Dreame Q100 vs Sony BRAVIA 7 II

Unfortunately the Dreame Q100 is too simple, and above all too dim, a television to talk about a true HDR effect. The peak brightness we measured reaches at most about 300 nits, which is clearly too little for bright elements of the image to actually 'pop' with light. In fact, this is a level we more often associate with SDR material than with HDR. It therefore lacks the brightness headroom offered by more expensive televisions that makes highlights, reflections and the sun look noticeably more striking.

HDR colours

Fortunately the Q100 makes up for this a little elsewhere. The manufacturer markets it as a QLED television, although in practice a PFS filter is responsible for widening the colour palette. The DCI-P3 colour space we measured is covered at roughly 92%, and BT.2020 at about 67%. These are not top-tier figures, but still clearly better than simple LCD televisions without an additional gamut-expanding layer. As a result, HDR material can at least offer more saturated and varied colours, even if the brightness itself does not yet allow us to speak of a fully fledged HDR effect.

The Sony Bravia 7 II handles HDR very well and, above all, is simply a bright television. In the correct viewing mode, Professional, we measured around 2,000 nits of peak brightness, so the panel’s capabilities are truly significant. Of course, with Mini-LEDs a test pattern result is only part of the story, because a lot still depends on how the TV controls the backlight in real scenes. Here Sony’s algorithms perform very well. Depending on the scene, the brightness we measured in films ranged from roughly 1,100 to as much as 1,700 nits. That’s already a level at which HDR has proper punch and bright highlights can be genuinely impressive. It isn’t perfect in every situation, though. With small bright elements on a very dark background the Bravia 7 II clearly favours maintaining good blacks, which can cause their brightness to drop to around 500 nits. It still looks good, but you can see the TV does not always manage this without compromise.

Colours

The second thing that has a huge impact on HDR is, of course, colour. And this is precisely where True RGB technology was meant to bring one of the biggest changes. Looking at the panel’s capabilities alone, the Bravia 7 II performs very well. We measured about 98% DCI-P3 coverage and 88% BT.2020, so the potential to show strongly saturated colours is really large. In RGB TVs, however, the situation is a bit more complex. When we repeated the same measurements with a film background applied, palette coverage fell to around 92% DCI-P3 and 78% BT.2020. Those are still good figures, especially for an RGB Mini-LED TV, but they clearly show that the final result largely depends on how the algorithms control the three backlight colours. In most scenes the Bravia 7 II handles this well and colours retain high saturation. The biggest differences are visible in shades of blue, where samples begin to deviate more noticeably from reference values and coverage is weaker than for the other primary colours. True RGB therefore offers genuinely greater potential here, but, as with brightness, much depends on what is happening on screen.

We chose the "Film" mode for testing and, in our opinion, it is by far the best of the available presets. There are none of the heavily boosted, unnatural colours you can see, for example, in the Vivid/Dynamic mode. The picture looks quite reasonable straight away, although it falls a little short of perfect. In SDR material the most noticeable issue was a slight warming of the image. The white balance had too much red, which made whites lean towards a warmer hue, and a similar tint was visible in shades of grey. In HDR the situation was a little different. Here blue had a slight advantage, making the picture a touch cooler. These are not major faults, though. For such an inexpensive TV, the factory settings on our unit were fairly decent, and the "Film" mode already delivers a relatively natural image without much fiddling with the settings.

To evaluate the factory colours we chose the Professional mode, because it performs best among the available settings. However, it is not perfect. In SDR the white balance drifts slightly towards magenta, making some scenes look a little warmer and less neutral than they should. A bigger problem is the gamma, which sits closer to 2.5 than to 2.4. This makes the image a bit too dark in places, particularly in the midtones. In HDR the situation is better. As brightness increases a little too much red appears, but this is not an issue that is highly noticeable during viewing. Overall the Professional mode is a good starting point, although you can get a bit more out of it after calibration.

Contrary to appearances, the Dreame Q100 is quite well prepared for image calibration. The menu contains quite a few advanced picture settings that allow its characteristics to be adjusted fairly precisely. In our case the most work was required on the white balance, both in SDR and HDR. After correction SDR content looked very good. We managed to achieve a practically neutral white balance and natural colours, with the main remaining limitation being the black level itself, stemming from the panel construction and the lack of local dimming.

In HDR we also managed to improve white balance and colour reproduction, but here the limitations of the TV's electronics become apparent more quickly. Even after very precise adjustment of the EOTF curve, the Q100 does not always follow it correctly during actual scenes. In some content it can also brighten the image further, causing some parts to look brighter than they should, and in bright areas some details can be lost as a result.

After calibration the Bravia 7 II can look decidedly better. Above all, we managed to set the white balance very well, both in SDR and HDR. Gamma can also be improved, which after correction runs very close to the reference value. And in fact, for most users these changes will have the greatest impact on the picture. There is, however, a limitation when it comes to the colours themselves. In the Bravia 7 II Sony does not provide access to a classic CMS that would allow us to correct individual hues separately. A lot is therefore left in the hands of the algorithms controlling the True RGB backlight. If the TV misrepresents a particular colour, we are not always able to do anything about it. In our measurements this is most visible in certain reds and blues, where errors can still be quite large. This does not, however, undermine the point of calibration itself. Correctly setting the white point and gamma strongly affects the whole picture, so even without the ability to precisely correct every colour the difference compared with the factory settings is noticeable.

