Samsung MU9000 55" (UN55MU9000) vs Sony A1E OLED 65" (XBR65A1E)

The MU9000 can produce really detailed pictures, especially in dark scenes thanks to its really deep black levels. It has a contrast ratio of about 6000:1, which enables it to produce blacks that are 6000 times darker than the brightest white.

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 ~400 nits for SDR & ~450 nits for HDR.

Even in a decently-lit environment, the MU9000's picture quality can still hold up - the panel is excellent at handling reflections thanks to its glossy finish, and it can get bright enough to fight off glare.

On top of its great picture quality, the MU9000 has a high HDR peak brightness level and wide color gamut that makes it good for HDR.

Shadows look pretty good with nice details, and highlights are quite vibrant thanks to the peak brightness level of ~450 nits.

The panel can reproduce the wide range of colors required for true HDR playback because of its wide color gamut, which covers ~60% of the standard colors required for HDR according to the Rec. 2020 color space. This is considered decent enough for reproducing HDR details, and it can display these colors accurately at different brightness levels.

It’s worth noting that while the MU9000 has local dimming that’s supposed to make HDR better, the local dimming is worthless and doesn’t do much. It increases the contrast ratio by a meager amount and does nothing else.

The MU9000's panel has a glossy finish that reduce reflections significantly. This makes it excellent at fighting glare, along with its adequate brightness levels of ~400 nits for SDR & ~450 nits for HDR.

The MU9000 is pretty versatile. On top of its great picture quality, it has features that makes it perform quite well for gaming and sports.

It offers a responsive and fluid gaming experience . Players will have no issues keeping their actions in sync with what’s on the display, and fast-moving objects won’t leave any trails on the screen. That is thanks to the low input lag of ~25ms and the panel’s quick response time of ~15ms, which virtually eliminates motion blur.

It’s also great for watching sports because of the almost non-existent motion blur that makes fast-moving objects look smooth. The panel is also pretty uniform meaning it has no issues with displaying large, same-color objects on screen, like football fields.

The MU9000 comes with a OneConnect box which moves all the hard-to-access rear inputs away from the TV. Thanks to this, you’ll always have full access to all inputs and outputs of the TV even if it’s wall-mounted. The OneConnect box can also be used as a USB charging hub.

The MU9000 runs on the Tizen smart platform, known for its simplicity and intuitiveness.

It’s easy to navigate and access all the functions of features of the TV. The Tizen OS menus are organized around the “Smart Hub” which contains everything: apps, settings, input switching and others. It also has a section for quick access to frequently used items.

The MU9000's remote has a voice command feature that can perform actions as you physically would with the remote, and it can even be used to adjust settings directly.

The MU9000 can upscale 480p, 720p, and 1080p content to 4K quite well. The upscaled content has almost no noticeable artifacts, and all the details are preserved.

The MU9000 is great at dealing with 24p content, such as Blu-rays or media sourced from an cable or satellite box. It can detect and eliminate the judder effect present in these content, where images displayed can appear jittery.

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.