Sony X900E 49" (XBR49X900E) vs Sony A1E OLED 65" (XBR65A1E)

The X900E looks true-to-life with really deep blacks, clear details, and captivating colors.

Pictures look realistic with lots of details. There’s great depth to them and you’ll be able to see everything in the picture stand out.

Dark scenes are excellent with nice shadow details that are not overly dark to the point where some details get drowned out. This is thanks to really deep black levels, enabled by the panel’s contrast ratio of about 5500:1 which means it can produce blacks that are 5500 times darker than the brightest white. This can be pushed even further to over 6500 with local dimming.

The colors are lifelike and accurate even without any calibration by the user. They will look really vibrant even in bright scenes because of the panel’s high peak brightness levels of ~500 nits for SDR & ~550 nits for HDR.

Even in a decently lit environment, the X900E’s picture quality can still hold up as the panel is great at handling reflections and it can get bright enough to fight off glare.

The X900E runs on Android TV that has Google Assistant. It has voice commands that are pretty useful as you can open apps with it, ask for the weather, and even turn the TV off.

The X900E can upscale 480p, 720p, 1080p content to 4K with no issues. All the details are preserved and most won't notice any imperfections.

The X900E's panel has a semi-gloss finish that significantly reduces the intensity of glare.

The X900E runs on Android TV that has access to the Google Play Store. The Play Store has a nice selection of apps, but normal Android apps won't work unless they support Android TV.

There are no ads on the X900E's interface.

The X900E can display fast-paced or rapidly-moving objects very well without any trails behind it. The panel only requires ~11ms to fully change the pixels color, which eliminates virtually all motion blur. It also has a native refresh rate of 120Hz that makes images look smoother.

Apart from being an excellent TV for movies, the X900E is a decent choice for gaming and sports thanks to its decent input lag, low motion blur, great screen uniformity, and a 120 Hz native refresh rate that makes images look smoother.

The input lag of ~35ms is sufficient for most gamers, apart from competitive ones, to stay in sync with what's on the screen. The low motion blur of ~11ms and a refresh rate of 120 Hz ensures that everything will look smooth - fast-moving objects won't leave any trails on the screen.

It’s also viable for watching sports because the panel also has no issues with displaying large, same-color objects on screen, like football fields.

Even in a decently lit room, the X900E's picture quality will remain more or less the same as in a dark room.

The colors will still look vibrant because the panel is bright enough to fight off glare. It has peak brightness levels of ~500 nits for SDR & ~550 nits for HDR, and reflections are also significantly reduced by the panel's semi-gloss finish.

On top of the excellent picture quality, the X900E has everything essential to an immersive HDR experience: decent local dimming, great coverage of HDR colors, and high HDR peak brightness level.

Its excellent black levels are further improved with local dimming, which can make parts of the screen darker when the image calls for it. This results in an increase in overall picture quality with black levels becoming much deeper, so highlights will stand out further.

The panel can reproduce the wide range of colors required for true HDR playback because of its wide color gamut, which covers ~65% of the standard colors required for HDR according to the Rec. 2020 color space. This is considered great for reproducing HDR details, and it can display these colors accurately at different brightness levels.

Along with the the high peak brightness level of ~550 nits, HDR scenes will look stunning and you'll be able to see HDR details really pop.

The Sony A1E is an 4K OLED TV with perfectly uniform blacks and infinite contrast ratio, achieved by its ability to manipulate pixels individually. This, along with its color uniformity and wide color gamut, gives it exceptional picture quality and makes it the perfect choice for movies. It also has no issues with brightness levels as the panel can reach up to ~650 nits of brightness when playing HDR content, and it handles reflections very well.

The Sony A1E's panel has a glossy finish that handles reflections exceptionally well.

The Sony A1E has a practical peak brightness of ~650nits for both SDR and HDR content — it can sustain this level of brightness when playing content. While the number here isn't very impressive compared to some other high-end TVs (e.g. the Sony X930E with ~1.4k nits of brightness), the panel of this TV offsets this by being an OLED. It can handle reflections very well and will not have any issues with fighting light in bright environments.

The sound quality of the Sony A1E is suprisingly good for a TV (which isn't known for having good sound). The speakers can get really loud without much distortion happening, and its frequency response is perhaps one of the best measured in a TV's speakers. While an external audio set-up will definitely be better, the built-in speakers should suffice for most users that doesn't wish to spend additional money on an audio set-up.

The Sony A1E runs on Android TV — normal Android apps from the Google Play Store (or other app stores) will work on it.

The user interface of modern smart TVs can include some advertisements similar to those on the internet or in a mobile app. The Sony A1E does not include any, and it also has a feature for limiting ads in third-party applications.

The Sony A1E performs exceptionally well in dark environments. Its ability to produce absolute and perfect blacks means the reproduction of dark highlights and scenes in movies will look great — this is further improved when there's no light around the TV as it allows the blacks to stand out more. This makes it great for watching all sorts of movies in a cinema-like setting, particularly movies with many black highlights/scenes where this is immediately noticeable even to undiscerning viewers (e.g. Interstellar).

Because the Sony A1E has an OLED panel, it has near-perfect pixel response time; the motion blur is virtually non-existent at sub-1ms, which means this TV will have no issues with displaying extremely fast-moving objects — they will look smooth without any blur or lag.

Input lag is one of the most important factors when considering a TV for gaming — it's representative of how fast the TV can display the image after receiving the input. The Sony A1E has ~30-40ms of input lag, which is decent enough for most gamers, but competitive gamers might find this lacking.

The Sony A1E can handle dark scenes very well thanks to its OLED panel, which gives it infinite contrast ratios — it can reproduce dark scenes perfectly because of this.

The picture quality of the Sony A1E does not suffer from much deterioration when viewed from other angles. The brightness will decrease with deviations in viewing angles, but the black levels seem to be maintained perfectly.

The Sony A1E's versatility is top-notch. The motion blur (sub-1ms) along with great overall color uniformity makes it an excellent choice for sports.

The color gamut of a TV refers to the range of colors the display can reproduce — the wider the color gamut, the more colors it can display, and the better the overall picture quality will be. This is extremely important for HDR content because it requires a much wider color gamut than SDR content. The Sony A1E has no issues with accurately reproducing the colors necessary for true HDR.