Sony BRAVIA 5 (XR5) vs Haier Q80FUX

Looking at similar results in terms of black levels and contrast, we expected the same stable performance as last year's model when it comes to HDR content. Unfortunately – and this must be said plainly – there has been a regression here that is hard to overlook. The paradox is that the peak brightness of the Bravia 5 can be impressive: in our synthetic tests, the television reached around 1000 nits in HDR. Sounds great, right? The problem is that this power does not always translate effectively to all movie scenes. When small, pinpoint elements appear on the screen, something that was usually refined with surgical precision in the case of Sony clearly falters this time. The algorithms try to maintain deep blacks around small objects, but the side effect is that details can be dimmed to the point of becoming barely visible. A case in point is the movie Sicario 2 – there, in some scenes, small light sources practically vanished as if someone had covered them with dark film.

Of course, not everything looks so dramatic. In simpler, brighter scenes, where the image is filled with a greater amount of light, the Bravia 5 shows that it can shine: literally and figuratively. At that point, the television achieves values in the range of 600–800 nits, which we observed in both synthetic tests and during movie screenings. The impression is truly positive; the brightness adds dynamism, and the colors appear vivid and fresh. However, there remains a certain dissonance. We feel a slight confusion because it is evident that something has gone the wrong way. Technological advancement – more zones, greater backlight power – has not been supported by the refined image management we usually associate with Sony. Fortunately, there are elements that have not been worsened and are instead at a very high level. We are talking about color reproduction. Thanks to the use of the PFS filter, the color gamut coverage is excellent – about 97% of DCI-P3 and 75% of BT.2020. These values allow for a truly wide color reproduction, giving films a natural and cinematic character.

Alright, let's move on to the topic that generates so much discussion, namely the capabilities of the TV in HDR mode. Let's make it clear right away: the Haier Q80FUX is certainly not a brightness demon. The panel of this receiver can generate about 350 nits at peak, which in today’s reality is an absolute minimum to even talk about the presence of extended HDR tonal dynamic range. On the plus side, this power is at least stable – regardless of the test pattern or movie scene we used, the measurements invariably oscillated around 300-350 nits. These are therefore at best adequate results, definitely far from the stunning showcase of capabilities that we know from more expensive models. Fortunately, there is one aspect in which the Q80FUX makes up for these shortcomings and does so abundantly. After all, we are talking about a QLED TV (or more precisely, PFS LED), which means that thanks to the quantum dot filter applied to the matrix, it can generate really juicy, vibrant colors. These are not empty promises – a DCI-P3 color gamut coverage reaching nearly 95% is an impressive result that directly translates into very pleasant, saturated colors for the eye.

Sony Bravia 5 was of course tested in the best possible mode, which is the Cinema mode. Right out of the box, it offers the most natural colors, definitely better than anything provided by the "eco" or "dynamic" modes, which are more suitable for a store display than a living room. However, the Cinema mode itself does not guarantee that we can always expect cinematic image quality. In SDR content, we had practically no major complaints – the slightly warm white balance made the scenes take on a somewhat golden tone, but it was nothing that was glaringly obvious. However, the problem arose with HDR materials. Here, the color reproduction simply looked poor. The white balance was severely off – with an excess of blue and a noticeable lack of red. At times, it even resembled the store "super vivid image" mode, where everything is overexposed and artificially boosted.

This state of affairs made managing brightness seem too aggressive as well. The EOTF graph clearly showed that the television had issues with overexposing many scenes right out of the box. And while we know what Sony televisions are usually capable of, it was hard to remain indifferent here – which is why we quickly decided to go for calibration.

