The A95L QD-OLED was Sony's top model for 2023, but will it get a successor?
(Image credit: Future / Netflix, Our Planet II)It's fair to say that Sony's current TV strategy is a touch confusing. The famous Japanese brand produced what I feel was the best money-no-object TV of 2023 – the A95L QD-OLED – while simultaneously hinting at a huge pivot away from OLED and towards next-generation LED backlighting.
That pivot has now taken place, and Sony's 2024 flagship TV is the backlit Bravia 9 – a TV with a huge amount of promise but a couple of teething issues that hold it back from greatness, as we explain in our Sony Bravia 9 review.
Throughout this whole period of apparent change, a couple of related questions have repeatedly come up: is Sony done with OLED TVs? And will there ever be a replacement for the awesome A95L?
These are questions that I have actually put to Sony myself, and it probably won't surprise you that the company is very cagey about its future plans. That said, looking at its recent history and reading between the lines, I think it's possible to get a steer on what the future holds for Sony TVs.
Is Sony done with OLED TVs?
On the one hand, Sony is demonstrably not done with OLED TVs. That's because it has a new OLED TV for this year, the Bravia 8, which is a direct replacement for last year's Award-winning A80L.
On the other hand, though, Sony has confirmed that it's not replacing the A95L QD-OLED or its A90K 'small' OLEDs this year. The first of those decisions can be explained away by how late in 2023 the A95L arrived, but the decision to not replace the A90K models is a peculiar one, mostly because they first launched in 2022. For a modern TV to have an on-sale lifespan of more than a year is very unusual, and going beyond two years is practically unheard of.
Sony tells me that the A90K TVs are continuing for another year simply because they're still selling well, but this doesn't sound like the whole story to me. There's high demand for small OLED models, and Sony's A90K TVs, which are available in 42-inch and 48-inch sizes, look a bit old-fashioned and overpriced compared to LG's C3 and now C4 rivals.
Ultimately, while Sony certainly isn't 'done' with OLED TVs, it is at least giving the impression that it's less committed to them than it was.
Will there ever be a replacement for the A95L?
While a seeming reduction in commitment to OLED as a technology inevitably casts worrisome doubt over the prospects for an A95L successor, I have now come around to thinking that such a TV really is in development – though it's probably quite early development.
I believe Sony is genuine in its feeling that it's too soon to replace the A95L this year, and I also believe that it wants to give the new Bravia 9 and its next-gen backlight some time to shine at the top of the range. I think there's probably also an element of the company feeling that it needs some time in order to produce an A95L successor that's materially better – no easy task, I'm sure.
It's telling, too, that the Bravia 9 is priced lower than the A95L, leaving space for a TV above it. I'll go out on a limb and say it will be called the 'Bravia 10'.
So, when will this Bravia 10 appear? It won't be until next year, for sure, and my guess is that Sony will aim to repeat this year's schedule. That would mean an announcement around April 2025 and a launch around July. With any luck, the exhausted A90K will be replaced at the same time.
Of course, I could be wrong about all of this and Sony could indeed be moving away from OLED. But I, for one, sincerely hope that's not the case.
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