Sharp FQ8 vs SONY BRAVIA 3 II (XR35M2)

The Sharp FQ8 achieves a maximum brightness of over 450 nits, which is commendable for its price range. While this level might not be groundbreaking, it places the television among the better-performing models in its class. At this brightness, the image appears vivid and detailed, and the HDR metadata functions effectively, offering a more immersive viewing experience compared to dimmer devices.

The television supports the advanced Dolby Vision HDR format, enhancing the depth and richness of the content. It also includes Dolby Vision IQ, which adjusts the image's brightness and colours based on ambient lighting. However, the implementation of this feature on the Sharp FQ8 is suboptimal, introducing artificial brightening and noticeable distortions. For this reason, it is advisable to disable Dolby Vision IQ for the most accurate picture quality.

With quantum dot technology, the television achieves a colour gamut coverage of approximately 94%, resulting in vibrant and realistic colours. This combination of features ensures the Sharp FQ8 delivers an engaging and detailed visual experience, even with some limitations.

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.

The Sharp FQ8 was evaluated for colour reproduction in its movie mode, which provides the best default settings for achieving realistic visuals. While it performs adequately, certain issues impact the overall image quality. Tests on HD content revealed significant white balance problems, with a marked dominance of red. This is evident in the colour graph, where the red line noticeably rises above the others, and in practical tests, such as a movie scene featuring a child, where the image appears overly warm and unnaturally red. Similar issues persist with 4K HDR content, where an excessive red tint detracts from the accuracy of colour reproduction, an important consideration for viewers prioritising faithful visuals.

For SDR contrast, the gamma graph displayed an unusual anomaly at the start, highlighting reproduction issues. The remainder of the gamma curve lies below the reference line, indicating suboptimal brightness and contrast levels for standard content. In 4K HDR, the EOTF curve also deviates significantly, suggesting inconsistencies in brightness reproduction. These fluctuations can result in less enjoyable viewing experiences for HDR content, particularly in scenes requiring precise light and dark balance.

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.

After calibration, the Sharp FQ8 shows notable improvements in its performance for SDR content. The white balance has been significantly refined, with all lines approaching the reference line. While the lines are not perfectly straight, the results are impressive for a TV in this price range. This adjustment enhances the naturalness and accuracy of colours, contributing to a more enjoyable visual experience. However, the gamma chart still displays the peculiar jump at the start, though the remaining line now aligns much closer to the expected outcome.

For HDR content, the white balance also sees meaningful improvements compared to the pre-calibration state, although it doesn’t perform as well as in SDR mode. This refinement results in more consistent and visually appealing colours, despite some remaining imperfections. On the downside, the EOTF chart reveals limited progress in contrast due to the lack of control over dynamic tone mapping settings, which hampers uniform brightness representation in HDR.

Despite these limitations, the calibration significantly elevates the Sharp FQ8, particularly in SDR mode. The improved white balance and colour reproduction deliver a more natural and pleasant viewing experience. While HDR content still leaves room for improvement, the TV achieves a respectable level of performance, solidifying its position as a strong contender in its price range.

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.

The Sharp FQ8 performs adequately with its 10-bit colour reproduction feature, providing smooth transitions between grey shades in the light bulb photo. For optimal results, setting it to medium is recommended, as it avoids issues like grain smoothing or blurring key elements. The "low" setting also yields good results without introducing unwanted visual artefacts.

In terms of upscaling, the Sharp FQ8 TV handles video without overscan, making full use of the screen. The jagged edges of branches are noticeable, but the edges of trousers appear without any clear jaggedness, contributing positively to the overall image quality. Additionally, the TV's AI Super Resolution feature enhances clarity by artificially sharpening jagged elements, further improving the viewing experience.

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.

The Sharp FQ8 features a 120 Hz panel, able to support playback at 144 Hz when connected to a PC, which should theoretically provide smooth motion rendering. The TV includes features designed to enhance film fluidity and reduce motion blur, crucial for more dynamic content. However, in the absence of Black Frame Insertion (BFI) technology, the panel's average response time leads to less-than-ideal results. This results in slight motion blur, which may be particularly noticeable when watching sports or during intense gaming sessions.

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.

The Sharp FQ8 offers several features that cater to gamers, enhancing the overall gaming experience. Firstly, the television is equipped with HDMI 2.1, which brings several advantages. ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode) automatically switches the TV to a low-latency mode when a gaming device is detected. VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) helps reduce screen stuttering by adjusting the screen’s refresh rate to match the number of frames generated by the console or PC, providing smoother gameplay, especially in dynamic games. Additionally, the TV supports G-Sync, which synchronises the image with the graphics card, preventing stuttering and screen tearing.

Despite these advantages, the FQ8 has some limitations. The lack of support for HGiG (HDR Gaming Interest Group) means the TV does not optimise the dynamic range for HDR games. Furthermore, while Dolby Vision mode can improve picture quality in supported games, it suffers from very high input lag.

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.