The latest annual Value Electronics TV Shootout event took place over the weekend, pitting a quartet of 2025’s most impressive TVs against both each other and the critical eyes of a judging panel of AV industry experts and luminaries. And after multiple rounds of judging across a variety of standard and high dynamic range picture quality categories, the overall winner was [drum roll please]… the Sony Bravia 8 II.
Joining a 65-inch Bravia 8 II for this year’s exceptionally heavyweight Value Electronics face off were 65-inch versions of Panasonic’s Z95B range, Samsung’s S95F range, and LG’s G5 range. This for me adds up to the most all-round competitive roster of TVs that Value Electronics has ever put together for one of its shootouts – which of course makes Sony’s overall victory with the Bravia 8 II all the more impressive.
The 2025 event took place on Saturday July 26 at Value Electronics’ showroom in Scarsdale, New York, and featured all four TVs running side by side to make it easier for the judges to directly evaluate each set’s capabilities across a wide range of picture attributes including: SDR Contrast/Grayscale, SDR Color, SDR Processing, SDR Bright Living Room, HDR Dynamic range/EOTF accuracy, HDR color, HDR processing, and HDR Bright Living Room performance.
The four TVs were also set alongside, for reference, two of Sony’s BVM-HX3110 professional mastering monitors, and each TV was fully calibrated by industry experts to make sure they could deliver their best efforts on a relatively even playing field. The tests comprised a mixture of test patterns and ‘real world’ content.
The judging panel awarded each TV a score from 1 to 5 in each image performance category, with the average mark from the judges’ scores becoming that category’s final score. The average scores for each category were then themselves averaged out to give each of the four TVs overall average scores for SDR and HDR performance, with the SDR and HDR scores ultimately being added together to give us the final winner.
Playing a big part in the Sony Bravia 8 II’s overall victory was its SDR performance. It achieved the highest score in two of the four SDR attribute categories, helping it achieve a fairly substantial lead over the second-best rated TV for SDR, Samsung’s S95F. Panasonic’s Z95B came in right on the Samsung’s heels for SDR, with LG’s G5 bringing up the rear.
Sony’s TV didn’t actually win the high dynamic range part of the shoot out, though. Here the victor was the Panasonic Z95B, which, like Sony in the SDR category, achieved the highest score in two of the four HDR attribute categories. The other two HDR categories were won by Samsung’s S95F, leaving it a hair’s breadth – literally .01 of a point – behind the Panasonic with its overall HDR score. Sony came in third for HDR, with the LG fourth. So if you find yourself watching HDR much more than SDR these days, you might want to consider the Panasonic Z95B or Samsung S95F ahead of Sony’s overall winner.
Final rankings with SDR and HDR scores added together found Samsung’s S95F taking second place, Panasonic’s Z95B bagging third, and LG’s G5 occupying the final spot.
Here’s the full break down of scores, with the winning total in each category highlighted in yellow:
Value Electronics has been a custom A/V integrator since 1998, with a retail showroom in the Village of Scarsdale, NY. Owners Wendy and Robert Zohn created and began sponsoring the annual TV Shootout event in 2004.
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