TCL C9K vs SONY Bravia 9 II XR95M2

As we mentioned with black and contrast – the C9K makes a huge impression in synthetic tests. Our measurements showed that on a screen 10% filled with white, the television is capable of squeezing out... 4000 nits of brightness! It sounds cosmic, but – and here unfortunately the pattern repeats – the numbers say one thing, and practice another. In real film scenes, the situation looks different. In the best case, when the light effects occupy a large part of the image and the local dimming algorithm doesn't have to think too hard about what to do with thousands of zones – the result is really quite good. At that point, the C9K can reach about 1500 nits, which provides a pleasant, intense flash and can indeed make a positive impression.

The problem begins with smaller elements – such as stars in the sky, the moon, or individual reflections. That's when the proverbial cat comes out of the bag: the algorithms are not yet refined, and brightness drops even to 400–500 nits. This is a huge difference compared to the potential of 4000 nits that we saw in laboratory tests. Why does this happen? Most likely, the television tries to protect the black and minimise the halo effect around bright objects. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of details – some of the intricate details simply disappear, and the scene loses its nature.

The real showcase of the new backlight architecture and Sony’s processor is HDR material reproduction. At the official launch Sony engineers said (not officially 😉) that the brightness of the Bravia 9 II should be almost identical to their professional director’s monitor BVM-HX3110, which is priced at astronomical sums. Our lab tests confirmed those were not empty promises. During synthetic measurements on the L20 test pattern the TV effortlessly exceeded the 4000 nits peak brightness barrier. Most importantly, these spectacular results translate directly to real film scenes. In most of the demanding shots we tested the screen easily maintained brightness around 2500–3000 nits. Regardless of the scene’s character, whether the light was small and pinpoint or flooded almost across the entire screen, the HDR effect was incredibly intense.

Colours

Colours are another key pillar of RGB Mini LED technology (Sony’s True RGB implementation). Specifically for testing these kinds of displays we have permanently introduced a new research section to examine how TVs handle colours in real-world conditions. Traditional tests using synthetic patterns are no longer enough to determine actual colour-gamut coverage. From now on we also measure colour saturation directly in selected film scenes by overlaying measurement points on them. So how do the colours perform?

In synthetic tests the Bravia 9 II achieves excellent results. For the popular DCI-P3 space used for HDR content the colour gamut coverage reached almost 98%, while for the extremely wide and demanding BT.2020 space measurements indicated nearly 90%. However, in real, varied scenes those values fall by a few percentage points. This is a direct result of the nature of zoned RGB backlighting. When differently coloured elements or bright white highlights appear side by side, light from adjacent zones starts to bleed together, producing a slight whitish glow. That naturally affects colour saturation, reducing it slightly. It shows that despite Sony’s brilliant algorithm for controlling the RGB LEDs, the number of zones is still too small to eliminate this effect entirely.

Is that something to complain about? Of course not. The Bravia 9 II’s final colour coverage is ultimately the same as that of a very good QLED TV, and the most important point is this: the vast majority of HDR films and series are distributed in the DCI-P3 colour space. In that standard Sony easily maintains very high colour saturation, regardless of the scene.

For colour tests, we once again reached for the Filmmaker mode – a new feature in TCL televisions for 2025. And although the direction itself is a step in the right direction, the execution leaves much to be desired. The white balance in SDR content turned out to be too warm – there was an excess of red. Conversely, in HDR, it swung in the opposite direction: the image became excessively blue. The Colour Checker test revealed quite a few colour inaccuracies that were noticeable to the naked eye. An even bigger problem turned out to be what we mentioned above – managing brightness. Regardless of whether we were watching SDR or HDR content, the image had a tendency to blow out the entire scene, giving it an unnatural, almost grotesque character. Therefore, it is hard to call this a 'director’s mode' – because the director surely has never seen such an image.

Contrary to appearances and high expectations, the Bravia 9 II we tested showed some issues with its factory calibration straight out of the box. Looking at the white balance charts, it’s clear it wasn’t perfect. In SDR content the red component was noticeably lacking, so the image leaned toward cooler, bluish tones. In HDR, however, the white balance in that respect was considerably better. So where do the visible errors in image reproduction come from? They result from unexpected tuning of the gamma and the EOTF curve. In both cases the Bravia 9 II straight from the factory showed a marked deviation from reference standards. In SDR material the gamma was significantly too high — at extremes it hovered very close to 2.8 instead of the target 2.4. In practice this meant the image looked artificially darkened and seemed washed of colour, with details in darker areas (the shadows) disappearing entirely. The opposite happened with HDR material, where brightness reproduction is governed by the EOTF. That curve was pushed too high above the correct value, causing the image to be artificially brightened across most luminance ranges. As with every TV we test, we subjected this unit to professional calibration. You can see the results and how we managed to correct these factory errors below.

