Dreame S100 vs SONY BRAVIA 3 II (XR35M2)

The Dreame S100 is a relatively bright television. In movie mode, the brightness we measured reached about 600 nits. This is a really good result, although not the highest, considering the capabilities of the competition in this price range. In fullscreen scenes, it is evident that the television can generate an image that strikes with brightness. Unfortunately, when more complex scenes appeared on the screen, the local dimming algorithm in this model tried above all to maintain the deepest blacks. However, this came at the expense of HDR effect – and in a drastic way. In such scenes, the brightness of bright elements dropped below 100 nits, which is a truly tragic result, far from any HDR effect. This aspect can be improved, though not without any "buts." It is enough to change the local dimming setting in the television's menu, but then the blacks in such scenes simply turn gray. It’s a pity that Dreame could not refine the local dimming algorithms better, and the S100 is another example that the mere number of local dimming zones does not always translate into better image quality. As a consolation, it is worth adding that the Dreame S100 is advertised as a "QLED" television, although in reality it utilizes a PFS LED filter. As a result, the colors are appropriately saturated, and the color gamut coverage we measured exceeded 94% of the DCI-P3 palette.

Bravia 3 II is certainly not a TV that tries to impress with brightness. In our measurements it reached about 450 nits, so it's far from the strongest designs on the market. That said, HDR here is not just a paper feature. Compared with regular SDR material, the brightest parts of the image can already punch through, and reflections, highlights, or 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 many bright elements appear on screen. Then the Bravia 3 II can give a hint 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 strong, striking HDR we get only a correctly rendered picture.

Colors

Bravia 3 II uses a QLED-type panel, although technically it does not use a traditional quantum-dot layer. Instead Sony applied a PFS phosphor-based solution that serves a very similar role: it allows for more saturated reds and greens and thus lets the TV display a much wider color gamut. Measurements showed about 94% coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut and about 74.4% of the very wide BT.2020. Those are good results for this class of hardware, meaning the Bravia 3 II has no problem showing adequately saturated colors in HDR content. Colors don't look washed out, and the more intense shades can look really attractive.

We tested the Dreame S100 in "movie" mode and definitely recommend using this setting for watching all kinds of content. Interestingly, in the deeper settings of the TV, we also find a dedicated "Filmmaker" mode, which is available today from almost every manufacturer. However, in the case of the Dreame S100, we do not recommend using it – it blocks all image-related settings and does not allow any configuration in the menu - not even motion smoothing. So how do the factory colors perform on the S100? Not too bad, but also not great. The TV itself was quite heavily tinted with blue components, which is clearly visible in our white balance measurements. This caused the image to be artificially brightened, and the colors had a slight bluish tint. This is confirmed by the Color Checker palette, which showed how color samples leaned towards blue, generating quite significant color errors. The image in HDR mode looked definitely better, where color errors were not as prominently visible, though they still fell far from ideal. Here, the white balance was also too heavily skewed towards the blue color, which caused quite significant errors in color reproduction.

In Professional mode the Bravia 3 II, straight out of the box, delivers a fairly good level of color reproduction. In SDR the most noticeable issue is a slightly low gamma, which makes the midtone areas a bit brighter. White balance is not perfect either; as brightness increases there is a slight lack of blue and red, so whites can sometimes take on a slightly warmer, mildly greenish tint. However, these are not errors that immediately stand out while watching a movie. Average error values hover around 3, so the factory preset can be considered quite good. The situation is similar in HDR. Here again there is a slight deficiency in the blue component, so the image is a touch warmer than the reference, but the difference is not large enough to be significantly distracting during normal viewing.

The Dreame S100 turned out to be a device very susceptible to professional calibration. In its menu, we found a whole array of advanced options that allowed us to effectively correct factory errors. Thanks to advanced white balance correction – both in SDR and HDR content – we completely eliminated excess blue components. The image immediately became much more natural and pleasant to view. After fully tuning the colors, errors in the Color Checker test dropped below Delta E values of 2-3. For the average viewer, this means that any color distortions have become nearly impossible to notice with the naked eye. This is a really nice surprise, as often new brands in the television market have significant problems with proper implementation and functioning of sliders in the calibration menu. Here, everything worked as it should. The only thing we need to criticize is the way the television manages its brightness in HDR. Due to the specific nature of the local dimming algorithms, we observed anomalies in the EOTF curve we measured. In the areas where high highlights should appear, there is a slight uplift of the curve above the reference line. In practice, this results in unnatural brightening of some of the brightest elements in movies or games. Despite this minor flaw, professional calibration brings a huge, very positive change to this model.

After calibration you can get a lot out of SDR content. The white balance was set almost perfectly, gamma practically matches the reference value, and average color errors fell from around 3 to about 1. That's a level at which differences from the reference image are, in practice, very hard to detect. The Bravia 3 II therefore shows that despite its position in Sony's lineup it has quite a lot of potential for precise picture tuning. Improvements are also visible in HDR, although here you can no longer work around all of the TV's limitations. After equalizing the colors 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 slightly darkens part of the image. That's not ideal from a reference standpoint, but in this particular TV it also has an advantage. With no local dimming and average black levels, this behavior slightly reduces the visibility of the backlight in darker scenes and helps maintain a greater sense of contrast. So you could say Sony partially masks the limits of the panel that way, rather than trying at all costs to stick to the reference luminance.

