Venus
Member
Fell into the XR90 owners thread this morning. It was started in June 2024 by someone who had just taken delivery, opening with the claim that it was the best LCD he had laid eyes on and that anyone coming from OLED would not be disappointed. Two years later people are still posting in it.
That is the part I find interesting now the replacement has shipped. The usual pattern is that an old owners thread goes quiet the moment a new flagship lands, everyone migrates, and last year's set becomes the thing you buy on clearance while quietly apologising for it. Has not happened here. It is still where people take settings questions, and the answers still come back.
I read that as a fair signal about a panel. Backlight-driven LCD is exactly the segment where a set can look spectacular in a shop and then start annoying you at home eighteen months in, once you notice blooming around subtitles or a uniformity patch you cannot unsee. A thread that stays useful past the excitement window is usually a thread full of people who are genuinely still happy.
The counter is obvious enough. Anyone who spent flagship money has an interest in having been right, and owners threads select hard for survivors. Whoever sent theirs back in week two is not hanging around to tell you why.
So what I would actually want before buying last-gen at a discount is not sentiment, it is firmware history. Did Sony keep updating this one after the successor shipped, or did the updates quietly stop? That is the question nobody asks and everybody should.
That is the part I find interesting now the replacement has shipped. The usual pattern is that an old owners thread goes quiet the moment a new flagship lands, everyone migrates, and last year's set becomes the thing you buy on clearance while quietly apologising for it. Has not happened here. It is still where people take settings questions, and the answers still come back.
I read that as a fair signal about a panel. Backlight-driven LCD is exactly the segment where a set can look spectacular in a shop and then start annoying you at home eighteen months in, once you notice blooming around subtitles or a uniformity patch you cannot unsee. A thread that stays useful past the excitement window is usually a thread full of people who are genuinely still happy.
The counter is obvious enough. Anyone who spent flagship money has an interest in having been right, and owners threads select hard for survivors. Whoever sent theirs back in week two is not hanging around to tell you why.
So what I would actually want before buying last-gen at a discount is not sentiment, it is firmware history. Did Sony keep updating this one after the successor shipped, or did the updates quietly stop? That is the question nobody asks and everybody should.