After calibration, we finally managed to tame the white balance – and it immediately translated into a more natural image. Colours finally started to look as they should, and the overall presentation was incomparably better than with the factory settings. In other words – it’s worth taking a moment to improve this, as the gain is really significant. The gamma responsible for managing brightness was also brought under control in SDR content, and the effect was more than satisfactory. Unfortunately, when we switched on the HDR material, the situation quickly became complicated. No matter how we set the local dimming, the television had a tendency to do what it pleased with the image – either overexposing the whole picture or dimming the darkest parts too much. Just like we saw in the scene from the film Billy Lynn. Colour-wise, the improvement after calibration makes a great impression, but managing brightness in HDR remains the Achilles' heel of the C9K and constitutes a technological limitation.

Fortunately, with professional calibration, most of the Bravia 9 II’s factory missteps can be effectively eliminated. We managed to precisely correct, above all, the white balance and the gamma curve and EOTF. After these procedures, in everyday use and during film viewings the television looks worlds better. The picture gained proper depth and modelling, the cool tint to whites disappeared, and shadow detail that previously vanished because of an overly high gamma finally became perfectly visible. Although we ultimately rate colour accuracy as very good, as specialists we must point out one fairly serious design flaw in this model. The Bravia 9 II could look even better if it were not for the complete lack of an advanced colour management system in the television’s menu.

While a basic white balance correction can be carried out here without difficulty, the settings lack options for adjusting specific colours. We tried to tackle this issue in every possible way, both with the traditional method from the remote and via dedicated calibration software for Bravia televisions. Unfortunately, that function has been completely locked. We suspect this may stem from the specifics of the new RGB architecture, which imposes its own limitations. It’s a great shame, because without it you cannot push colour reproduction to perfection. A skewed red still catches the eye. One can only hope that Sony will fix this shortcoming in time via an update.

The digital image processing in TCL C9K is rather mediocre. The tone transition smoothing feature is supposedly present, but activating it hardly makes any difference – colour banding is still visible, and it can inadvertently highlight elements we would prefer to hide, such as textures of objects. Fortunately, it does not remove film grain, but that's scant consolation considering the effects are still poor. Thus, it's hard to recommend using this option.

On the other hand, image scaling performs significantly better. Lower quality materials look quite decent – characters and backgrounds are represented clearly, although of course, with sources like 576p, the limitations of the physics cannot be disguised. Sometimes, there's characteristic aliasing of objects, but that's due to the source itself, not the algorithm. A plus for the fact that there are no overscan issues – the image is neither artificially cropped nor enlarged.

Digital processing and upscaling have long been Sony’s hallmark, and after testing the Bravia 9 II we can confidently say that nothing has changed in that respect. Sony remains at the forefront of the market. Their proprietary XR image processor, which in this model works alongside the main MediaTek Pentonic 1000 chip, deserves the highest praise. That combination delivers excellent results. The upscaling of lower-resolution material itself is extremely effective and precise. However, what most deserves applause in the XR processor’s operation is its tonal transition smoothing function. The system can reduce posterization in heavily compressed material to virtually zero. Crucially, the algorithm does this in a very intelligent way. It removes only the annoying digital “steps” in gradients without blurring fine texture details or creating an artificial, “plastic” look stripped of film grain. The picture remains sharp, natural and cinematic.

Similar to the C8K, the C9K is also a really fast television – both figuratively and literally. On board, we have a 4K panel with a refresh rate of 144 Hz, and at lower resolutions, the panel can even ramp up to 288 Hz. Such speed translates into practice – while watching sports or playing games, the picture looks very smooth and clear. Additionally, in films, we get an extra motion smoothing feature called Motion Clarity, which allows you to adjust the smoothness to your own preferences – from the cinematic "stuttering" of frames to nearly theatrical smoothness.

In the Sony Bravia 9 II specification you won't find very high screen refresh rates above 120 Hz, which some more demanding PC gamers may regard as a drawback. However, in everyday use, whether during movie viewing, console gaming or watching sport, it's really hard to have any complaints about motion smoothness. The VA-type panel used here does show slight smearing, natural for this panel type, but the excellent Motionflow motion smoothing algorithms come to the rescue. In the system menu you'll find sliders for blur reduction and smoothing that let you precisely tailor the motion characteristics to your own preferences.

For gaming, the TCL C9K is a complete tool. Here we have two (out of four) HDMI 2.1 ports with full bandwidth of 48 Gbps, so all the key technologies work: VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) and ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode). Additionally, the manufacturer has included a really intuitive Game Bar, which allows you to quickly check the most important parameters and adjust settings without rummaging through the menu. Also worth noting is TCL's policy – the television does not shy away from any HDR formats, even in game mode. Whether it's HGiG or Dolby Vision for the Xbox Series S/X console – everything works as it should, giving the player a wide range of freedom.

Aside from a fairly serious design misstep in limiting the platform to just two full HDMI 2.1 ports, the Bravia 9 II offers almost all the key gaming features available on the market. Sony has already accustomed us to such a rich feature set in its previous models. The list of supported technologies is extensive. It includes automatic low-latency mode (ALLM), variable refresh rate (VRR), and a fully correct implementation of the HGIG standard and the Dolby Vision format tailored for gamers.