The scaling and digital processing in the Dreame S100 is handled by a technology that the manufacturer proudly calls Dreamind™ Pro AI. However, it is essential to clarify that this is not a proprietary processor but merely a marketing name for a chip from MediaTek – specifically, the model MT5889. Unfortunately, we are talking about quite an outdated unit, from the time when MediaTek lagged significantly behind the competition in terms of performance. This, unfortunately, has a direct impact on the image, as this chip is responsible for that as well. The upscaling in the S100 is rather mediocre, and the processor tends to strongly and artificially sharpen edges (fortunately, this can be somewhat tempered with the sharpness slider in the menu). In the options, we also find a "Contour Smoothing" function, which theoretically is supposed to improve tonal transitions. In practice, it brings almost no improvement – setting it to any level rarely eliminates visible color banding but can unnecessarily blur elements of the image that should remain sharp.

A separate problem is the phenomenon of overscan (clipping the edges of the frame), which is almost always visible here. Although there is an option to set the screen to display the full frame in low-resolution materials, it requires activating the aforementioned Filmmaker mode. And as you already know, this mode completely blocks any other adjustments in the image menu. In our test tables, we noted that the television offers the option to disable overscan, as technically such a feature exists in the system – however, in everyday use, with reasonable image settings, you will not be able to take advantage of it.

The Bravia 3 II is Sony’s first TV to use the new MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset, and you can see a few changes in image processing. Starting with the basics: upscaling is solid. The TV can sensibly upscale lower-resolution material and doesn’t have a strong tendency to overemphasize jagged edges or other source imperfections. With regular broadcast TV or lower-quality streaming the picture remains quite pleasing. We have more reservations about the digital image processing. In this model Sony replaced the well-known "Smooth Gradation" feature with a new setting called "Digital Noise Reduction." Its role is essentially the same: to smooth unpleasant tonal transitions and artifacts caused by heavy compression. Unfortunately, this feature performs noticeably worse than before. At the "Large" setting — the only one that noticeably affected the picture — the TV can smooth away too many image elements at once, causing film grain to disappear and surface textures or even character skin to start looking unnatural. Worse, the effect is not very consistent. When a scene contains more motion the function’s effect weakens significantly and at times it looks as if the TV stops intervening in the image altogether. For everyday viewing we therefore don’t recommend using it at a high level. It can help on a static shot, but the price is often too much loss of detail.

When it comes to motion fluidity, the Dreame S100 performs really well. It features a panel with a 144 Hz refresh rate, although in reality, the vast majority of users using it in a traditional way will still be limited to 120 Hz (because today's equipment, apart from PCs, only allows for such values). Thanks to the high refresh rate, the image in motion remains really sharp, largely due to the well-functioning MEMC fluidity enhancer. In the menu, we find predefined modes that allow the TV to efficiently add artificial frames, which effectively improves the fluidity of dynamic sports shots, but also helps get rid of image stuttering in film and series materials recorded at 24 frames.

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. Here Sony has managed to get that problem very well under control. Fast-moving objects remain sharp, and the characteristic trails and blurring are reduced to a very low level, if not to zero. It's one of the least smearing 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 Dreame S100 seems almost like the perfect screen for gamers. The TV is equipped with 2 HDMI 2.1 ports with a bandwidth of 40 Gbps, which means that features such as Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM) and Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) synchronization in the range of 48-144 Hz work seamlessly on consoles. It also has a well-designed game panel (Game Bar) that allows you to continuously check the most important parameters – from active picture modes to the number of frames rendered by the console, and even the ability to add a crosshair in the center of the screen. All of this looks great on paper, but the biggest issue with the S100 is the implementation of HDR mode in games. The TV does not have a properly implemented HGiG format. As a result, an unsuspecting user may incorrectly configure the console during the initial setup of the display. A wrong configuration can lead to a picture that is too dark or too bright (as a guideline: we suggest setting the brightness in the Xbox console menu to about 600 nits, and in the PS5 to 12 clicks). The Dolby Vision format is also problematic; it often just would not activate at all when using the XBOX – Dreame S100 line. And when it was managed to be activated, gaming was impossible due to a very high input lag that often exceeded 100ms. If the manufacturer can improve the HDR issue in games through an update, the S100 will be truly excellent equipment for gamers. For now, however, one must reckon with compromises.

Sony Bravia 3 II is a very good TV for gamers, although not everything has been handled the way we'd like. The biggest change concerns the connections. 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 long-standing issues that has plagued the manufacturer's TVs. You can connect several devices at once and use each input's full capabilities, including VRR and ALLM. There's also a simple Game Bar that lets you check 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. This won't be a problem 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 does not allow disabling tone mapping on the Bravia 3 II, so the TV continuously processes HDR content even when you would prefer to leave that task to the console. You can most easily notice this during HDR setup. The checkerboard pattern does not disappear at the point corresponding to the TV's actual capabilities. That doesn't mean HDR in games will look bad. You just need to approach the setup a bit differently and, instead of relying on the pattern, manually set the peak brightness to about 450 nits. The issue can be worked around, but you should know about it before you start configuring your console.