

Fine detail is better on the Sony than the Hisense too, the Sony looks sharp without creating noisy artefacts. SDR black levels are strong, contrast is very good, as is dark detail – these Blu-rays look natural and authentic to the point where I struggle to think of anything to say. The just look great.

With DVDs there’s the inevitable drop in detail, but The Bourne Ultimatum, Drive, and the IMAX scenes on The Dark Knight DVD look decent enough on a 65-inch screen. The TV handles noise very well, and blurriness with movement isn’t an issue here either. It’s a stable, solidly drawn upscaled image.

Like with HD content, SDR highlights look bright, black levels are resoundingly solid – the Bravia 9 II doesn’t feel like it’s trying to add more processing to highlight any more detail like Samsung’s AI upscaling can do; but it does bring lower-resolution sources up to a better standard, and it does a cracking job without introducing distracting artefacts.

Gaming

• HDMI VRR
• Quick input lag
• SBTM support

Sony’s focused on the PS5 with its Bravia TV line-up, so there’s little to no room for PC gamers. There’s HDMI VRR (4K/120Hz) but no certification for the likes of Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync. You can plug a PC into the Bravia 9 II, but the performance won’t be optimised.

I measured input lag at 11.ms, which is one of the fastest measurements I’ve recorded from a Sony TV. I did have issues with the PS5 though – it didn’t recognise it supported HDR so I had to force it to output in HDR. Lag was responsive with a DualShock, though the Bravia Trio sound system introduced noticeable audio lag.

The Bravia 9 II supports ALLM – the PS5 says differently – and through its Perfect for PS5 branding, it optimises the HDR performance automatically (through its SBTM support); and automatically put the TV into its game mode.

PS Remote Play is included to stream from a PS5 even if it’s not in the same space. There’s also a Game Bar where you can alter settings on the fly. The Bravia 9 II supports Dolby Vision Game mode, but the PS5 doesn’t. It makes me wonder why it’s even there.

Sound Quality

• Bass with heft
• Tall and wide soundstage
• Clear reproduction of dialogue

The Bravia 9 II is the best-sounding TV I’ve heard in 2026. The soundstage created carries from one end of the screen to the other. There is genuine panning across the screen that underlines a left, centre and right channel as sounds past from one side to another.

The Hisense UR9 is perhaps the only other TV that I’d regard as getting close to the Bravia 9 II, but it lacks detail, especially in the highs, and isn’t as confident with the low frequencies.

The Sony puts out a punchy bass performance, which I thought might suffer at louder volumes but if anything, the louder it gets, the better this TV sounds. Push the volume to level 70 and there’s weight and power well beyond what the LG G6 OLED can do.

There is distortion that pops up, and it can’t quite handle the depth of Dune: Part One, but this is a TV that can summon a solid blow with low frequencies.

The height of the soundstage is genuinely tall. There are height channels created above the TV, with helicopters or spinner cars in Civil War and Blade Runner 2049 respectively that hover above the TV.

Dialogue is clear and naturally reproduced, even in tricky scenes (the “go to hell Andre” line from Tenet being one). But what this TV does brilliantly is capture the atmosphere and mood of films and TV. It’s great at handling busy soundtracks without much detail being lost – it picks up subtle background sounds that not many others can manage.

The Gom Jabbar scene from Dune should have rising levels of intensity as Hans Zimmer’s score gets louder as the scene reaches its climax. So many TVs play this as flat, inert and dull. Not so with the Bravia 9 II.

I would nitpick and say that I’d like more punchy and energy at lower volumes, but raise the volume up to about 70 and it sounds better, though distortion does become more evident.

Could you add a soundbar? Yes, and having tested the Bravia Trio with this TV, that’s the calibre of system that could improve the Bravia 9 II experience. It’d be an expensive package altogether but a pairing comes close to delivering cinematic nirvana.

User Experience

• Google TV
• UK catch-up apps
• Gemini for TV

Google TV is again the platform of choice for Sony’s TVs. It’s a good, intuitive user experience that’s responsive and easy to navigate.

All the UK apps are present, though there’s no Freely as Sony places its weight behind YouView for receiving broadcast channels. There’s a Continue Watching row to get straight back into what you’re watching, though this doesn’t extend to the UK catch-up apps.

There’s plenty of variety in the content that Google TV summons, though it does feel as if there’s less of a human hand and more of an algorithm behind the choices. Rails include Homegrown Picks, Top Selling Movies and ‘If You Like’ content rails.

It does give prominence to its deals, though, and some rental fees are quite high (£15.99 to rent The End of Oak Street?). Free ad-supported content is an alternative, and you’ll find some gems but weird choices too. Content behind a paywall is indicated by a lock.

You can browse by genre from animated, thrillers, drama, comedy and more, though it does appear to pull info from my Google searches or what’s trending. There was a “If You Like The Odyssey” rail, though the choices presented had little connection (Tron Legacy?), but at least I know that Battlestar Galactica is on ITVX. While I think Google TV is good, it doesn’t feel personalised to me.

New this year is Gemini for TV. You can ask, learn, create or customise the experience to your liking, but like Copilot or Perplexity, I’m still perplexed as to why I’d want to use it.

The questions it poses are weird, there’s a disclaimer that Gemini can make mistakes, and in some cases it actively spoils films, such as a question that asked if I wanted to understand the ending of The Prestige. Strange.

Connectivity

• Two HDMI 2.1 inputs
• AirPlay streaming

As is common with Sony TVs, on the rear are four HDMI inputs, but only two meet the HDMI 2.1 standard.

For me this isn’t as big a problem but for those with multiple HDMI 2.1 devices, it may be. There’s HDMI eARC for connecting a sound system, and Bravia Sync for control over HDMI devices.

I’ve had some issues with HDMI handshakes – the TV didn’t like Dolby Vision played on an external player, but a recent update looks to have resolved this.

The other inputs and outputs cover Ethernet, RF for receiving terrestrial broadcasts, two IF inputs for satellite signals, two USB inputs and a digital audio output that’s also a hybrid S-Center Speaker output. You can record content via USB, though curiously, Italy is exempt from this.

Wi-Fi is obviously included, and you get Google Cast, AirPlay and Apple HomeKit support as well. And there’s Bluetooth 5.3 to stream or connect a Bluetooth device to the TV.

Should you buy it?