Sony XBR-77A9G 77-inch TV: MASTER Series BRAVIA OLED 4K Ultra HD Smart TV with HDR and Alexa Compatibility - 2019 Model

Our previous Sony TV was a top-of-the-line XBR HD TV with an outstanding HD picture. After 12 years of continuous use, it was still working well with the same great picture, but we decided to upgrade to a new top-of-the-line Sony 4K TV. After some research online and a few YouTube reviews, we settled on the Sony A9G 55” OLED TV. At the same time, we also upgraded our AV Receiver to the Sony STR-DN1080 Receiver and kept our 5.1 Surround Sound speaker array intact. For anyone upgrading to a 4K TV, a little bit of preparation will ensure a spectacular audio and video experience. First, I purchased 3 new Ultra High Speed HDMI Cables. Although you only need High Speed HDMI cables capable of 18Gbps for 4K, I decided to go with cables that would handle 48Gbps for possible future firmware feature enhancements. I ran one of these cables between my Xfinity Cable box and the HDMI SAT/CATV HDMI input on the back of the receiver. I ran a 2nd HDMI cable between my new Apple TV 4K box and the Video 2 HDMI input on the receiver. On this receiver (and perhaps on other brands as well), it is important to connect the Apple TV 4K box to Video 2 and NOT Video 1. As per the instructions for the 1080 receiver, “The HDMI IN VIDEO 1 jack supports bandwidths of up to 9 Gbps. If your device supports high-bandwidth video formats such as 4K/60p 4:4:4, 4:2:2, or 4K/60p 4:2:0 10 bit, connect your device to an HDMI IN jack OTHER than the HDMI IN VIDEO 1 jack.” The Video 2 jack will support the necessary enhanced video requirements for flawless 4K TV performance. If you accidentally plug into the Video 1 jack, you will immediately see erratic picture performance and frequent blinking if you try to set the Apple TV box to the HDR or Dolby Vision settings. With the Video 2 jack, HDR and Dolby Vision perform flawlessly. I ran a 3rd HDMI cable from the HDMI Out (eARC/ARC) jack on the back of the receiver to the HDMI In (eARC/ARC) jack on the A9G TV. Using the receiver’s menu, I navigated to the HDMI signal settings for the input jacks and changed them all from the Standard Format to the Enhanced Format. Using the menu on the TV, I made sure that the HDMI In (eARC/ARC) jack was also set to Enhanced Format. One final note, specific to this scenario, whereby the Cable box and the Apple TV 4K box connect directly to the receiver and the receiver outputs those signals to the TV, I also turned the eARC/ARC feature OFF on the receiver and the TV since it is not necessary. With these important TV/Receiver cable and input/output jack prep steps in place, the picture on the Sony A9G 55” TV is absolutely spectacular !!! If you are obsessive about fine tuning your picture (as I am), you can also go to best-tv-settings.com and follow their recommendations specific to the Sony A9G. Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime TV, and Apple TV+ all offer 4K content and the crisp picture resolution, contrast, color, pure black, and pure white details will blow you away on this TV !! We love the Sony A9G and highly recommend it to anyone interested in a high end 4K TV upgrade.

The screen is also the speakers. Sound is created in a way similar to audiophile electrostatic speakers. If you touch the screen you can feel it vibrating, but it is way too fast to see. The sound quality is so good that we disconnected our (painfully installed) external system. For dialog comprehension it is unbeatable for voices to come RIGHT OUT of the center of the screen, and you wonder how you ever endured voices coming from “elsewhere.” For music, even at low volume, nothing we have owned has ever come close in quality even at 10X the price. Classical & Jazz sound amazing. We aren’t into super loud; if you are then this is where screen speakers will wash-out, especially on bass. But for movies, “natural” volume music (as if there were a piano or violin in the room) short of room shaking Rock—this magical sound screen never stops delighting. You just can’t believe there aren’t any speakers! We also love that now we have only one cord plugged in: power. No sound system, as the screen is superior by far. (Gave our old audio system to Salvation Army, and good riddance as it was ugly furniture and we had to use closed-caption to follow the script.) No CAT5, as WiFi is 10X faster than needed for 4K, so now all wireless. Cast from phone or PC, no problem. Screensavers from my PC photo collection as wall art when not being watched, all wireless. The only physical connection is just power. <big nerd grin> The picture quality everyone raves about. I must admit that before buying I thought the “Master Series” reference-screen feature was a bit of hype. But it looks very, very good, especially in low-light scenes. You’ll see every skin pore, all the bad makeup you never knew was there, every hair follicle. Nature scenes are also breathtakingly clear, and color perfect. I don’t see this well in real life, so it continues to amaze. This is the most satisfying luxury product we've ever bought--especially since only slightly more expensive than other options. Like time-travelling into the future. Imagine our reaction to the expensive and ugly “home theatres” that we used to have and see elsewhere. Just slap this 77” on the wall, connect a power cord, provide some comfy seating, and this beats all.

