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✅ ⚫⚪ Contrast close to OLED level in a mini LED TV
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✅ 💡 Highlights bright enough to make you blink
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✅ 🌈 Naturalistic color reproduction
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✅ 🔉 Special midrange speakers ensure loud and clear dialogues
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✅ 📺 Netflix and Prime Video’s calibrated mode optimizes the image for streaming content
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✅ 🎮 Responsive and smooth 4K 120Hz gaming
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❌ 🪩 Reflections in the room can be disturbing
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❌ 🤏 Narrow viewing angles
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❌ 🔌 Only two 4K 120Hz gaming-capable HDMI 2.1 ports
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❌ 💸 $600 price increase over Sony’s previous X90L 4K TV
The Sony Bravia 7 is a direct Sony X90L Replacement with mini-LED backlighting that adds hundreds more lighting zones for a brighter picture and much higher contrast. It’s a correction to our biggest frustration with the rear-facing full-array backlighting on the X90L, which was otherwise our favorite TV for PS5 gaming.
By and large, it’s a direct upgrade, albeit with a big price jump from $1,199 to $1,799. The Sony Bravia 7’s new mini-LED backlight adds hundreds more lighting zones that deliver highlights bright enough to make you squint, while delivering nearly the contrast of an OLED TV. The speakers are some of the best we’ve ever heard, especially in reproducing dialogue loud and clear. The only things that detract from this TV’s excellent picture quality are unsightly reflections in the room and the narrowest viewing angles we’ve seen on an LCD TV in years. In a small enough room, though, this isn’t a problem if you’re looking directly at the TV.
Overall, the Sony Bravia 7 is an excellent mini-LED TV. With its natural color reproduction, it’s a fantastic TV for watching anything. Calibration for Netflix and Prime Video means you don’t have to tweak your TV settings to get an optimal picture for everyday streaming. PS5-specific features and a higher gaming brightness mean it’s well-suited to all games. Best of all, at $1,799, it’s quite a bit cheaper than LG’s QNED or Samsung NEO QLED TVs (though you can still find TCL and Hisense TVs for a lower price).
💡 Mini LED, maximum upgrade. Switching from a full array to a mini-LED backlight has given the Sony Bravia 7 a 790% increase in dimming zones, and it shows. The brightness of this set peaked at around 1,750 nits at a 10% window. This makes the Bravia 7 twice as bright as most OLEDs, but it falls short of the scorching 2,023 nits brightness I saw on the Samsung QN90D. The Sony Bravia 7 was still bright enough to impress me during the flare scene in 1917.
👾 Even better game mode. Interestingly, peak brightness rose to just over 2,000 nits in Game Mode and with automatic low latency. So the Bravia 7 is even better tuned for HDR gaming, making it even better for gaming on the PS5 Slim – and PS5Pro maybe soon too.
😇 Deep black with a hint of halo. On the other side of brightness, you get almost OLED-level contrast with this TV. Blacks look almost like pure darkness thanks to the grainier mini-LED backlight and the new XR Backlight Master Drive technology that controls the 480 lighting zones. There is some slight haloing around bright objects and the white text on subtitles, but this only bothered me slightly.
💐 Natural colors. The Sony Bravia 7 excels above all in its reproduction of true-to-life colours. The colours are vibrant and strong, but they have none of the surreal or psychedelic hues that can sometimes invade the picture of other TVs. The colours reproduced on the Bravia 7 make watching content feel more like looking through a window into another world, as it helps to make even films like the absurdly fantastic The poor look realistic.
🎛️ Calibrated mode for Netflix and Prime Video. Several TV brands have introduced some sort of Filmmaker or Professional Video Mode that adjusts the TV’s settings to display movies the way the director intended them. Sony has now gone a step further and added a Calibrated Mode that kicks in when you stream something on Netflix and Prime Video. When you start watching something, the feature chooses between eight presets that adjust the TV’s settings like screen brightness, color temperature, and gamma. This is a great help for anyone who wants to calibrate their TV in a less extensive way.
In this mode, the Sony Bravia 7 pulls metadata from the streaming services to apply different settings for movies, game shows, sports, and other types of content. Overall, it works well, providing a look that complements what I’m watching. For example, any sports program is shown with a brightened image, while movies are presented with more accurate color gradations and better HDR.
🪞 Dark mirror. I’ve gotten a lot of praise for the Bravia 7’s picture so far, but unfortunately the screen’s physical anti-reflective coating isn’t the best we’ve seen from Sony. In most dark scenes, you’ll still see a lot of reflections in the room, including your own. That being said, the anti-reflective coating still scatters sunlight and bright spotlights quite well when they hit the screen at an angle. But your performance may depend on how much bright light comes into your living room.
