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this is absolutely outrageous who in their right freaking mind would pay this

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much for a 65-inch tv when they could

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have literally 10 of them for the same money

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and then be happy with their purchase

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a lot of people apparently everyone from the media to enthusiasts on avs forum is

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absolutely raving about the sony a90j a

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tv that costs 3 800 us dollars for the

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65-inch model i thought we were past this i thought tvs were cheap now well

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apparently not if you want to build one with lg's second generation OLED panel

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and sony's unparalleled image processing

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boy does this thing ever have a lot to live up to

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like our sponsor esr esr's new halo lock

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end of the video or clicking the link in the video description

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does all that money get you at first glance the super thin bezels of

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the a90j will please all but the strictest minimalist wannabes at just

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4.1 centimeters thick it looks great mounted to the wall or if a cabinet is

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more your style you get two options elevated for soundbar integration or

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full van damme style for a nearly bottomless look there's three usb ports

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here and here Ethernet optical audio and a headphone jack alongside an array of

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HDMI ports four in total but this is

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where we hit our first speed bump only two of the a90j's hdmis are full fat 48

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gigabit per second HDMI 2.1 which is a

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real shame since samsung and lg are offering 2.1 support across every port

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in this price tier but it makes sense at a hardware level

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the reason lg and samsung are ahead of the pack is because they bit the bullet

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and develops their own socs to process HDMI 2.1

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sony on the other hand uses a mediatek soc

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a cost savings for sure but one that has chained them to the features or lack

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thereof of a third-party solution of course no one buys a tv to look at

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the back anyway and from the front it's easy to forget that

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whatever i was just talking about i mean look at it

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it is hard to believe how far we've come in quality price and performance in just

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a few short years i mean inky blacks as

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always but the star of the show here is

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the stars lg boasted that their second generation

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panels were so named for their huge leap forward in brightness ben proceeded to

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tell us to expect about a 20 uplift which to me sounded more like an

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incremental step than worthy of being called second gen

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then i got to experience them side by side and

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yeah between the more precise color and

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increased brightness it looks a lot better

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but awkward thing lg has their own product

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based on this panel coming soon the g1

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and for a lower cost why would anyone buy a sony

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sony's image processing for starters historically it's been the best in the

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biz and the a90j is no slouch either with some tweaks you got your cinemotion

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your motion flow your random and digital noise reduction and why not some smooth

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gradation i'm i mean i'm grateful all these dials exist but reality creation sony reality

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creation why not just call it ai assisted sharpening because it's

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actually really good so it can be a little exhausting trial

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and erroring all the dials but thankfully once you've got it just right

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it looks amazing and your settings will be saved and synced to their respective

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inputs dolby atmos also makes an appearance here alongside HDR 10 and dolby vision

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dynamic HDR so these are more top tier features that are expected from a

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flagship OLED but there's one glaring a mission the

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lack of variable refresh rate support is something i just can't skip over

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it is promised apparently by winter 2021

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but the thing is sony this same company is now six months behind microsoft on

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variable refresh rate for the playstation 5 which is a great reminder

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that when you buy something you have to evaluate and purchase what it offers now

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and not go based on what's promised so what that means is that lg c10 or c1

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lineup is still the go-to for gaming on the big screen

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once that update drops however sony will have a very strong contender here

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cause here's the thing sony has another trick up their sleeves lg's second gen

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OLED tvs actually lack a key feature

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that sony has built into the a90j an

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aluminum sheet lamination layer that

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is why 20 brighter look by so much

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because it's way more than 20 percent

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thanks to that extra cooling sony is actually driving this thing as high as

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1300 nits bloody hell that is right up

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there with last generation quantum dot led backlit tvs and in practice it makes

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for a fantastic viewing experience with 4k content especially in HDR

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of course a lot of our content isn't HDR or even high-res for that matter but the

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a90j shows its strengths here too bad upscaling can be worse than no

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upscaling and most upscaling honestly speaking is bad but sony's algorithms

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put in work here and really do make a big difference the bravia xr processor

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is able to take what little information it's given and dynamically make local

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adjustments to contrast and gamma to bring pop back to parts of the image on

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screen and the addition of the low cinemotion setting it was previously

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only an on and off toggle in the last generation x900h means that you now have

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a nice middle ground for low bitrate streamed content enhancement essentially

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what it does is tries to detect what sort of processing has already been done

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to your image then tries to un it

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so cranking it up to high for highly compressed content like netflix has a

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profound effect on the experience now something that's plagued OLED's in

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the past has been the lack of near blacks in very dark content dubbed as

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near black chrominance overshoot by hdtv hdtvtest in our viewing of a handful of

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dark scenes though we didn't see any blocking or lack of depth to the darks

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so thumbs up from me there moving along to the other half of the tv experience

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though how does it sound great

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actually really great the surprisingly crisp sound profile

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comes thanks to dual primary actuators that are mounted directly behind the

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screen at 10 watts per channel along with dual 20 watt subwoofers for the low

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end and as a result of the well-designed audio package

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i would actually think twice before outfitting this tv with a sound bar i

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mean a sound bar along with a dedicated subwoofer to bring some low end grunt

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back yeah there's no replacement for displacement but even so i can

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comfortably say that the sound here is best in class for being integrated

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as they say though good hardware is nothing without good software and

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included in the a90j's tool quiver is a super easy automatic room eq it

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leverages the microphone and the remote to measure and adjust the speaker output

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based on how your space reacts to sound and your seating location and i can

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actually show you this yay

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GPU and that's it there is no manual eq

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thumbs down for that but we focused the auto configurator to a couple of

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different seating positions and i can verify it does make a difference if

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you're more of an av receiver person you can also use the tv as a center channel

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over e-arc to add to a full speaker setup but if your other speakers don't

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match sony's acoustic timber you might be better off getting something that's a

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closer match anyway sony's new remote is a breath of fresh

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air everyone else is trying to do simpler simpler simpler and this just

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has all the features which personally i prefer it's larger longer there's four

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shortcuts to the usual bunch of content providers and the aluminized top is a

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nice touch pun intended it's sturdy and comfortable to use with nice grippy

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backing and this might seem minor but having the remote light up when it's

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jostled is so nice when you're looking for it in the dark all other tv makers

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please take note and as for the software on the tv google

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tv is a really nice improvement over the more dated Android tv and the experience

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is much better for it finding content across all your services is easy with

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the built-in cross-platform search and menu navigation is snappy with all the

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google integrated services that you could wish for there's also apple airplay too if that's your preferred

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flavor of device but hey maybe you don't like flavor at all you can just take a

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clean refreshing sip of flavorless water

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lttstore.com so where does that leave us we've got a highly featured very smart

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tv that kills it in the image processing department and uses the latest

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generation of OLED panel seemingly to its utmost along with a nice sound

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package and a sleek aesthetic would i buy one

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no not for what i would want to use it for anyway variable refresh rate makes a

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huge difference for gaming and i suspect that matters to a lot of you as well

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but if you're more of a passive content consumer and you play the occasional

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game and you can stomach the price the a90j is a great tv as it is now and when

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vrr gets added to the mix it will be scary tempting

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just like i'm tempted to tell you about our sponsor esr esr wants to help make

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phone firmly attached to your dash while wirelessly charging it and you can

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easily rotate your phone between landscape and portrait modes without

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the video description if you guys like this video maybe take a

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look at the other side of the coin with our video using lg's c10 48-inch as a

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monitor