Sony A1

£TBC, sony.co.uk What am I looking at here? A giant IKEA picture frame?

This minimal rectangle isn’t a ‘Fjörksta’, it’s the latest flagship 4K TV (available in three sizes) from Sony. Don’t feel stupid for not recognising it as a telly, though – Sony’s designed it to look as inconspicuous as possible. Only the screen and a thin black bezel are visible from the front, with no speaker grill or stand to be seen. Instead, business takes place at the rear, with a kickstand housing the TV’s guts and subwoofer.

Ok, but where are the speakers?

Sony’s innovated here, creating an ‘acoustic surface’ using tiny actuators. In other words, it’s turned the screen into a speaker by using vibrating motors behind the panel. This allows for audio that can accurately track what happens on screen. It won’t shake the TV off your A/V unit, though – the micro-vibrations are imperceptible and won’t affect image quality.

But OLED panels are dull.

OLED has arguably looked a little lackluster in the past, but the latest generation is ace. Whereas LCD requires a backlight that illuminates the panel, here each OLED pixel can be switched on/off independently. The A1 supports Dolby Vision HDR, too, which is capable of vivid, ‘contrasty’ pictures. Powering it all is Sony’s X1 Extreme chip that upscales HD footage to 4K and SDR to HDR.

It sounds pricey, but I want one.

Prices haven’t been announced yet. The A1 series, featuring 55- 65- and 77-inch models, is expected to go on sale later this spring.