As most of the other reviewers have stated, the picture from this TV is really great. Are other cheaper sets just as good? I don't know. Suffice to say that the picture is really, really good. Read the other reviews for more information. I'm going to comment on some other areas that you should probably know about. Delivery and Packaging. - 10 years ago I bought another Sony Bravia from Amazon. Close to top of the line set. The delivery guys brought it in, unpacked it, attached the base, set it on the stand, turned it on to make sure it was working, and took away the packaging. This time, two guys brought it in, placed it on the floor and left. I asked about taking it out of the box and one guy said, " We don't do that." So I stood there wondering how I was going to handle unpacking this thing (this is the 55 inch set.) Luckily for me, Sony anticipated this. The packaging is so designed that the box releases from the bottom and you just lift the box off the set. The set is still held upright by a cardboard and styrofoam stand. But you do have to eventually lift it out of this stand and place it on its pedestal stand which slots into two slots on the back of the set. Make sure you have help because this is a heavy set. Sony has included detailed picture instructions for this whole procedure so it's fairly easy. Kudos to Sony for the packaging. Setup - You go through a basic setup procedure using the remote to help the set connect to your network (LAN or WiFi) and your cable or satellite setup (if you have either.) All of this is pretty easy and doesn't take long. Local channels and Streaming - I get my local channels through DirecTv which the TV set up for me in the original setup procedure. When you turn the set on the Home screen shows a list of streaming services as well as a box marked TV. If you choose the TV box the set automatically connects to the input that you chose for the TV input. The Sony remote changes channels and volume, uses the DirecTv channel guide, and the DVR listings just fine. Only thing it doesn't do is turn on/off the DirecTV box. It's no real problem because you can still use the DirecTv remote to do all of these things. The DirecTv remote does turn on the TV as well as the box. Streaming services. - The set's Home screen lists a bunch of streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and others. I subscribe to Netflix and Prime so the first time clicked on them I had to go through a sign-in routine but that's only once. I also subscribe to Acorn TV and Britbox and these were not listed. New apps can be loaded through Google Play Store and I found Acorn easily enough. I installed it and added it to the list on the screen. Since I have a hearing loss I use closed captions and subtitles but it seems the Acorn app on this TV does not recognize them even though there is a setup for captions on the TV. Also, Britbox isn't even in Google Play Store for this TV. This means I will be hooking up my Roku box to be able to access these two services. It's not a big deal but a minor annoyance. Am I happy with this TV? Yes I am. As I said the picture is outstanding. I replaced a 42 inch Bravia (which had a screen failure after 10 years and was not worth fixing) with this new 55 inch Bravia OLED. Even though there is a size difference the overall footprint of the larger TV is really not much bigger than my older one so it fits on the same TV stand. The pedestal mount on this new TV is really good, heavily weighted for stability, and I like the fact that it is a center pedestal rather than the skinny looking legs on other sets. If this one lasts as long as the other one I'll be very happy.

We've always purchased Sony TV's, since like...well...growing up in the 70's (a little B&W tv). When we built our home in 2018, we purchased an 82" 4K Samsung for our entertainment room, because of the cost savings. I felt a little unfaithful, lol. But it's a great TV too. We are now replacing the TV in our "open plan" living room, with lots of natural light, with one a little larger (52" to 65"). We decided to go with another Sony and chose this OLED. We chose the 65" which is the biggest before the major price jump. It is the best TV we have ever owned - picture, features, etc., and happy it's a Sony. The picture is AMAZING, no professional calibration, and I don't believe there's really a need to spend the money on a sound bar. It's not like a typical flat screen (sound) - the sound is very impressive. It also handles the day time lighting very well. No glare, and the black is still black. I know LG makes the screen, but Sony sure knows how to take it from there. And the Android system is flawless. Integrated with everything, seamlessly, not a hiccup with set up. Even Airplay which I occasionally use. Waiting on another Echo to see how the Alexa control works out. Hoping we get many many years of enjoyment. Note: the 52" LED (XBR) that is the predecessor is being relocated, it is still going strong at 11 y/o with daily use.

