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✅ 🌟 Almost record-breaking brightness
✅ 🎥 Cinema-quality contrast and color
✅ 🎮 Decent for gaming with exclusive features for PS5 Pro gaming
✅ ▶️ Handy Multi-View feature for watching YouTube while gaming
✅ 📺 Auto-calibrated mode for Prime Video streaming sports, movies, and more
✅ 🍿 IMAX Enhanced recreates the IMAX theater experience with a taller image and tuned audio
❌ 🐌 Not the most responsive or fastest for gaming
❌ 🔌 Only two HDMI 2.1 ports
❌ 🏋🏻♀️ Incredibly heavy compared to its competition
Amazon: Sony Bravia 9 - $2,698
Best Buy: Sony Bravia 9 - $2,699
Walmart: Sony Bravia 9 - $2,698
The Sony Bravia 9 is the perfect movie and show watching TV for true cinema fans. It features a fantastically bright and contrast-rich display with excellent color reproduction. You also get real height audio for Dolby Atmos and DTS:X surround sound without needing a soundbar or additional speakers. Plus, a Prime Video calibrated mode and IMAX Enhanced support lets you watch movies even closer to how their creators intended.
While the Sony Bravia 9 is more than sufficient for gaming, it only has two HDMI ports, which support only two gaming devices at a time. The Sony Bravia 9 sports some PS5-specific gaming features, including Auto HDR Tone Mapping and Auto Genre Picture Mode; however, there are TVs better suited for gaming, like the Samsung QN90F Neo QLED and LG C5 OLED evo.
🔆 QLED max brightness. The Sony Bravia 9 displays a stunningly bright picture, although not the brightest, with a peak brightness of up to 2,816 nits. The Hisense Q8N and TCL QM851G are still the brightest TVs I’ve ever seen, both blasting out over 3,000 nits of peak brightness. Still, the Sony Bravia 9 proves its place over the Sony Bravia 7, which topped out at slightly over 2,000 nits. It’s also brighter than Samsung’s competing QLED TV, the Samsung QN90D, which I measured with 2,023 nits of maximum brightness.
🎥 Cinema quality. This TV’s almost record-setting brightness and Dolby Vision support make the Bravia 9 excellent for watching HDR movies and shows. For a Mini LED TV, the Bravia 9 also produces almost pure-looking black levels. The dock scene in The Equalizer looked fantastic on the Bravia 9. The TV showed no bloom, even though the scene started in pitch black with only a few bright spotlights. When the scene ended with the equivalent of a nuclear explosion, the Bravia 9 displayed the power of the blast with equally eye-searing brightness.
🎮 Respectable gaming chops. The Sony Bravia 9 is also great for gaming, though I wouldn’t call it the best. The TV features a native 120Hz refresh rate and VRR support up to 144Hz. I also measured a latency of 10.4ms, which doesn’t make this the most responsive TV for gaming. It has a hair more latency than the Sony Bravia 7 and more than triple the latency I saw with the 3ms Samsung QN90D. You’ll also enjoy a more responsive gaming experience with a newer OLED TV, such as the Sony Bravia A8 II or LG C5 OLED evo.
▶️ YouTube while you game. Sony’s long-promised Multi-View feature is finally here, and it's spectacular if you love watching YouTube while gaming. Basically, you can pull up a quick YouTube search from the Game Menu at any time while gaming and start watching videos in a split window. Some PS5 Pro games already support this to some extent with Game Help. However, Sony’s Multi-View universal works with all games, and it also works with the Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch OLED, and gaming PCs.
🎛️ Netflix and Prime Video Calibrated modes. The Sony Bravia 9 makes streaming movies and shows with the best picture settings a breeze. Beyond Filmmaker mode, this auto-calibration mode identifies what kind of content you're watching and adjusts the screen settings accordingly. For sports, it’ll raise the brightness and add some motion smoothing. Meanwhile, movies toggle the TV into a calibrated movie mode. The Netflix Calibrated is essentially the same as Sony’s previously named X- and A-series TVs, and appears to apply the same settings to all content.
