Sony's Bravia A8H OLED TV is not only the most expensive TV I have tested, it is also the most mischievous. At this price, I knew its performance would be so extravagant as to be impractical, and that I myself would not want one.

Instead, it has ruined every other TV for me.

Was I naive to think that a new 65-inch, $2,800 OLED would perform less than that? Maybe I was. But living in a house with a lousy 8-year-old budget set in every room, a high-end TV was never appealing to me. Besides, half of my streaming is done on my laptop or phone.

Not so anymore. After a month of being glued to the Sony Bravia A8H OLED for its jet blacks, smooth motion, and clever smart features, I realized this TV is everything I want in a TV.

What makes the A8H's OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) technology so great is the luminous properties of the panel. This allows some areas of the screen to be turned off completely, creating so-called true black. Many smartphones, monitors, and even the Apple Watch use OLED displays, but their distinct characteristics are far more pronounced on 65-inch TV screens.

However, there is a caveat to the larger format: compared to LCD TVs, OLEDs struggle with brightness because they cannot output much light. This often makes viewing OLEDs difficult in natural light and may even compromise the accuracy of the image.

Our tests proved that this is not the case with the Sony BRAVIA A8H OLED. In fact, in Tom's Guide TV lab tests, it was one of the most accurate TVs ever.

TV accuracy is measured using the Delta-E rating, which is the deviation between how colors look and what they actually appear on the display. The smaller the score, the more ideal (0 is perfect), and the A8H scored an impressive 1.54. This is higher than other top models such as Sony's Master Series A9G OLED TV (2.7) and LG's CX OLED TV (1.95).

What I liked about the A8H, however, was not its high empirical performance. Rather, it was my personal experience watching the latest installment of my favorite sci-fi franchise. In Star Wars: Skywalker Strikes Back, Adam Driver's distinctive mane tangle really looked black in difficult high-contrast scenes.

When Driver, or Kylo Ren, discovers Emperor Palpatine, a haunting strobe effect flashes across the screen, to and fro between darkness and intense brightness. Many sets struggle with fast transitions in this scene, but the Sony Bravia A8H OLED maintained nearly enough detail and cinematic contrast to momentarily transport me to the movie set.

And I've been thinking about the film ever since. The Sony Bravia A8H OLED I reviewed went back and I started using my old, crappy TV. At first, it was an uncomfortable transition, like watching people who had not been socially distanced by the recent pre-pandemic shows.

A month later, I realized the glass was shattered. Like the Spoiler Alert episode of How I Met Your Mother, once-overlooked annoyances about each character were coming to light and ruining each other's illusions. The illusion of black on non-OLED TVs is gone, and now all we see is sublimated black, the part of the screen that looks gray or blue because the backlight prevents true black from being displayed.

So don't buy the Sony Bravia A8H OLED unless you are prepared to be dissatisfied with every other TV you have. At least, TVs that are a few years old like mine. Of course, if you can afford it, it's one of the best TVs of the year in terms of picture and sound.