This Sony TV utilizes the OLED Panels manufactured by LG, and incorporates Sony's outstanding image processing. The OLED panels Sony is procuring are exceptionally flat and do not have the annoying rippled reflection the LQ OLED TVs exhibit when viewed while the TV is off. Theses two facts alone make the higher price for the TV worthwhile. The image quality is first- rate. No perceptible motion blur, no noise artifacts visible, no off-axis dimming or color shift that one typically sees in LED backlit LCD TVs. The TV exhibits natural color and tone rendition with crisp details. The program material viewed may not be up to this TV's ability to display it however- older film- based program material will have it's foibles revealed- you'll redily detect which producers chose to use less expensive film or had to change emulsion types in some cameras, causing a perceptible change in the image quality, sometimes between scenes. This TV is a movie buff's TV! I love the TV. This TV uses the entire surface of the TV as a speaker- dialog is very crisp and easy to understand, which places this TV at the top of a short list of TVs to be considered for your living room or media room. The realism of this TV cannot be understated, nor can it be understood, without seeing it for yourself.

Right out of the box review (like 2 hours ago). Will update as I get some experience with this TV. (See updates below) We're redoing a lot of stuff in our house. We'll be remodeling our entertainment center. Our current space had a built in cabinet for an old projection type TV. The biggest thing we could fit in there neatly was a 65" Vizio. The old vizeo served us well, but it was getting a bit long in the tooth. I will give it credit for taking some major abuse (like the time when my toddler daughter managed to pull the TV down on top of herself). The TV itself had a so-so picture by its day's standards. I'd say poor by today's standards. But since we're tearing out the wall that that TV was in, I wanted to go bigger because our room is fairly big and you can't really get as close to the TV as I'd like. I was actually looking at 85"-100" sets, but did not want to break the bank at $6k plus. I also had convinced myself I wanted OLED because it had deeper color saturation than QLEDs and wider viewing angles (lots of articles out there about OLED vs QLED pros and cons). This TV (the 77" version) seemed to check all the boxes and seemed to have the least amount of complaints about crappy remotes and firmware. Right now we're using an old Onkyo receiver and have Apple TV and Cable box inputs. I'm not sure, but I think the tv will give better performance if we go from the sources directly since our receiver is so old it may not handle the 4K as well as newer units. Set up - setting the tv up is a 2 person job. It's a beast and weighs about 100 pounds. I managed to do most of the set up by myself (like tip it out of the box and put the stand on), and my wife helped me do the final lift onto our TV cart. Right now I only have an HDMI going to the #1 input from my receiver and power hooked to the tv. The set-up menu was fairly straightforward. Attaching to my wifi was easy. I had the set up and running in about 10 min. I watched a bit of regular tv off the cable box which seemed ok. Deep saturated colors, sharp image. There was some fuzziness, but I think that's the cable feed. I then cued up 2001: on Apple TV and watched the intro scenes for a few minutes, then went to the Space Station rendezvous segment. Since it is in letterbox, you loose some picture on the top and bottom of the screen, which is to be expected. But the picture was very very nice!. It's not fair to compare this picture to my old tv, but for example, when the Ape throws the bone into the sky and the the scene switches to a satellite in space, I could see a tiny Soviet flag on the spacecraft (actually supposed to be an orbiting nuclear weapon). The details on the rest of the images were equally impressive. More importantly, I could see that kind of clarity from virtually any angle, which is important because if we have a bunch of people watching a game or something, they are scattered all around the room. There is a lot more to discover on this TV. I have not typically used smart TV features in my other sets, so it will be interesting to see if I use any of them here. I'm looking at new AV receivers, so it will be important how I configure the next set up. We'll see how the TV works with other components. I have no idea how good or bad the sound is, but I'll check that out too. I don't think this model comes in an 85" class, and even if it did it would probably be out of my price range. For all I know I might be happy with a larger QLED set but I'm not going to worry about that now. I'll update this review as appropriate. By the way, Amazon delivery service was very good. Only gripe was they gave me a 3-hour delivery window and said I'd get a text 30 min before delivery. Never got that text, but I was able to track the delivery truck. The two people just brought the TV into the family room and that was that. Update Feb 3 Well I hit my first bug. The TV started turning itself off randomly. Not a lot, but maybe once a day. I could not figure out if I was accidentally turning it off with one of my many remotes accidentally. I googled it and found out this is very common with Bravia tvs. You have to go into the setup menu and find Bravia Input Sync menu. Then turn that off. There are a couple of good YouTube videos on this. It seems to have worked and did not turn off spontaneously yesterday.

