Among TV makers, you can say Sony’s streamlined branding is probably the easiest to understand – its Bravia 5, for example, is a “mid-range” 4K TV straddling the entry-level Bravia 2 and 3 and the class-topping Bravia 7, 8 and 9.
If you’re not willing to spend top dollar but want to get better image quality than the basic 4K TVs you’ve been watching for the past few years, then Sony thinks you’d be interested in the new Bravia 5.
The big thing about the Bravia 5 is the introduction of mini LEDs in its display panel. As their name implies, these are smaller than the typical LEDs found in older TVs or today’s entry-level models.
This gives better control over individual parts of a screen that display your picture. The result: Better contrast and deeper blacks, at least on paper.
For this review, Sony sent us the 65-inch version of the Bravia 5 – the K-65XR50 – and viewing different content on it in the past two weeks tells me it’s a great upgrade for anyone whose TV is a good few years old.
In particular, I’m thinking of the natural skin tones and fluid motion that come on when I play a movie. For me, the Dolby Vision Atmos or Cinema modes that take away the over-vibrant or dynamic saturation typical on many TVs are great for watching movies.
Drawing the curtains in my room and settling down to watch the Warfare movie, for example, makes me feel like I’m in a cinema. With more realistic visuals, you can better sense the anxiety and stress of the American soldiers defending against insurgent attacks in a sand-swept house during the Iraq war.
As the movie has many scenes of someone peering out from a dark room into the bright exterior from a window, you can spot the great contrast and dynamic range even in the more subdued movie modes.
I also fired up the Devotion movie, which features a scene with American pilots attacking a bridge during the Korean War. Again, the colours are suitably cinema-like, especially in a darkened room, while darker parts of a scene reveal important detail. Motion appears smooth and natural.
There is a good balance of sharpness here as well – not overwhelming and unrealistic like with a “soap opera” effect but enough to give detail to the facial features of characters and large landmarks.
This movie streamed over Netflix supports Dolby Atmos Vision, which lets you easily choose either vivid, bright or dim on the Bravia 5 to suit your environment. It’s a quick way to get what you like without fiddling with all the picture settings.
Speaking of that, Sony does include a lot of settings for you to tweak things like brightness for each video source, if you don’t like the presets. A good thing, if you are after a truly customised experience.
Of course, you can also max everything out to see how bright this screen goes. With YouTube content like those of natural landscapes in 4K, you can fire up the bright and sharp Vivid mode and see intricate details on rock faces and tree tops, as long as you’re far back enough for the screen.
So, yes, if you want to get a dynamic picture, you can still have it, say, for your games or football matches. I’d say this isn’t the brightest screen around but it does the job well enough for just about any content.
Notably, with the Bravia 5, I didn’t detect much of the troublesome blooming – white spots forming usually near the sides of an LED TV – that older panels suffer from. This is, after all, a micro LED TV with more dimming zones allowing for better control of the image.
And some of that promised picture quality is best seen in several scenes in Interstellar. Deep blacks are what you get – probably close to what you get on an OLED TV – when you stare at the nothingness of space in several parts of the movie.
What about audio? For the review, Sony sent us a matching soundbar – the Bravia Theatre Bar 6, the Japanese company’s entry-level Bravia-branded home theatre audio setup with a separate subwoofer.
It promises “room-shaking bass” and sure enough it does try to fill the room with sound that moves you. If you’re looking for a “big” and loud cinematic experience without listening too closely, I think this combo does a passable job. It certainly adds to the “basic” sound from the TV itself.
However, the 35-watt soundbar and 20-watt subwoofer will seem lacking if you want the bass to hit with more focus and scale without sounding flabby. It’s just plenty loud and lacking detail at times.
Bullets should fly past with zip and punches should hammer in with a thud, which the Bravia Theatre Bar 6 unfortunately doesn’t deliver. It lacks the resolution or the reach that you’d expect from a top-notch home theatre system.
I even tried turning down the bass but it’s doesn’t result in a lot more control and tightness. That said, there isn’t any issue with synchronising dialogue, which always comes across clear and audible even in busy scenes.
I haven’t spoken about the Google TV interface that Sony uses on its TVs. On the Bravia 5, it is easy enough to navigate around with the unfussy remote controller, or even with voice.
Using Google also means you can download your own apps easily by signing in to your Google account. Even without doing so, the TV has apps like Netflix, Amazon Prime Audio, YouTube, Disney+ and Max, which are almost all the streaming apps I use today.
What I find a little strange is that the Google TV interface seems a little less visually sharp than usual. I tried fiddling with the picture settings but it doesn’t seem to be as sharp as when I fire up some YouTube videos.
To be fair, I don’t have much to complain about the TV itself, except perhaps for Sony to consider coming up with a matte surface, as Samsung does done with some of its newer models.
This is a great help for homes in Singapore, where bright living rooms and reflections from windows, where TVs are often placed close to, are a problem. Of course, you can draw the curtains but then you might need to turn on the air-conditioning…
Another stumbling block against the Sony Bravia 5 is its price. The 65-incher I have with me has a sticker price of S$4,199, which puts it above the retail price of Samsung’s entry-level 65-inch OLED TV that goes for under S$4,000.
Yes, mini LEDs are great but OLED TVs allow each light to be individually dimmed for unrivalled control over the contrast and image quality of a screen.
If you can get the Sony Bravia 5 at a good price after discount – typical in stores in Singapore – you should check it out. Certainly consider it if it is cheaper than an OLED TV.
To be sure, the new Sony TV offers a good entry point for mini LED TVs that are a clear upgrade over basic entry-level LED TVs. Priced attractively, the Bravia 5 will win over buyers.
UPDATE at 25/06/2025, 4:54pm: The review has been updated with an additional note on the deep blacks presented by the Sony TV.
