Haier M95E vs SONY BRAVIA 3 II (XR35M2)

If there is one category where the Haier M95E absolutely shines, it is the HDR effect, powered by the raw power of the backlight. This television cannot be denied its reputation as a truly bright device. In both most film scenes and during our synthetic measurements, the panel easily reached, and often exceeded, the threshold of 1200-1500 nits. This directly translates to the viewing experience – the image has punch and truly allows one to feel the magic of materials recorded in this format. However, one must be aware of a certain compromise. When particularly demanding shots filled with small but intense bright points appear on the screen, the M95E, while not losing its resonance and not dimming, pays a different price for it. A very strong and noticeably distracting halo effect is generated around these bright elements. It is evident that the algorithms controlling dimming have been programmed to prioritise brightness and the visibility of the smallest details, even if this comes at the cost of perfect black levels. We are not entirely convinced that this is the healthiest approach; nonetheless, it must be admitted that the general capabilities of the M95E in this regard are indeed substantial. A huge positive is that we are dealing with a Mini LED QLED construction. The use of a quantum dot layer brings measurable benefits in the form of wide coverage of the colour palette, which in our tests reached nearly 96% of the DCI-P3 space. This guarantees that the television has full predispositions for displaying vibrant and appropriately saturated colours.

The Bravia 3 II isn't exactly a TV that tries to impress with brightness. In our measurements it reached around 450 nits, so it's well short of the brightest models on the market. That doesn't mean HDR is just a paper feature here. Compared with standard SDR material, the brightest parts of the image can already punch through noticeably, and highlights, light sources and stronger exposures have a bit more energy and stand out better from the rest of the scene. You can see this best in simpler shots where the screen contains lots of bright elements. Then the Bravia 3 II can give a taste of a higher-dynamic-range picture. The problem only starts with more demanding content, where much greater brightness headroom is needed. There the TV quickly shows its limits and instead of bold, spectacular HDR we’re left with a merely competent picture.

Colours

The Bravia 3 II uses a QLED panel, although technically it doesn't employ a traditional quantum-dot layer. Instead Sony has used a PFS phosphor-based solution, which performs a very similar role: it allows for more saturated reds and greens, and thus reproduces a much wider colour gamut. In our measurements coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut was about 94%, and of the very wide BT.2020 around 74.4%. Those are good results for this class of hardware, which means the Bravia 3 II has no problem showing suitably saturated colours in HDR material. Colours don't look washed out, and the more intense hues can look really attractive.

Each TV is evaluated primarily based on its default cinematic mode – in this case, "Movie" – which theoretically should be the "best" and most accurate straight out of the box. Unfortunately, with the Haier M95E, the word "best" is absolutely not synonymous with the word "good." Even during SDR viewing, the picture revealed evident issues: white balance skewed too far towards red, and excessive, unnatural colour saturation led to noticeable colour deviations. Worse still, the M95E also struggles with brightness management (gamma curve), excessively darkening the entire scene. Such behaviour is hard to commend, as it directly leads to the merging of details in shadows, which irretrievably disappear into a black void.

However, the real disaster arrived when switching to HDR content, still remaining in "Movie" mode. It's hard to guess who came up with such a fantastic idea – or perhaps it was simply a complete oversight by Haier's engineers during this stage – but instead of cinematic accuracy, the image started to resemble a vivid "Dynamic" mode. The white balance exposed significant issues with blue color, which in turn resulted in unnatural sharpness and artificial over-brightening of the entire scene. As if that wasn't enough, the EOTF curve's characteristics mercilessly revealed that the TV also had fundamental issues with managing the local dimming system in this setting. We haven’t calibrated many Haier TVs in our career, but we know for sure already that the M95E definitely needs it.