Factory settings for film mode are rarely perfect, but in the case of the Q80FUX, we encountered a noticeable imbalance. In SDR content, the image was definitely too warm, which resulted from an excessive amount of red in the white balance, giving it a slightly sepia tone. Contrarily, in HDR materials, the television fell into the other extreme—the excess of blue created an unnatural, cold effect. However, it wasn’t the whimsical white balance that was the biggest problem with this TV. The real culprit, responsible for the previously described issues, was hidden deeper. It turned out that the Q80FUX had completely misaligned gamma values and, crucially for HDR, a poorly managed EOTF curve. It was these erroneous factory settings that caused notorious clipping of the brightest parts of the image, applying that characteristic milky filter over them. Thus, we found the source of the problem. This state of affairs led to overall, significant color errors that were easy to catch even for an untrained eye. Like every television we tested, we decided to calibrate this model as well, and you can find the results of those adjustments in the next paragraph.

After calibration, the situation changed drastically. We managed to tune the white balance so that entire scenes began to look more natural, and the image gained coherence and elegance. In HDR, we finally got rid of that unwanted blooming effect that had previously ruined some shots. Suddenly, it turned out that the Bravia 5 can extract much more from films than the first contact "straight out of the box" suggested. Yes, if we take a look at the graphs and compare them with the reference patterns, we can see that the start of the EOTF curve slightly deviates from the reference line. However, this is not so much a calibration error as a natural limitation of Mini-LED technology, which cannot be bypassed. Sony, instead of clinging to perfect black, prefers to prioritize the visibility of details – and in practice, it’s hard to disagree with that. We prefer to see the texture of the material on the screen rather than a pitch-black blob that obliterates all nuances.

The calibration itself made a significant difference. After about an hour spent on adjustments, we felt that the picture resembled that from the best cinema halls – of course on a home scale, but with the same sense of quality and refinement. And in such moments, we remember why we love Sony televisions: because once we fine-tune them, they can reward us with an image that captivates for long hours.

The results of our calibration efforts must, unfortunately, be considered twofold. Overall, the image is indisputably better than before the corrections, but the biggest winner of this process turned out to be SDR content. It is here, after clarifying the gamma and white balance graphs, that we obtained results that can confidently be called very good. After the setup, the Q80FUX truly shines in standard dynamics, showing only slight errors in the most challenging skin tone reproductions. Unfortunately, the weakest link still remains HDR content. And here lies the paradox: even though we managed to calibrate the white balance almost to perfection, the overall color errors still remain at a fairly high level. The reason is that the television still interprets the static HDR10 metadata "in its own way," stubbornly enforcing that unfortunate washed-out image effect, which inevitably leads to significant distortions. Although we successfully eliminated the factory excess of blue color, due to this electronic interference, the screen can still tend to fall into somewhat too cold tones. This television just has it this way.

Bravia 5 carries within it the genes of Sony, which remain intact – and thank goodness for that, because we are talking about absolutely remarkable digital image processing. There is a reason that for years it has been believed that it is this brand of television that sets the standard for how a screen should handle lower-quality materials. If someone is still watching classic television, old movies, or YouTube in lower resolution, here they get equipment that can turn such content into a surprisingly pleasant experience. On board, we find several tools worth activating. The first of these is "digital noise reduction." Set to a medium level, it works almost flawlessly – smoothing tonal transitions that usually pose the biggest challenge with low-quality materials, while not introducing any artificial artifacts. Importantly, it also does not remove the filmic character, or the natural grain that is an intentional element in many productions. Another advantage of Bravia 5 is the upscaling capabilities of the XR processor. The image presented after scaling is soft yet sharp and clear. The contours of characters are well-defined, and backgrounds retain their structure without excessive artificial sharpening. It’s hard to find a better television for watching lower-quality content – Bravia 5 only confirms why Sony is regarded as the benchmark in this field.

If there is one area where Haier clearly shows that it has quite a bit to catch up on compared to the market leaders, it is digital image processing. The upscaling, well... is just okay. And that's about all that can be said about it. It does what it is supposed to do: it ensures that lower resolution signals don't scare you with harsh pixelation on the screen and don't look like an overly enlarged postage stamp. However, it is far from the finesse and "intelligent" sharpening that more experienced players in this market have developed over the years. The biggest drawback of the Q80FUX software, however, is the almost complete lack of additional "cleaning" and smoothing functions for the image. The receiver does not offer any noise reduction or gradient enhancement mechanisms. This means that with older or more heavily compressed materials, we simply have to accept that any imperfections in tonal transitions or color blending, which we mentioned earlier, will constantly accompany us during the viewing.