This is the second Sony large flat panel we've owned. The first was a medium range model that I was completely happy with. When we considered another TV purchase I felt the investment in the XBR-55A9G 55 Inch set was completely out of the question. It was, in words that will come ringing back to me, "A completely stupid amount of money for a TV! I was wrong. This set is worth every nickle. Here's why I think so. First, I generally have an aversion to setting up new Tech Goodies. Usually there is a chasm between initial acquisition and comfort of use that brings my frustration level near the TILT. It usually starts with the unpacking. I know this may seem like a little thing, but this thing came in the most intelligently designed packaging I have ever seen. We simply slid the box into the living room and followed a few brief instructions and had it unboxed and ready to turn on in a matter of minutes. During the entire process my language remained well in the PG range. As I said, this may seem like a small thing, but I think it is reflective of the overall quality of the set and the company that produced it. There was a substantial amount of engineering that went into the packaging. And it shows. I have no idea of the engineering characteristics of OLED panels, I'll leave ut to others to wax lyrical about flatness and color depth. Even after we turned the set on, it was ready to watch in a matter of minutes. The voice commands work flawlessly, the picture detail is amazing and my blood pressure remains safely in the non lethal range. While yes, it's more than I would have spent given my own devices, based upon the initial set up and an hour or so of watching, I'm sold. Oh about the title, if I find anything I don't like about the set, I'll amend this review.

Like the reviewers say, this is the best picture around. The absolute black of OLED provides fantastic contrast and pop, but factory settings are too dark for me because they crush the details of dark objects, at least on my set. I needed to make adjustments to see the collars, lapels and pockets on black jackets, texture of black fabrics, and that there are actually individual hair strands on dark haired people. Otherwise black hair looks like it was colored with a crayon. I am able to correct that. It's a Sony though, so the color processing is excellent with a very wide range of adjustments. I know every show has it's own coloring and lighting, but I wish they weren't so different. This tv really displays how the production is meant to look and I didn't realize how wide the variety is. Maybe it's me, but I make adjustments for almost every program. It's somewhat tiresome sometimes, even though I can usually adjust the picture to my liking. The contrast, color saturation, detail, and depth are amazing, and like an upgrade to one's sound system, there is more to see when I watch a show again. Although I was initially wowed out of the box, I probably get a tech to calibrate this set eventually, but for now it's very good. I am trying it out as the center channel of my 5.1 set up. It is very good in that the speech seems emitted from where the speaker is on the display, but the sound doesn't project towards me as nearly much as my center channel speaker. It is fairly clear, but I wear hearing aids so I'm not a good judge of sound quality and my comments on sound must taken with a large splash of salt. The screen does reflect light and is not as good as my Samsung Plasma when the sun lights up the room, even with the blinds closed. All in all, I am enjoying shows, new and old, and am happy with the purchase.

Upon timely and expert delivery, the packaging of this product was noticeably of top quality and very protective. The product definitely requires two people to unpack and install. All instructions were clear and easily followed. Once installed, the TV set up was very easy and efficient. The picture quality is second to none , sound is very good even without a bar, and features are easily accessed. I can't wait to update our receiver to 4K.

Expensive but a fantastic TV. Not many on the market than can touch the quality of the Sony. Very easy to set up and the menu is user friendly without having a background in computer science. The colour and sharpness of the picture is so good most actors faces show their age far more than on a lesser TV. If you want a fantastic picture and sound this is the TV to buy!

Fantastic TV. Watching programs in 4K is absolutely stunning. The feel and comfort of the remote is great with the control buttons easily accessible. All the Smart TV applications work really well. Upgrades the picture quality of HD programs as well, largely due to how vibrant the picture quality is as a result of the OLED feature. Great TV. Sony has always stood out over the years with the quality of their products. Great service and follow up from the shipper, Simcoe Audio/TV.

This TV was rated Best TV model of the year for 2019. Good to know! My purchase decision was based on that rating. {specifically the 65"} The TV is Beautiful! Sony is number one for picture quality. The company I purchased it from - Stephensens Electronics, I would also give a five star rating to. They got the TV to me in a timely manner. They advertise that they ship all over North America and they did great. The TV was packaged very well so I had no concerns with that considering it came across Canada, from Toronto to Vancouver. I also got in on a sales promo that ended the day of my purchase so I was happy with that. I would buy this way again. Thank you. Lynne Fulton

I miss detailed instructions for use for the versatile setting options. Otherwise a very good TV.