In Professional mode the Bravia 3 II delivers a fairly good level of colour reproduction straight out of the box. In SDR the most noticeable issue is a slightly low gamma, which makes the midtones a little brighter. The white balance isn't perfect either; as brightness increases a bit of blue and red drops away, so whites can sometimes appear a touch warmer with a faint greenish tint. These aren't mistakes that immediately jump out when watching a film. Average error values hover around 3, so the factory setup can be considered quite good. The situation in HDR is similar. Here too there's a slight lack of blue, so the picture is marginally warmer than the reference, but the difference isn't large enough to be distracting during normal viewing.

The calibration process left us with extremely mixed feelings. On one hand, we noted considerable success in the area of colour. By using the options available in the menu, we managed to tame the white balance and bring it down to an acceptable level. As a result, SDR content finally freed itself from the irritating red dominance, and the HDR image stopped resembling the vivid, retail demonstration mode. The entire colour palette and its saturation were also clearly corrected – maybe not perfectly, but to the extent that the software allowed, and the difference was visible to the naked eye.

And on this, unfortunately, our list of corrections pretty much ends, as M95E simply didn't allow for any more. As we signalled earlier, most settings related to the brightness of the image do not respond to our commands at all. This means that we were not able to control its fundamental characteristics in any way – neither the gamma curve nor the EOTF. In practice, the television still tends to darken details in SDR content, which was confirmed by the inflated gamma, merging details in the shadows. Meanwhile, the EOTF curve in HDR mode still mercilessly exposed all those previously mentioned problems with chaotic local dimming management. And although the calibration process itself achieved a lot, removing most of the colour issues, in the end, we had to capitulate.

After calibration you can get a lot out of SDR material. The white balance was set almost perfectly, gamma practically matches the reference value, and average colour errors fell from around 3 to about 1. That’s already the level at which differences from the reference image are very hard to spot in practice. The Bravia 3 II therefore shows that despite its place in Sony’s range it has quite a bit of potential for precise picture tuning. Improvement is also visible in HDR, although here you can’t avoid all the limitations of the TV itself. Once the colours are evened out it’s easier to notice that the EOTF curve in film material runs slightly below the reference value in places, meaning the Bravia 3 II gently darkens parts of the image. That isn’t ideal from a reference point of view, but in this particular TV it also has an advantage. With no local dimming and average black levels this behaviour slightly reduces the visibility of the backlight in darker scenes and helps preserve a stronger sense of contrast. You could say Sony is partly masking the limitations of the panel this way, rather than trying at all costs to stick to the reference brightness.

No worries, but what happens to those colour transitions when lower quality material with compression artifacts comes on screen? Unfortunately, we have some bad news for you. Even though in the menu we can find an option responsible for smoothing tonal transitions in older content, we definitely DO NOT RECOMMEND using it. Its activation causes an avalanche of additional, nasty artifacts, noticeably blurring the entire image, and ironically – it often doesn’t even remove those unwanted “jaggies” it was meant to tackle. This feature might as well not exist at all.

We can write many more warm words about the overall upscaling, which is the process of raising lower resolutions to the native 4K matrix. The image after upscaling looks really decent – it’s neither overly jagged nor artificially smoothed. In this particular area, the M95E really does the job.

Bravia 3 II is Sony's first TV to use the new MediaTek Pentonic 800 chip, and you can see a few changes in the image processing. Starting with the basics: the upscaling itself is decent. The TV can sensibly upscale lower-resolution material and doesn't have a strong tendency to over‑emphasise jagged edges or other source imperfections. With regular broadcast TV or lower-quality streaming material the picture therefore remains quite attractive.

We have more reservations about the digital image processing. In this model Sony has replaced the well-known "Smooth Gradation" function with a new setting called "Digital Noise Reduction". Its job is basically the same: to smooth out ugly tonal transitions and artifacts caused by heavy compression. Unfortunately, this function performs noticeably worse than before. At the "Large" setting (the only one that had any visible effect) the TV can smooth away too many image elements at once, which causes film grain to disappear and object textures or even skin to start looking unnatural. Worse still, the effect is not particularly stable. When there's more motion in a scene, the function's effect noticeably weakens and at times it looks as if the TV stops intervening in the image altogether. So for everyday viewing we wouldn't recommend using it at a high level. It can help on static shots, but the trade-off is often too much loss of detail.

