Guide to configure your Sony X80K, X85K, X90K and X95K: the best settings and image modes. The picture setting of a television can be a before and after when it comes to getting the most out of it, so it’s extremely important to do it correctly. With this guide with several tricks and image options, you will leave your new Sony Bravia as perfect as possible that the television leaves you, although you can always hire a professional calibration service).
Take these options as a possible “base“, as we always indicate, the correct path is only one, but the television is yours, so if you want to modify the options by adulterating the image, you are completely free to do soalthough we would always recommend that you stick to these values “base“.
What does each option on my TV do?
In this section we are going to see each of the options, what it does and if it is advisable to activate them or not and in what mode. Then, in the next section, you will find the best settings and image modes depending on the type of content that we send to the TV (SDR, HDR, games, PC, etc.) summarized in table form. Now, as we indicated at the beginning of this news, we go with the options and we will see little by little what each of them does.
| Option | Description |
| Image Mode | Allows you to switch between various pre-made image types (Standard, Cinema, Custom, etc.) |
| Image Mode Auto | Applies a Picture Mode automatically based on the content. |
| Brightness | It takes care of the OLED light (amount of “brightness” that the TV emits). A submenu is displayed. |
| Color | Controls the overall color saturation of the panel. A submenu is displayed. |
| Clarity | Regulates scaling and various image processing options. A submenu is displayed. |
| Movement | Regulates several options of the movement of the image. A submenu is displayed. |
| Video signal | It takes care of various black range options, HDR mode, etc. It has a submenu. |
| Advanced color adjustment | White balance and CMS adjustment for sonar use. It has a submenu. |
These would be the main configuration sections of our television, now we go into detail of the submenus of Advanced Settings…
| Option | Description |
| Brightness |
It opens a submenu with: Brightness: Handles the backlight (amount of “brightness” the panel emits). Contrast: Allows you to manage the contrast of the TV. gamma: Allows us to change between the various gammas, raising or lowering several points. Black level: It allows us to adjust the level of “brightness” of the lower area of the image. assign HDR Tone*: It allows us to adjust the HDR tonemapping (Off, Gradation, Preferred Brightness), only available on the X90J and X95J. Black Adjustment: Applies a dynamic contrast (between 3 levels). Advanced contrast enhancement: Dynamic contrast crushes the black and burns the whites. Not recommendable. Local dimming: Controls the aggressiveness of the local dimming (recommended at Medium or High), only available on the X90J and X95J. * Only available on HDR, HLG and Dolby Vision sources |
| Color |
It opens a submenu with: Color: Controls the overall color saturation of the panel. Recommended not to abuse. Tonality: Allows correcting the phase error given between transmitter and receiver of an NTSC signal. Recommended not to touch. Color temperature: Shifts the color set towards a cooler or warmer (more bluish or more yellowish) image. Bright color: Increases the saturation of various color points in the spectrum, creating a false sense of greater color range vividness. In HDR, affects the cutoff point of the panel clipping. |
| Clarity |
It opens a submenu with: Sharpness: Applies an unsharp mask to simulate sharpening. Recommended at 50 (neutral value) realistic recreation: Sony’s exclusive option, which applies algorithms to improve the scaling of non-4K sources. Recommended in Auto. Resolution: Controls the level of Realistic Recreation that will be applied, if set to Manual. Random noise reduction: Applies a PNR to clean the image of grain and noise, but also detail. digital noise reduction: Applies a filter to avoid compression defects (banding) of this codec. In disuse. smooth gradation: Exclusive to Sony and LG. Apply a Countering filter, at Low level you don’t lose any fine detail. Only available on the X90J and X95J. |
| Movement |
It opens a submenu with: Motionflow: It lets us apply different predefined motion presets. If we put it in Personal it will open: Homogeneity: Interpolation level (smoothness) of the movement. Recommended maximum in 1. Clarity: Level of B.F.I. (Black Frame Insertion), we can set 3 levels (Low, Medium and High), at minimum it is disabled. Movie mode: Detect between two levels (Low/High) if the broadcast is interlaced or if it is a 24p movie broadcast at 50/60 Hz. |
| Video signal |
It opens a submenu with: HDR mode: Allows us to force HDR10, HLG, etc. mode. Recommended in Auto. HDMI Video Range: Allows you to switch between the ranges 16-235 (video) and 0-255 (PC/Consoles). Recommended in Auto. color space: We can switch between Rec.609 (SD), Rec.709 (HD), BT.2020 (UHD), sRGB, etc. color spaces. |
| Temp. advanced color |
It opens a submenu with: Temp. Basic color: It allows us to modify the gains and deviations of the colors. Temp. Color Advanced (10p/20p): We can modify the white balance by 10 points. color adjustment: We can use the CMS for colometry. |
Guide to configure your Sony X80K, X85K, X90K and X95K: the best settings and image modes
And with this we finish the explanations of what each option does. Now comes the summary, that is, which options to activate and which ones not and which value to put on each one of them depending on the content that we put on it (It is not the same to put the PS5 as a UHD player). As we said at the beginning of the article, take this as a base on which you can touch up with your own tastes.