🏳️🌈⃤ Bad viewing angles. The Sony Bravia 7’s viewing angles are also pretty poor. Take just a few steps to the side and even before you cross the edge of the screen you can see the image starting to fade. This is surprising as I haven’t seen an LCD TV with narrow viewing angle issues in over five years.
🎮 Designed for PS5 gaming. If there’s one thing the Sony Bravia 7 was made specifically for, it’s gaming, especially with a PS5. It features the same Auto HDR Tone Mapping and Auto Genre Picture Mode that we loved so much on last year’s Sony X90L. Auto HDR Tone Mapping automatically sets the TV’s maximum and minimum brightness to the right levels. At the same time, Auto Genre Picture Mode optimises your TV picture for whatever type of game you play, without having to dig through menus every time you switch from Final Fantasy XVI To God of War: Ragnarok.
🕹️ Maximum FPS. Aside from the basic gaming setup, the Sony Bravia 7 is a fantastic TV for gaming. I measured an input latency of less than 10ms when gaming at 4K 120Hz. That’s significantly faster than the 18ms I measured on the Sony X90L, but lags behind the 3ms on the Samsung QN90D. The Sony Bravia 7 also handles motion beautifully at 120Hz. It makes games look buttery smooth. Combos in Street Fighter 6 feels even more seamless when presented in silky animations. Meanwhile, the chaos of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Small mosh pit matches seem even wilder (and more addictive) when all the action happens at high speed, making all of last season’s sudden deaths from blunderbuss explosions feel even more immediate.
🫥 Strangely, the multi-view function is missing. Sony’s Game Menu has remained relatively unchanged since last year. It still provides a good overview of your TV’s output and whether you are actually playing at 4K 120Hz with ALLM and VRR turned on. Multi-View was supposed to be a new feature in Sony’s latest Game Menu though and it would have basically allowed you to watch YouTube while you played. Oddly enough, it seems to be a phantom feature as it is missing from my Sony Bravia 7 set. There is also no coverage of it in other reviews and if you google the topic you will find a barely a few Reddit posts also confused about the missing feature. I’ve asked Sony for an update on whether the feature has been cancelled or postponed and will update my Bravia 7 review if I get a response.
🔊 Acoustic multi-audio. The Sony Bravia 7 has a robust sound system with dual woofers and midrange drivers paired with sonically positioned tweeters. This is a much better audio setup than the usual stereo speakers found on most thin-screen TVs of this type. I’ve never heard clearer or louder dialogue than on the Sony Bravia 7, and that’s largely thanks to the dedicated midrange drivers. They’re especially important because when paired with a Sony soundbar or speakers, you can still use the TV’s built-in sound as a center channel with Acoustic Center Sync.
🗣️ Voice Zoom 3. Like the Samsung QN90D, the Sony Bravia 7 uses AI to separate and increase dialogue volume with a feature called Voice Zoom 3. Sony’s version gives you plenty of detail with six levels of adjustment and does a great job of increasing dialogue volume while also separating it from other sounds. Dialogue seemed 20% louder with Voice Zoom 3 set to maximum. In my experience, it doesn’t ruin how shows and movies were originally mixed. Instead, it saves you the hassle of constantly increasing and decreasing the volume when someone whispers a line followed by a thunderous explosion.
👆 Custom Google TV menus. While the Bravia 7 uses the same Google TV operating system as Hisense and TCL TVs, Sony’s version has an extra coat of paint over the menus – and it’s noticeable. It’s easy to see where Google TV’s simple text menus end and Sony’s more graphical and detailed menus begin. The best thing about Sony’s menus is that they include a little guide to the TV settings as you adjust them.
🪨 This is difficult. You really need a TEAM lift to get the Sony Bravia 7 on your counter or wall mount because it is HEAVY. At 62.39 pounds (with stand) (59.75 pounds without), Sony’s TVs continue to be some of the hardest to set up.
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✅ 📺 You want to upgrade to a mini LED TV without breaking your budget
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✅ 🔊 You want a TV with fantastic built-in speakers
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✅ 🎨 You want a TV with high brightness, deep contrast and great colors
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✅ 🎮 You want a TV specifically designed for PS5 gaming
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❌ 🛋️ You have a large living room or TV area. (Get the Samsung QN90D or an OLED TV like the LGC4 And SamsungS95D)
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❌ 🔌 You need 3+ HDMI 2.1 devices and refuse to buy an A/V receiver. (Get the Samsung QN90D instead)
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❌ 💰Looking for a Mini LED Gaming TV for under $1,000 (Get the Hisense U7N or TCL-QM7 instead)
Kevin Lee is Creative Director at The Shortcut and has been testing technology for more than a decade, including extensive research into TVs and soundbars.
