So this review is a bit long so forgive me as I go thru the story of how I purchased the TV. I was looking for a 65 inch TV upgrade for my living room which had a 55 inch Samsung NU7100. I don't usually buy open box TV's but was on the Best buy site looking to see if anything was on sale on a whim and the TCL 8 series was on sale for 999, a 1000 savings. It said there was open box available so I clicked on the link and they had one for 599 at a store about 45 minutes from me. It was 3am so I figured I would call in the am to ask about it. Sure enough next morning it was gone. Mad at myself for just not buying it I started looking at other TV's. I always have loved the picture on the 900F/950G models seeing them in store but didn't want spend too much as I am currently on temporary furlough due to COVID19. The 900F was sold out and no open box in area and the 950G was on sale for 1399.00, I didn't want to spend that much right now but did have open box available. I clicked on the link and they were, two available in a store about 1.5 hrs from me (in satisfactory shape it said) for 839.00. I quickly called...one had no stand the other said minor scratches but screen was perfect so I bought it. Went and picked it up they brought it to the car wrapped in heavy duty bubble wrap. Got it home and looked over it with a fine tooth comb and I could not find any scratches of any kind, the TV was in prefect shape. So powered the TV up and to honest I was not blown away (at first). The picture was nice but did not wow me. It was much better than the 55 inch Samsung NU7100 4K TV it replaced but it should be as it is a higher end TV. Luckily I can honestly say after playing around and tweaking the settings this TV is amazing. I have ATT Uverse which gives a crappy 1080i signal and the way this TV handles upscaling is excellent and 4K content...all I can say is wow!! Everything about it just works. The way it handles, colors, contrast, brightness, motion handling, HDR content, Dolby Vision, local dimming is all top notch (they say it only has 60 dimming zones, who cares, I rather have 60 well controlled zones than 200 with crappy processing). The sound is ok, not great but more than acceptable and the Android OS is fine. For gaming its very good and I have had no issues but wish it had VRR. Overall I am completely happy with the purchase especially considering the price I paid.

I bought a 65" Sony OLED previously. While it looked phenomenal, and nothing does the deep perfect blacks of OLED, the brightness was not great. My house's great room has high ceiling with lots of tall windows and natural lighting. It was so jarring how the OLED during the day was just not bright enough. While I was sad to do so, it made me realize that they served better for maybe a home theater setup or a maybe a bedroom in the evenings. So, I returned it and got this TV instead. I am not disappointed at all with my purchase. The brightness is off the charts. The HDR pops amazingly. Properly setup, this TV just looks phenomenal. There is something about it that is just great. Even in a brightly naturally lit room on the middle of a Saturday afternoon at home and I can see everything so clearly. I had people over the house for Super Bowl Sunday to watch the game in 4k and I got a ton of compliments at how amazing this looked. So, I give you the caveat that I don't think this TV is superior to an OLED in terms of picture quality (though according to my wife she can't tell the difference lol), it is still worth mentioning that you should gauge your situation and your setup at home and if you have too much natural lighting, you may want to consider something that is still phenomenal quality yet has fantastic brightness. Oh and, on a positive note as well, the built in apps are super snappy and great. Runs just as good as my 2018 Nvidia shield did in terms of overall app performance and ARC setup to send 5.1 back to my receiver worked just fine so I didn't need to get anything extra, like a Roku, or Apple TV, or even use my old Shield. Everything built-in was perfect. Obviously this might not apply for a home theater people who want an atmos setup and ARC is insufficient, though it does come with eARC support too, but I am not well enough read on that. This also integrates nicely with so I can turn the TV on and Off with Alexa. No additional hardware needed. Very cool.

