Sony KD-65AF8 test: premium TV with Android on board

The Sony KD-65AF8 TV demon­strates how, based on demo­c­ra­t­ic Android, you can cre­ate a real pre­mi­um device with excel­lent pic­ture, sound and equip­ment. How­ev­er, such a device will be expen­sive both in terms of pow­er con­sump­tion and in terms of price.

cool sound

To begin with — about the best. With Acoustic Sur­face tech­nol­o­gy, Sony has achieved a high­ly inno­v­a­tive yet very high qual­i­ty audio expe­ri­ence. The device makes the entire sur­face of the pan­el vibrate, that is, when play­ing sound, the screen acts as a speak­er. Dur­ing test­ing, the sound was good, with great bass and clear highs.

Excellent image

The device from Sony belongs to the pre­mi­um class not only acousti­cal­ly, but also in terms of image. Whether you’re using one of the three dual tuners (DVB-T2, DVB‑S(2) and DVB‑C), HDMI cable or stream­ing apps for play­back, This OLED TV exhibits excel­lent con­trast ratio and superb col­ors. Sony TV con­tent in 4K res­o­lu­tion can be streamed with HDR enhance­ment if desired. HDR10, Dol­by Vision and HLG stan­dards are sup­port­ed. The results are note­wor­thy whether the con­tent comes from an SD or HD source.

Good equipment

In addi­tion to six TV tuners, on the back of the device you will find as many as four HDMI ports, a com­pos­ite video out­put, and three USB inter­faces. Through the lat­ter, you can con­nect any media stor­age device and play video or music in all pop­u­lar for­mats. At the same time, you can also record TV pro­grams using the USB record­ing func­tions of the dig­i­tal tuner.

Android with high performance and good control

This Sony TV can be con­nect­ed to your home net­work via a LAN cable or a WLAN mod­ule. Android 7 is used as the oper­at­ing sys­tem. The advan­tages here are seen first of all in a very intu­itive and fast-work­ing menu, as well as in a sur­pris­ing­ly large selec­tion of avail­able appli­ca­tions. The Google app store has the appro­pri­ate apps for almost any media ser­vice, and there are more than enough games. Anoth­er fea­ture is the inte­grat­ed Chrome­cast. This allows you to play smart­phone videos direct­ly on your TV with the touch of a fin­ger and enjoy the full glo­ry of a 65-inch OLED pan­el. Despite the abun­dance of func­tion­al­i­ty, remote con­trol using the remote con­trol remains sim­ple and straight­for­ward. In addi­tion, the inte­grat­ed voice con­trol from Google also has some­thing to praise.

Not for the budget conscious

But in the end, we have a rea­son for crit­i­cism. For all its mer­its, the TV’s won­der­ful­ly bright OLED dis­play has the side effect of a rather high pow­er con­sump­tion of 136W in nor­mal oper­a­tion. Of course, it can be reduced a lit­tle thanks to the inclu­sion of an inte­grat­ed ECO mode. At the same time, regard­less of the set­tings, the TV in stand­by mode will con­sume about 1.9 W, which, in our opin­ion, is exces­sive. Thus, the device deserves the ener­gy effi­cien­cy label “B” accord­ing to EU stan­dards.

QLED alternative: Samsung QE65Q8C

In the face of the QE65Q8C, Sam­sung is launch­ing a real com­peti­tor to OLED — a TV with a Quan­tum Dot LC dis­play. The image qual­i­ty of this 65-inch device is excep­tion­al­ly pleas­ing to us, and the sound does not give any rea­son for crit­i­cism. Since the fea­tures and ease of use are also at a very high lev­el, this mem­ber of the Sam­sung range also occu­pies a fair­ly high posi­tion in our rank­ing of 4K TVs with a diag­o­nal of more than 56 inch­es.

Sony KD-65AF8 test results

Specifications and test results Sony KD-65AF8

Pho­to: man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny