UPDATE
Received my refurbished, Grade A, A85BU today. Was at work so Mrs took delivery. Told her to check box for damage etc.
When I got home the box was used but structurally sound. However I noticed it said A8 on the outside. I thought "here we go"
@Issues.
I quickly unpacked it and checked the TV sticker on the back and it said A85 and the remote was metallic, so looks like they just used the standard A8 box.
Next, no stand feet.......or was there. Silly me the top foam was stuck in the top of the box and for about 10mins I'm rummaging around looking for it. F'ing and blinding at no feet. Then looked at the quick guide and there was some kind of box in the top on the picture. Looked in the big outer box and pulled out the foam and it was there LOL
Right, set it all up and dialled in the AVS Forum settings for HDR. Attached below.
Once calibrated, I went straight onto YouTube and ran some oled screen burn check video that cycled through all the colours. Everything clear. I tried really hard to look for banding, dirty screen, dead pixel etc. But nothing. Great so far.
Next up was the grey cards from 0% through to 50% in increments to check screen uniformity. Now I have included pictures below, however I just wanted to point out, to my eye when I ran through the screens, I tried very hard to find an issue, but I could not see anything. So I got a perfect screen! Wow!
However, even though my eye could not see it, the phone camera picked up a little between 2.5-10%. Vincent Teoh of HDTVtest finds common uniformity shadows in and around 5-10% screens but says its perfectly acceptable and gives the screens the a OK. Mines at 5% is better than majority of the ones Vincent reviewed.
So here are the screens starting from 0%, then 2.5%, 5%, 10%, 12.5%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30% & finally 35%.
Again, my eye didn't see any of this, sitting 4 feet away from it. But the camera picked up some shading at 2.5% and 5%. It starts clearing up at 7.5%. By 10% it virtually gone and from 15% onwards is clean all the way through.
Make of that what you will, personally I'm very happy as I didn't see anything and it took a camera to pick it up.
Finally I pulled up the service menu using the display, 5, v+, power steps. And to my surprise, I hot the jackpot!
The panel and the TV itself had only done 4hrs in total! See figures at bottom. Wow, was happy if I got 100hrs, but 4hrs must have been a show demo unit or a customer return after using it once. Nice!
The only downside is Android. I'm not too fussed about the layout, but it sometimes freezes on apps like YouTube. And wouldn't play 4k hdr mp4, mkv files off USB using its own mediaplayer. I then tried it on VLC and the same. Finally got them to work using Kodi, already installed on the TV. Everything worked perfectly on Kodi. So some bugs to fix there.
Oh, there was a little signed refurbished checklist for remote, stand, user guide etc. Dated 27 Jan 2021.
The sound is pretty clear and overall good. Lacking a little in the bass department but hey, they're TV speakers. They definitely disperse the sound a little left and right away from the TV as well.