Sony TVs often come with a hefty premium, which is largely due to their general performance gains against most rivals. This is evidenced in the fact that its Bravia 8 II OLED TV was recently crowned king of OLEDs. But, the good news is you don't have to spend over $2,500 to get great performance even when looking at Sony TVs.
Right now, the 65-inch Sony Bravia 5 Mini-LED TV is available for $1,398 on Amazon. While that's an okay deal on a great TV, I personally recommend going with its more powerful brethren in the Bravia 7 instead. The 65-inch Sony Bravia 7 Mini-LED TV is available for $1,498 on Amazon, offering a bit more performance and features over the Bravia 5 for just $100 more.
The Bravia 5 and Bravia 7 are both excellent TVs with tons of value baked into their designs. While the Bravia 7 debuted in 2024, Sony brought it over to its 2025 lineup alongside its Bravia 8 and Bravia 9. It's a stellar display, one we have four stars in our Bravia 7 Mini-LED TV review.
While the Bravia 5 might boast a cheaper price right now (albeit just a mere $100), the real story is in general performance. The Bravia 5 lends itself more to the budget realm, meaning it requires a few compromises to make give it that value. Limited processing, poor glare mitigation, worse audio, and a so-so panel all factor in here.
While we don't have any testing on the Sony Bravia 5 Mini-LED TV just yet, we did get a hands on demo with it at a special event in Tokyo. You can already see some poor glare mitigation even with it set in the more ambient room on display, plus managing editor of Tom's Guide Kate Kozuch did note poor off-axis viewing angles.
Put these concerning elements up against our testing of the Bravia 7, and that extra $100 proves totally worth it. The Bravia 7 doesn't have eye-searing brightness metrics like some of the better QLEDs out there from TCL or Hisense, but with an HDR luminance of 1,507 nits, it does the job well enough.
It also has a Delta-E score of 1.5, with lower scores meaning better color accuracy. This means you can rest assured that the colors you're seeing displayed on the Bravia 7 are true-to-form, which is often the case for Sony displays given its years of designing some of the most advanced reference monitors used by film editors.
If it were me, I'd be going with the Bravia 7 Mini-LED TV over the Bravia 5. It simply has better contrasts, picture performance, and motion processing. Plus, its color volume is off the charts. You could pay $100 less for the Bravia 5, and maybe that's a better decision for your budget, but you'll get a far better return on the Bravia 7 for the price.
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