🎞️ IMAX Enhanced. On top of the smart calibrated modes, the Sony Bravia 9 also supports the IMAX Enhanced format. This picture profile essentially brings the IMAX theater experience home. This includes the taller 1.9:1 aspect ratio, which fills more of the screen than an ultrawide movie with thick black bars. All the while, DTS:X enhances audio with more directionality while separating the dialogue, music, and sound effects tracks. Unfortunately, the IMAX Enhanced library is mainly limited to MCU movies on Disney+ and the Sony Core Pictures app. Still, for the limited series of films, the extra vertical resolution is a treat, especially for eye-filling spectacles like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
👾 Perfect upscaling. Rewatching Battlestar Galactica on the Sony Bravia 9 reminded me of how I originally saw it on SyFy. The Bravia 9’s XR Processor does a fantastic job of 4K upscaling and adding HDR tone mapping to shows that were never shot for a modern TV. The Bravia 9 also presented the first Michael Keaton Batman movie closely to how it aired on a CRT TV – that proves this processor doesn’t attempt to make scenes too sharp or bright.
🔊 Built-in Dolby Atmos speakers. The Sony Bravia 9 is equipped with a 70W speaker system that includes the usual side-firing tweeters, but there’s also a special beam tweeter that bounces sound upward. This is used precisely to generate height audio for Dolby Atmos and DTS:X formats, and it’s incredibly effective. During the sprinkler scene in The Equalizer, it made it sound like there was water raining down from overhead. The TV also produced a convincing surround sound, especially for the atmospheric opening of Drive. I could hear sirens in the far distance from the sides while the over-the-radio baseball game was centered and projected at me.
🗣️ Voice Zoom Max. Voice Zoom 3 returns on the Sony Bravia 9 to make dialogue audible without the need for subtitles. The dialogue-enhancing feature subtly increases the volume of any type of speech without drastically lowering the sound mix on music or special effects. It can’t perform miracles and restore all the dialogue in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. However, I still found myself reaching less for the subtitle zipcord than I usually would with modern shows like Whitelotus and Yellowjackets.
🏋🏻♀️ HEAVY. The Sony Bravia 9 is an incredibly heavy TV. The screen alone weighs 71 pounds, or 76 pounds with the stand. Be prepared for a sweaty fight to get this up a flight of stairs. It’s almost absurd how heavy this TV is compared to most 65-inch TVs from other brands, some of which I can easily lift by myself.
📐 Clean back. The Bravia 9 isn’t the thinnest TV in the world, but it has a great design that keeps wires tidy and hides the back kibble that usually plagues most TVs. This is thanks to the TV coming with over 10 detachable plastic panels that cover up all the ports, power connector, and wire running channels. Even the TV’s feet have attachable cable guides to help ensure this is the cleanest-looking TV, whether on a credenza or wall-mounted.
🔌 2x HDMI 2.1 only. Disappointingly, you only get two HDMI 2.1 ports on the Sony Bravia 9 TV. That means you can only connect up to two gaming systems, like the PS5 Pro, Nintendo Switch 2 or Nvidia RTX 5090-powered gaming PC. Also, eARC is annoyingly positioned on one of the HDMI 2.1 ports, so you’ll lose one gaming port when you connect a soundbar like the Sonos Arc or Sennheiser Ambeo soundbar. Thankfully almost all of Sony’s soundbars come with a HDMI 2.1 passthrough port. Other flagship TVs, such as the Samsung QN90F Neo QLED and LG G5 OLED evo, have four HDMI 2.1 ports. Even the lower-tier LG B5 OLED evo has four HDMI 2.1 ports, and it costs half as much as the Sony Bravia 9.
✨ Light-up remote. The Sony Bravia 9’s included remote has a convenient light-up feature that turns on automatically whenever it's in a dark room. All the buttons light up, so it’s easy to navigate anything from the power button to the central navigation circle to all the app shortcuts. It’s also super helpful for finding the remote while watching a movie with all the lights off and curtains drawn. The remote itself also has a unique, slightly green tinge with blue and black speckles throughout, thanks to Sony’s SORPLAS recycled plastic, which itself is made from recycled bottles and optical discs.
Amazon: Sony Bravia 9 - $2,698
Best Buy: Sony Bravia 9 - $2,699
Walmart: Sony Bravia 9 - $2,698
✅ 📺 You want the best picture for movies and TV shows
✅ 🎥 You love rewatching older media on streaming or disc
✅ 🎮 You want a PlayStation 5 gaming TV
❌ You’re looking for a gaming TV (get the LG C5 OLED evo instead)
❌ You want to hook up more than two gaming devices (get the Samsung QN90F Neo QLED instead)
Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on X @baggingspam.
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