TCL P607 55" (55P607) vs Sony A1E OLED 65" (XBR65A1E)

At $650, it's hard to find a better deal for a 55-inch 4K TV that can also handle HDR content reasonably well.

Compared to its direct competitors, its picture quality is more or less similar to them. Although the HDR performance is just a tad below them, it's still great, especially for the price.

It's also more versatile because it has better features for gaming - the input lag of ~15ms is among the lowest in 4K TVs on the market, and it has a motion blur of ~12ms that stacks up to more expensive options.

The screen size is large for the price when compared to TVs in this price bracket, such as the Sony X900E which costs ≥$250 more for the 49" model.

The P607 can play both HDR10 and Dolby Vision content.

The P607 runs on the Roku TV smart platform, touted for its simple, straightforward, and lag-free UI.

It’s easy for anyone to grasp how navigation works, thanks to its two-column design with the menu on the left and options on the right.

There’s also no noticeable lag during navigation or menu selection.

In a decently-lit environment, the P607's colors won't look dull thanks to the panel's high peak brightness levels and decent handling of reflections.

It's bright enough to fight off glare with peak brightness levels of ~500 nits for both SDR & HDR, and the intensity of reflections are also reduced by panel's semi-gloss finish.

The P607 has low input lag and barely noticeable motion blur, making for a responsive and fluid gameplay experience.

The input lag is barely noticeable at ~15ms for both SDR & HDR inputs, and the panel only requires ~12ms to fully change the pixels color, resulting in fast-moving objects not leaving any trails on the screen, eliminating virtually all motion blur.

The P607 is excellent at reproducing colors accurately out of the box.

Even without calibration, the colors are spot-on. They're very close to what the source signal demands, and any inaccuracies are generally considered imperceptible to most end users.

The overall average difference between the source signal and the panel's reproduction of the color is measured in Delta-E, where lower means better accuracy. The P607 has a Delta-E of below 2.0, and anything below 3.0 is generally considered accurate for most end users.

On top of its excellent picture quality, the P607 has everything essential to a great HDR experience: local dimming, wide color gamut, and fairly high peak brightness level.

Highlights will really stand out as the deep black levels are further improved with local dimming. It can make parts of the screen darker when the image calls for it, resulting in a fairly huge boost in picture quality as the black levels become deeper.

The wide color gamut enables the panel to reproduce the full range of colors required for true HDR playback. The screen can get sufficiently bright at a peak level of ~500 nits to light those colors up and make HDR details really pop.

The P607 has no ads on its main interface, although there can be ads in third-party applications. Third-party ads can't be blocked, but the tracking and personalisation can be limited through the TV's settings.

The P607 can upscale 480p, 720p, and 1080p content to 4K very well. The upscaled content has almost no artifacts, and the crisp details are preserved.

The P607 looks true-to-life with lots of details.

There’s a great depth to pictures and you’ll be able to see everything stand out. Dark scenes are great and you won't miss out on any details, even in shadows.

The panel has a contrast ratio of about 6500:1, which means it can produce blacks that are 6500 times darker than the brightest white. This can be pushed even further to over 7000 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 P607’s picture quality can still hold up - the panel is great at handling reflections and it can get bright enough to fight off glare.

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.