Sony A1E 55" (XBR55A1E) vs Samsung MU9000 65" (UN65MU9000)

The Sony A1E has exceptional picture quality because of its infinitely high native contrast ratio, decent luminosity, and near-perfect black uniformity.

The TV does a fantastic job when it comes to reproducing dark scenes, as the infinitely high native contrast ratio and the near-perfect black uniformity allow it to display thick, rich, and immersive dark scenes.

As for bright scenes, the luminosity of 389 nits allows this OLED TV to fight glare and reproduce crisp and vibrant colors in vivid scenes.

Out of the box, the Sony A1E has excellent color accuracy, so the majority of users will not require doing the color calibration procedure. The A1E has better color accuracy than its competitors, including the LG seven series OLED TVs.

This 4K120 TV works well with all of the current-generation 4K consoles, including the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro, because of the A1E’s adequate input lag (30.7 ms) at 4K resolution. Additionally, the TV is a good choice for HDR gaming, since its input lag does not increase when processing high-bandwidth 4K HDR signal.

The Sony A1E looks good even from an angle since its colors only start to degrade when the angle between the viewer and the panel is greater than 29 degrees.

The Sony A1E sounds noticeably better than all of its competitors, including the LG Seven series OLED TVs.

The Sony A1E runs the Android TV which has the widest app selection among all the smart TV platforms currently available.

The Sony A1E is an excellent option for those who have a collection of old DVDs or Blu-rays, a cable or satellite box, or an Apple TV since the A1E can detect and eliminate judder from those sources and make 24p content playback nice and smooth.

The Sony A1E does an excellent job of managing reflections as its panel is coated with the anti-reflective material; therefore, the TV looks good even when situated right in front of a window.

The main interface of this TV is free of advertisements and sponsored content.

The Sony A1E can boost up the frame rate of low FPS content up to a stunning 120 Hz, making such content look more fluid and smooth. This feature is called motion interpolation, or in some sources, the 'soap opera' effect. Some people find the interpolated content very attractive.

The Sony A1E manages to balance all the features required for a good sports TV. It has well-handled motion blur, excellent color uniformity, and superb picture quality.

Motion blur handling is the most critical aspect of a good sports TV. The A1E has almost negligible motion blur because of its fast full pixel response time of 0.7 ms, which ensures that the pixels of this TV need only 1/1400th of a second to go from one color to another. Therefore, even fast objects don't leave noticeable trails on the screen.

As for the color uniformity, the A1E is currently the best TV money can buy. The overall color uniformity of a TV is essential for sports fans, as it allows a TV to reproduce realistic and good-looking football fields, hockey arenas, golf fields, and other large sports fields.

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.

The MU9000's panel has a glossy finish that reduces 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 great at dealing with 24p content, such as Blu-rays or media sourced from a cable or satellite box. It can detect and eliminate the judder effect present in these content, where images displayed can appear jittery.

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 whole menu of the Tizen OS is organized around a menu known as the “Smart Hub” which contains everything: apps, settings, input switching, etc.

It also has a section for quick access to frequently used items.

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 pretty versatile. On top of its great picture quality, it has features that make 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 results in virtually no motion blur.

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

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.

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 crap and doesn’t do much - it increases the contrast ratio by a meager amount and does nothing else.