When comparing Sony X850E 65" (XBR65X850E) vs Sony A1E OLED 77" (XBR77A1E), the Slant community recommends Sony X850E 65" (XBR65X850E) for most people. In the question“What are the best TVs?” Sony X850E 65" (XBR65X850E) is ranked 2nd while Sony A1E OLED 77" (XBR77A1E) is ranked 190th. The most important reason people chose Sony X850E 65" (XBR65X850E) is:
The X850E is an excellent option for those who watch content from an antenna/satellite box, DVD/Blu-ray player or Apple TV. It can detect eliminate jerky playback that is common in content from these sources.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Excellent for 24p content
The X850E is an excellent option for those who watch content from an antenna/satellite box, DVD/Blu-ray player or Apple TV. It can detect eliminate jerky playback that is common in content from these sources.
Pro Offers best value for screen size in this price bracket
The X850E has the largest screen size at 65” for the cheapest when compared to its direct competitors. Similarly-sized models from its direct competitors cost much more.
Pro Decent for HDR content
The X850E has a wide color gamut that allows it to reproduce the colors necessary for true HDR, and it has an average peak brightness level of ~400 nits that allows it to light up these colors properly. Thanks to that, HDR pictures look decent and highlights will look fairly good.
However, the HDR performance can’t get better than that, due to the average peak brightness of ~400 nits which isn’t really enough for details to truly stand out, and it lacks local dimming.
Pro Great ecosystem of third-party apps
The X850E 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.
Pro Good for sports
The X850E looks fluid thanks to its excellent color uniformity and decent handling of motion.
It can display large, same-color objects like football fields really well - they will look natural and uniform.
Fast-moving objects, like football, will also look smooth. The panel only requires ~14ms to fully change the pixels color, resulting in fast-moving objects not leaving any trails on the screen, eliminating virtually all motion blur.
Pro Decent picture quality
The X850E looks really good in dark scenes, thanks to its decent contrast ratio of 4500:1 and excellent black uniformity.
It can produce blacks that are 4500 times darker than the brightest white, and the black uniformity is especially good - there’s barely visible flashlighting, where edges of the screen has light on them when displaying a black image, and the screen is evenly bright. This makes it perform really well in dark scenes.
Colors look vibrant because of the panel’s high peak brightness levels of ~350 nits for SDR & ~400 nits for HDR. With these brightness levels, it can get bright enough to fight glare. Along with its great handling of reflections, pictures will still look good in decently-lit environments without dull colors.
Pro Suitable for gaming
The X850 has a relatively low input lag of ~35ms that makes it a decent pick for gaming. Most players will feel in sync, however, it might be a little unresponsive for competitive or demanding gamers.
It’s also acceptable for HDR gaming because the input lag does not increase in HDR mode.
Pro Interface is ads-free
There are no ads on the X850E’s interface.
Pro Excellent motion interpolation capabilities
The X850E can increase the framerate of content to either 60Hz or 120Hz.
It guesses which frames are missing based on the previous and next frame, and inserts the missing frame in between them. This produces a really strong soap opera effect, where images look really smooth.
This might look weird to some people that doesn't like it, but the X850E can do this really well for those who enjoy it.
Pro Perfect TV for movies and HDR content
The Sony A1E is a 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.
Pro Great performance in bright environments
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 imposing compared to some other high-end TVs, 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.
Pro Interface is ads-free
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.
Pro Virtually no reflections
The Sony A1E's panel has a glossy finish that handles reflections exceptionally well.
Pro Great ecosystem of third-party apps
The Sony A1E runs on Android TV — normal Android apps from the Google Play Store (or other app stores) will work on it.
Pro Extremely low motion blur
As 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.
Pro Excellent for dark rooms
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).
Pro Decent sound quality
The sound quality of the Sony A1E is surprisingly good for a TV (which isn't known for having excellent 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 be better, the built-in speakers should suffice for most users that don't wish to spend additional money on an audio set-up.
Pro Dark scenes are perfectly reproduced
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.
Pro Wide viewing angle
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.
Pro Decent for gaming
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.
Pro Excellent for watching sports
The Sony A1E's versatility is top-notch. The motion blur along with great overall color uniformity makes it an excellent choice for sports.
Pro Great color reproduction
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 broader color gamut than SDR content. The Sony A1E has no issues with accurately reproducing the colors necessary for true HDR.
Cons
Con Not suitable for group watching
The X850E has a narrow viewing angle that makes it unsuitable for watching with groups.
Its picture quality starts to deteriorate significantly when viewing from just ≥20° away from the screen's center. The colors will start degrading really quickly.
Con Might require color calibration
Some viewers might find the X850E’s white balance to be slightly off out of the box, so a brief calibration might be required if you notice it. Fortunately, all the optimal color settings are available on the internet and isn’t hard to find.
Con Suffers from image retention issues
The main drawback of OLED panels are image retention issues with static images — pixels on the panel gets burned in when the picture doesn't change for extended periods of time. Noteworthily, the static image doesn't have to be whole like a full wallpaper on the TV; it can happen with content that has a static image anywhere on the screen.
As the Sony A1E has an OLED panel, it, unfortunately, suffers from this problem. There might be some retainment of artifacts for ~10 minutes when this happens, and it usually goes away after watching other content without static images. It's worth noting that while this issue is present, the Sony A1E reportedly handles this pretty well — most users report the artifacts going away only ~5minutes of playing traditional content.
Con Might be hard to access inputs when mounted to a wall
The Sony A1E is extremely thin, and it has a reflective finish on the back. After mounting it to a wall, the inputs might be hard to access, and because of the reflective finish, it can pick up fingerprints/smudges when attempting to access the inputs (which also becomes hard to clean because of how thin it is).
Con Lacks support for Dolby Vision
The Sony A1E can currently only play HDR10 content. It does not support Dolby Vision.