To call Sony’s original OLED TV expensive would be an understatement — when they started at $5,000 brand new, you had to be a huge fan of the design and image processing to ignore the affordable alternatives from brands like LG. That won’t be quite such a problem in 2018. Sony has outlined the pricing for this year’s A8F sets, which start at $2,800 for a 55-inch model and climb to $3,800 for the 65-inch variant. That’s still more expensive than the competition (the LG C8 starts at $2,500), but it’s considerably easier to justify if you crave the A8F’s screen-as-speaker technology.
There is a catch: Dolby Vision won’t be ready. The A8F and Sony’s other 4K TVs won’t support the higher-end HDR standard until an update arrives later in 2018, so you’ll have to ‘settle’ for HDR10 or Hybrid Log-Gamma in the interim.
As usual, you can save gobs of cash if you’re willing to go with LED-based 4K TVs. The X900F starts at $1,100 for a 49-inch model and scales all the way to $5,300 for an 85-inch behemoth. If you don’t need its X1 Extreme image processing but do want a larger TV, the X850F starts at $1,800 for a 65-inch screen and tops out at $4,500 for an 85-inch set. At least some X900F and X850F lineups are available now through Amazon and Best Buy, and you can pre-order the A8F through both channels.