When it comes to 4K TVs there is a lot out there that place a large roll in determining which one is the right one for you. I had a 2009 Samsung 1080 tv that was 240 refresh rate which means zero motion blurring even with out the “soap opera” effect. The downside to that tv was that it was only 40 inches, which was fine since we didn’t set very far away from the tv so it was perfect. The problem was when we moved I needed bigger and I knew it was time to make the switch. I was looking at LG OLED which brings the best quality but there were a lot of little things about any OLED that worried me and at the price tag they come I don’t want any worries. When I went into Best Buy and looked at the 55 inch OLED I planned on purchasing it but even at 55 inch our new arrangement put us 12 feet from the tv and 55 still was quite small. So the employee pointed out this Sony TV and I was very skeptical that it would compare to my amazing 40 inch tv, but it was very cost affordable for 65 inch and the demo did a good job of showing how it operates out of the box.... now when you buy a TV even 4K you still need to fine tune it to get the TV to perform at its best so if it looked this good out of the box I knew there was hope. The performance of this TV is extremely respectable and a lot of the “bad” reviews I feel fall under a small number of people. I use an Apple 4K TV and this tv has Dolby vision. With my Apple TV with enhanced hdmi set, here is the ratings under Dolby vision calibration Color performance is 8.7 out of the box 10 with very little adjustments. The vibrant colors and spectrum is very good and has really impressed me. Has to be 4K quality to get the full range of color but it does upscale very well. Motion 7.7 out of the box 9 after calibrated based on personal preferences (minimal soap opera effect) there are still blurry parts I’ll explain more later on but it can handle high paced action Operating system 6.5 not a huge fan of android but I see the appeal, my low score is because it crashes a lot but the tv does do a good job of restarting. Most of the saving grace here is that through HDMI connectivity it can smartly sync the remote functions and power features to devices. Turn off the tv and the Apple TV turns off as well. Can control Apple TV through remote without and pairing. Clarity and sharpness 7.9 out of the box 9.3 after calibration When watching a 4K movie with Dolby vision the clarity is amazing there were moments when you might have actually thought the Actor was standing right there. 9.3 is actually a very high score for a large tv at 65 inches, what typically happens is larger TVs have larger zones and diodes which will degrade clarity and sharpness especially the closer you are, that is why OLED is the best. But this TV does a very good job with its size and features, Sony has its own features that maximizes color, clarity and motion. These features can sometimes effect certain movies and personal viewing preferences. Now motion blurring has occurred when a concentrated area of small objects like rain or splashing water or confetti it will pixelate and blur now this is very rare and very hard to notice and didn’t make me return the TV. Now it is hard for large TVs to work with small concentrated areas and most people do not realize that. This will be where 8K TVs will thrive. Upscaling feature from 1080 to 4K This was definitely something I would probably give a low score but actually very much impressed me! 10. I took two version of the same movie 1080 and the 4K Dolby vision versions and yes you can tell a difference but it came down to clarity and sharpness. On the 1080 version being upscaled it looked like 4K but didn’t have the crisp edges and clarity that 4K can provide and it will be hard for most to notice. Viewing angles A lot of people have complained that it has very limited viewing angles meaning if you set on the side of the tv it gets washed out because of back lighting and you can’t see anything other than white haze, the only thing I have noticed is the colors get a little more dull but you can still see everything the same. My tv is up on the wall, angled down a little and I have backlighting on the tv. Backlight helps your eyes from adjusting to darkness which helps make colors brighter looking and darks darker. Black color 9 out of box 9.5 after calibration Not OLED Black but it still a does really great job, whites might have a minor halo around them on a black screen but that is caused by settings, backlighting allows for contrasting to be a little lower and still getting that clean white, and by keeping blacks to appear darker. This tv is great for its price tag and it provides a great upgrade especially when you feel your 1080 tv looks way better than your friends 4K TV. It does a great job even at 65 inches and all the calibrations I performed were done from the regular settings menu. no fancy calibrating program was used. You will have to remember what you might think looks good others might not when it comes to calibrating it. Different devices might need to be adjusted differently, and this does have individual settings per source. Even though I state a 5 star rating I would give this a tv 4.8 mainly because of the operating system and the minor motion blur that has occurred. Also if you purchase this TV at bestbuy you have 14 days to put it through all the tests and if you seriously aren’t happy you can return it. Pictures don’t capture the quality of image but you can have a look.

The picture on this tv is amazing. You’re not going to get a better picture than this without going to an oled tv and they are still iffy in reliability. The blacks and colors are vibrant and dark and you have little if any motion blur. My only complaint is, like my last Sony, you do not have a full Android OS and there are some limitations to what apps you can download directly to the tv. You can get around this by using a fire stick or Apple TV. Pair this tv with Samsung n950 soundbar and you will have an amazing set up!

I have a large great room with south facing two story windows which are opposote the 4k TV, OLED would have been a failure with this high bright natural light. The Best buy staff advised me well about this. The Sony 950 was not a second choice behind an OLED when viewed in an home setting, it is stunning !! I as unaware of the TV OS being such a great reason to buy Sony... Android TV OS. Added a $20 keybord with touch pad cursor movement.. input is super easy. The remote is blue tooth, which also controls the new Sony reciever over 30 ft hdmi cables located in a nearby cabinet, we dont lik to see piles of tech in our loving space, but to enjoy video and theater audio. no need to poit optic remote at TV. The tv also automatically found my router with an external disk to be a media server for pix, video, music...cool. i can add apps, almost like cell phone, installed home automation, and voice controlled for sprinklers, thermostat, light control. It also mirrors my phone screen. Only one app, chrome i can not install, odd. ED