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HDMI 2.1 Gaming on Top Sony Bravia TVs: What Is Going On?
An unusually complicated issue… but — after almost 18 months — a solution might be finally coming
Hours before publishing my Sony Bravia A90J review — probably the television I enjoyed playing with more than any other in recent memory — I received a couple of questions regarding the Sony Bravia X90J and a specific one from two different Sony Bravia XH90 owners. That was no coincidence: the single most asked question regarding Sony TVs during the last 12 months or so has been about VRR support, the gaming function that allows frame rates to be perfectly synced between a TV screen and a gaming system. Sony has been handling this issue in a manner less than ideal for almost a year and a half now — ever since the launch of the Bravia XH90 — and, since the same issue is present in all five of the new Bravia XR 2021 models, it’s probably worth going over it and reporting on its progress.
All of the aforementioned Sony TV models offer two HDMI 2.1 ports theoretically capable of delivering a number of advanced features related to video gaming via PS5, Xbox Series S|X and PCs with recent graphics cards: variable refresh rate (VRR), automatic low-latency mode switching (ALLM) and a few others. That’s all still in theory, though, because Sony has not yet implemented…
