Sony A1E OLED 65" (XBR65A1E) vs Samsung NU7100 55" (UN55NU7100)

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.

From games to movies, sports and use as a PC monitor, the NU7100 is a good TV for diverse usage. The balance of low input lag, good picture quality, and decent motion handling make sure of it.

Even though the NU7100 doesn’t have local dimming, watching TV in the dark is not a problem due to amazing black uniformity - the blacks are even and there are no clouding issues.

Contrast is remarkable too – blacks are deep, and whites are bright.

The TV is a great option for a PC monitor. Not only does the NU7100 have ideal low input lag thanks to the “_PC_” and “Game” modes, it also features support for most resolutions, except 1440p.

Another thing to note – Samsung’s app store has the Steam Link app, which lets you connect your PC to your TV and play games without needing to connect the Steam Link hardware.

When you first turn on the TV, it basically walks you through the setup process and you can start properly using it in a matter of minutes.

Regarding picture quality, it’s also quite reasonable right out of the box. White balance (gray color inaccuracy) and color dE (color inaccuracy) could be tweaked down for better quality, but most people won’t notice a sizeable difference.

In case you can’t figure something out when setting up, the TV also has a handy “e-manual” button.

The NU7100 has a smooth, fast, and easy-to-navigate interface with a lot of room for customization, so you can tailor it for easier access to your most-used apps.

Samsung’s app store has a huge and diverse app library, second only to the Google Play Store.

The SmartThings app allows the user to control the TV and other connected devices via their smartphone.