Bravia 5 has a 120 Hz panel, which in itself sounds like an invitation to watch sports, fast matches, or spectacular action movies. However, the real magic begins only when MotionFlow comes into play – Sony's proprietary smoothing technology. Thanks to it, we can adjust the character of the image to our own preferences. The “smoothness” slider allows us to transition from a cinematic vibe with a slight “jitter” of the film frame to an almost theatrical fluidity, where every ball in the game glides across the screen like on a string. The higher the value, the smoother and more fluid it is; the lower – the more cinematic and natural. In the options, we also find an additional setting that Sony has called “clearness.” This is nothing more than the BFI function (which stands for black frame insertion), which aims to improve motion clarity. It sounds great in theory, but in practice, you need to use it with great caution. Why? Because all higher settings cause brightness drops of up to half, and in some cases, there can also be contour doubling. Therefore, if we want to use it, we recommend the lowest possible level – “1” out of the available ten. This way, we gain a little better motion clarity without risking a loss of half the image brightness.

The issue of motion fluidity and blurring is largely predetermined by the use of a 60Hz panel, which naturally makes it difficult to recommend this receiver to enthusiasts of very dynamic content. Fortunately, in the Q80FUX, we find a few options (though, as we will see shortly, actually only one) designed to improve the experience with older film productions. There is a "De-Judder" slider available, which indeed affects the smoothness of the image and allows us to adjust it to our preferences: from raw, cinematic frame rates to a more theatrical, smoothed presentation. However, a genuine surprise awaits us right next to it in the menu. There is also a second slider, supposedly dedicated to eliminating blur – this is a feature we usually encounter in 120Hz panels, aimed at combating motion blur in sports. However, as expected, recalling memories from testing the K85F model, here too this slider is merely a facade. Moving it does absolutely nothing to the image and it simply looks like an oversight by the product engineers who left a non-functional option in the software for this type of panel.

In the Bravia 5, there is significant progress compared to the X90L model from two years ago. The television offers literally everything that its predecessor had, but this time the issues that could irritate gamers have been fixed. The problems with setting up variable refresh rate (VRR) have disappeared, and there are no longer any issues with configuring HDR content in HGiG mode. In short: we get a device that simply works as it should without any fuss. The Bravia 5 thus has everything one could expect from a modern gaming television – and it could be advertised with the slogan "ready for PS5" without exaggeration. This is a statement we couldn't make about the X90L model. Hats off, Sony!

It's just a shame that in such a relatively high-priced model, a complete set of four HDMI 2.1 ports is missing. In everyday use, this won't be a problem for most people, but if someone has a console, soundbar, and additional equipment connected via HDMI, at some point there will be a need to either choose or juggle cables.

Stepping into the gaming territory, the Haier Q80FUX proves to be quite a decent companion for the "casual gamer." On board, we find today’s highly desired features like VRR (variable refresh rate) and ALLM (automatic low latency mode). However, the biggest surprise is something else. Although we are not dealing with a 4K@120Hz panel, the TV can accept and display a 120Hz signal at a lower resolution (Full HD). This is a very useful feature, allowing the conscious switch of the console to a lower resolution mode in exchange for significantly higher fluidity, which is a perfectly acceptable compromise in the gaming world.

We won’t particularly complain about the lack of extras like the "Game Bar," as it’s just a nice addition. The most concerning issues arise when we enter the world of HDR in games. Due to the fact that the TV constantly adapts the signal "in its own way," setting the brightness on the console according to the HGIG standard is nearly impossible to accomplish as per the instructions. Worse still, in the Dolby Vision mode for games, the input lag rises to about 50 ms, which is a high enough value that essentially makes this mode unusable. However, generally, we wouldn’t recommend gaming on this TV in HDR mode, so these aren’t such serious shortcomings. The most pleasing aspect is the presence of 120Hz in Full HD, which makes the Q80FUX quite a nice TV for the occasional gamer.