With its Bravia 5 series, Sony has finally figured out how to take its premium TV talents mainstream. Picture performance is impressive overall, with bold color, strong contrast and minimal blooming, while its sound is detailed with plenty of presence. Its smart TV interface is flexible and easy to use and while it's lacking the odd gaming feature, its ‘Perfect For PlayStation 5’ feature goes some way to making up for this.

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The Sony Bravia 5 is a mini-LED TV with crisp images, strong contrast and great gaming features. It occupies that level in Sony’s TV range where the brand has historically struggled to maintain its high standards. The Bravia 5, though, bucks this trend in pretty spectacular fashion.

The Sony Bravia 5 retains both mini-LED lighting and local dimming, for starters, as well as an 120Hz panel to keep gamers happy. Sony says the Bravia 5 LCD panels are still made to the brand’s Master Backlight Drive standard too, and they’re equipped with a full up-to-date version of the Google TV smart system.

There are ‘catches’ to this promising specification, of course. In particular, the Bravia 5 won’t benefit from as many dimming zones as the step up Bravia 7, or achieve so much brightness. In reality, though, the 65-inch Bravia 5 (AKA the K65XR55) delivers much less of a step down from Sony’s mid-range models than expected based on past Sony lines. Pictures are vibrant, crisp, full of contrast and just way less compromised than previous generations of the same level of Sony TV would have been.

Add punchy, clean and detailed audio to its surprising picture talents, and the Bravia 5 is the Sony value TV we’ve always wanted.

While the Bravia 5 is affordable by Sony TV standards, $1,499.99 / £1,499 / AU$2,299 is no longer cheap for a 65-inch TV.

The Bravia 5 retains much more of Sony’s mid-range — and even premium — TV DNA than expected based on similarly positioned models in previous Sony ranges, though. As a result, it has at least the potential to take a clear performance edge over more affordable rivals.

Backlight Master Drive VA mini-LED with local dimming

40W acoustic multi-audio speaker system featuring dual full-range (bass reflex) speakers and two ‘frame’ tweeters; Dolby Atmos and DTS:X decoding

Google TV (plus all main UK terrestrial broadcaster catch up apps for UK buyers)

As I’ve hinted more than once already, the Sony Bravia 5 is packing much more feature heat than I would have expected it to, based on Sony TV ranges of the past.

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This is particularly true of the screen hardware at the Bravia 5’s heart. Designated one of Sony’s Master Backlight Drive panels, it is illuminated by mini-LEDs driven by a local dimming system that, according to my own counting efforts, operates across an impressive 240 zones. That’s 240 areas of the image that are capable of receiving their own light level, independent of their neighbors, according to the needs of the image.

The Bravia 5’s panel is a VA type, too, which should further enhance contrast (though maybe not viewing angles). Meanwhile, even this far down Sony’s range, the brand's consistently impressive XR processor is still on hand to power all the constituent parts of the TV’s pictures. On top of this, rather than dropping down to 50/60Hz, the panel also maintains a native 120Hz refresh rate.

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