In terms of motion fluidity and blurring, our feelings are quite mixed because the M95E is a paradox television. Let's start with absolute admiration: the heart of the device is its 144Hz panel, but what really impresses is its performance with 120Hz content, which is crucial for sports and console gaming. We must state with complete certainty that Haier has equipped it with one of the best VA panels currently available on the market when it comes to minimising blurring. It is rare to encounter an LCD panel that offers such clear, sharp, and ghosting-free motion. In this regard, the M95E is simply phenomenal.

And that is why the unpleasant surprise waiting for us on the software side is so painful. It turns out that this fantastic hardware potential is completely underutilised because the TV virtually offers no functioning options for improving fluidity. The smoothing systems that should help with lower frame rate content can indeed be found in the menu, but they essentially do not respond to our settings. The conclusion is brutally simple: if you intend to watch high fluidity materials, you must be sure that the source is broadcasting them in native 120. In every other case, you will have to come to terms with a rather harsh, stuttering image, as the M95E will not help smooth it out in any way.

Motion handling is definitely one of the Bravia 3 II's strongest points. The TV uses a 120 Hz VA panel, a solution that by nature, despite the high refresh rate, doesn't always cope well with motion blur. Sony has, however, managed that issue very well here. Fast-moving objects remain sharp, and the characteristic motion trails and blur are reduced to a very low level, if not to zero. It's one of the least motion-blur-prone LCD TVs we've had the chance to test. Interestingly, in this respect the Bravia 3 II can even outperform the much more expensive flagship True RGB series, the Bravia 9 II.

When it comes to features for gamers, the Haier M95E offers some strong arguments. First and foremost, it is fully prepared for the new generation of consoles and powerful gaming PCs. It comes equipped with two full-fledged HDMI 2.1 ports, which effortlessly handle 4K signals at 120Hz and even allow gaming at 144Hz. This is the foundation that guarantees us full utilisation of our available hardware. Furthermore, the key technologies work flawlessly here. The TV accurately detects the console and automatically switches to low-latency mode (ALLM), so we don’t have to fiddle with the settings. The frame syncing (VRR) also works efficiently, eliminating annoying tearing when the game’s smoothness slightly drops. Considering the exceptionally low motion blur of the panel, which we've already mentioned, the M95E creates a truly comfortable and responsive gaming environment. Of course, it's not a perfect package. A dedicated "Game Bar", which is a handy menu for gamers, would be useful, but that's really just a nice extra. A more serious omission is the lack of support for the HGiG standard, which impedes the perfect HDR configuration on consoles and can lead to overexposure. Despite these shortcomings, the core "gaming package" that the M95E offers is really solid and fully functional.

The Sony Bravia 3 II is a very good TV for gamers, although not everything has been solved the way we’d like. The biggest change concerns the connectors. For the first time in a Sony TV we get four full HDMI 2.1 ports with 48 Gb/s bandwidth, thanks to the new MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset. That removes one of the problems that has hung over this manufacturer’s TVs for years. You can connect several devices at once and on each input use the device’s full capabilities, including VRR and ALLM. There’s also a simple Game Bar that lets you check the key signal parameters and change a few useful settings, such as black level, when you want to improve visibility in darker parts of a game.

There are, however, two limitations worth knowing. The first is the lack of support for 1440p at 120 Hz. That won’t be an issue for everyone, but people using that resolution on a console or PC—for example to get higher frame rates in certain games—will have to choose 1080p. We have more reservations about HGiG support. Sony doesn’t let you disable tone mapping on the Bravia 3 II, so the TV keeps processing HDR even when you’d prefer to leave that task to the console. It’s easiest to spot during HDR setup—the checkerboard test pattern doesn’t disappear at the point where it should based on the TV’s actual capabilities. That doesn’t mean HDR in games will look bad. You just need to set up a little differently and, rather than relying on the pattern, manually set the peak brightness to about 450 nits. So the issue can be worked around, but you should know about it before you start configuring your console.