The weakest point of the Dreame Q100 is its digital image processing capabilities. The processor used copes only moderately well with enhancing weaker sources, and the menu lacks any function that effectively smooths unsightly tonal transitions or reduces visible posterisation. Upscaling itself is also unimpressive. With low-resolution material the image is fairly soft and lacks faithful detail reproduction. Additionally, the Q100 tends to overscan, slightly cropping the edges of the image with very poor sources, such as 480p material. In everyday viewing of HD or 4K content this won't be a major problem, but with older recordings the processor's limitations become clearly visible.

Scaling and digital processing are among the strongest points of the Bravia 7 II and one of the bigger reasons to choose Sony over the competition. The manufacturer has been handling digital image processing well for years, and it shows here too. First and foremost, the 'Smooth Gradation' function works very well and can smooth out weak tonal transitions in lower-quality material. The safest setting is Low, but we would comfortably recommend Medium as well. The effect is stronger then, yet the TV still treats details very gently. Some fine details may be slightly smoothed, but Sony does this much more subtly than many other brands. The upscaling itself also performs very well. Lower-resolution material is well upscaled to 4K, the image looks clean and retains a lot of detail. Of course the TV will not magically turn native HD material into true 4K, but what can be extracted from such a source is handled really well by the Bravia 7 II.

The VA panel used in the Dreame Q100 has a native 60 Hz refresh rate, so from the outset this is not a TV designed for the most demanding sports fans or gamers. The manufacturer does mention the ability to run at 120 Hz, and that option is indeed available, but it mainly applies to a mode intended for gamers. In everyday use the Q100 should therefore be treated as a conventional 60 Hz TV. For fast-paced sports broadcasts or rapid gameplay this means less smooth motion than in models with 120 Hz panels or higher. On the plus side, the panel’s response time is worth noting. The VA panel does not exhibit excessive smearing, so motion remains quite clear and does not leave strong, blurred trails behind moving objects. For films you can also use a simple motion-smoothing system. The manufacturer has prepared several ready-made presets that help reduce the characteristic judder in material shot at 24 frames per second.

The Bravia 7 II uses a 120 Hz panel, so in terms of motion handling it delivers everything you would expect from a TV of this class. With sport or games at 120 fps, the picture is suitably smooth, and for films Sony provides an extensive motion interpolation system. You can therefore adjust the interpolation level separately and decide whether you want to preserve a more cinematic character to the motion or obtain noticeably smoother movement. The issue of motion blur itself is a little worse. The VA panel used is not among the fastest, and you can notice a slight trail behind moving objects, particularly on darker backgrounds. It is not at a level that greatly bothers during normal viewing, but last year’s Bravia 7 fared better in this respect and had a noticeably faster panel.

The Dreame Q100 is not a strictly gaming device, but for console use it offers a reasonable package. It provides VRR to eliminate screen tearing and ALLM, which automatically switches the TV to a low-latency mode when it detects a console signal. An interesting compromise is support for a 120 Hz mode. The panel won’t achieve that refresh rate in 4K, but dropping to 1080p lets you play at 120 frames per second. If a given title prioritises smoothness over high resolution (and the game offers such a mode), it’s worth using this option. There’s also a handy Game Bar on board, allowing you to quickly change display settings, switch the refresh mode or add a virtual crosshair. Admittedly the HGiG implementation is weak here, but it earns points for supporting Dolby Vision Gaming on Xbox Series X and S. This is not a panel for technological purists, but for casual console gaming it performs flawlessly, especially when you opt to trade 4K for a smoother Full HD.

Bravia 7 II has basically everything you’d expect today from a good console TV. It supports 4K at 120 Hz, VRR from 48 to 120 Hz and ALLM, so when you start a game the TV automatically switches to a low-latency mode. It also has properly working HGiG, which means that after configuring HDR on the console the TV won’t try to brighten the image further on its own. You just need to remember to turn off tone mapping in the TV’s menu. Dolby Vision in game mode is also a plus, especially useful for Xbox owners. Sony adds its own Game Menu. From it you can quickly check key signal information, verify VRR operation or change gaming-related settings without digging through the whole TV menu. The only thing missing from the feature list is support for 1440p at 120 Hz.

Our biggest reservation is not really about the functions themselves, but about the connectors. The Bravia 7 II has four HDMI ports, but only two of them support full HDMI 2.1 at 48 Gbps. One of those is also an eARC port. So if you connect a soundbar or AV receiver to the TV via HDMI, in practice you’re left with only one full HDMI 2.1 for a console or PC. With a single console that’s no problem, but with a PS5, an Xbox and an audio setup it starts to get tight. And this is hard to excuse for Sony. In cheaper TVs two HDMI 2.1 ports can still be acceptable, but in a model of this class, especially in 2026, we would expect a full set of four such ports.