In HDR and SDR, the options that are closest to the image reference measured with a probe have been set. The values for DTT can be ignored, since by not broadcasting with a standard, we can put the values that we like the most, I have left you some recommended ones but you can change them:
SDR and DTT modes
| Option/Mode | DTT/M+/SAT | SDR (Any other material) |
| Image Style | Staff | Staff |
| Brightness | 30 | 40 |
| Contrast | 90 | 90 |
| Local Dimming (only available on X90 and X95K) | Medium | Tall |
| gamma | -two | -two |
| black level | fifty | fifty |
| Black Adjustment | Nope | Nope |
| Advanced Contrast Enhancement | Nope | Nope |
| Color | fifty | fifty |
| Tonality | 0 | 0 |
| Color temperature | Expert1 | Expert1 |
| Bright color | Nope | Nope |
| Sharpness | fifty | fifty |
| realistic recreation | Manual | Manual |
| Resolution | twenty | twenty |
| Random noise reduction | Nope | Nope |
| digital noise reduction | Nope | Nope |
| Smooth gradation (only available on X90 and X95J) | Bass | Bass |
| motionflow | Staff | Staff |
| Homogeneity | 1 | 1 |
| Clarity | min | min |
| Movie mode | Bass | Tall |
| HDR mode | Auto | Auto |
| HDMI video range | Auto | Auto |
| color space | Auto | Auto |
HDR modes
| Option/Mode | HDR10 and HLG | DolbyVision |
| Image Style | Staff | Dolby Vision Dark |
| Brightness | max | max |
| Contrast | 90 | max |
| gamma | 0 | 0 |
| black level | fifty | fifty |
| HDR Tone Mapping (only available on X90 and X95K) | Gradation | Nope |
| Black Adjustment | Nope | Nope |
| Advanced Contrast Enhancement | Nope | Nope |
| Local Dimming | Tall | Tall |
| Color | fifty | fifty |
| Tonality | 0 | 0 |
| Color temperature | Expert1 | Expert1 |
| Bright color | Nope | Nope |
| Sharpness | fifty | fifty |
| realistic recreation | Manual | Manual |
| Resolution | twenty | twenty |
| Random noise reduction | Nope | Nope |
| digital noise reduction | Nope | Nope |
| Smooth gradation (only available on X90 and X95J) | Bass | Nope |
| motionflow | Staff | Staff |
| Homogeneity | 1 | 1 |
| Clarity | min | min |
| Movie mode | Tall | Tall |
| HDR mode | Auto | Auto |
| HDMI video range | Auto | Auto |
| color space | Auto | Auto |
Gaming modes
| Option/Mode | Consoles and PC Gaming SDR *** | Consoles and PC Gaming HDR*** |
| Image Style | Play | Play |
| Brightness | 30 | max |
| Contrast | 90 | 90 |
| gamma | -two | 0 |
| black level | fifty | fifty |
| HDR Tone Mapping (only available on X90 and X95K) |
/ | Gradation |
| Black Adjustment | Nope | Nope |
| Advanced Contrast Enhancement | Nope | Nope |
| Local Dimming (only available on X90 and X95J) | Tall | Tall |
| Color | fifty | fifty |
| Tonality | 0 | 0 |
| Color temperature | Expert1 | Expert1 |
| Bright color | Nope | Nope |
| Sharpness | fifty | fifty |
| realistic recreation | Nope | Nope |
| Resolution | / | / |
| Random noise reduction | Nope | Nope |
| digital noise reduction | Nope | Nope |
| Smooth gradation (only available on X90 and X95J) | Bass | Bass |
| motionflow | Nope | Nope |
| Homogeneity | / | / |
| Clarity | / | / |
| Movie mode | / | / |
| HDR mode | Auto | Auto |
| HDMI video range | Auto | Auto |
| color space | Auto | Auto |
With these simple steps you will be able to have your TV configured quite precisely, without going into professional probes and spectrophotometers, but at least you will be using a fairly correct base.
* The source must be set to the same range.
** Rename the HDMI input as “Game Console” when prompted by the wizard.
