Sony Allegedly Covering-Up Serious Input Lag Issues On Bravia 4K TVs It Markets As PS4 Pro Ready
It’s expected that customers would voice their frustrations through a company’s support forum, however, what’s completely unexpected is for Sony to silence those critics. Unfortunately, that is exactly what Sony has done, closing down and deleting a 92-page thread devoted to the issue.
A redditor also confirms that new threads dedicated to the input lag issues on newer Bravia TVs are also being targeted by Sony. Any subsequent thread relating to the issue has either been locked or completely deleted. We can only assume that Sony doesn’t want any bad press at the height of the holiday shopping season.
So what is exactly is input lag and what’s all the fuss? In simple terms, input lag is the amount of time between when an image generated by a source (i.e. a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One S) and when it actually appears on your TV. Although input lag isn’t going to be a problem if you’re trying to catch up the latest episode of The Grand Tour in glorious 4K, it becomes a serious problem for gamers in competitive gaming (i.e. first-person shooters) where a split second could mean the difference between capturing a flag for your team or getting a cap in your butt.
Sony released a firmware update a few weeks ago to address the input lag, and RTINGS was able to perform benchmarks on the Bravia X850D Series. Before the update, the X850D had input lag of around 35ms at 1080p, but rose sharply to 94ms when running 4K+HDR at 60Hz. With the update, input lag at 4K dropped to 57ms, but that’s still unacceptable for a TV that is promoted by Sony as being the perfect companion for the PlayStation 4 Pro. In fact, the X850 still ranks near the bottom of the heap when it comes to input lag according to RTINGS even after the update.
While we applaud Sony for at least trying to address the matter at hand with firmware updates, there is no excuse for locking and deleting threads that are pertinent to the topic at hand. Has Sony not heard of the Streisand effect?
