Look, there’s really no point in pretending otherwise at this point – I’m an OLED guy. I was bowled over when I first saw an OLED TV in action (the 11-inch Sony XEL-1) back in 2007, and I’ve not looked back since taking my first OLED TV home about a decade ago.
Over the years since, I’ve been lucky enough to have had various new, cutting-edge TV technologies presented to me, but (with the exception of Micro LED, which is still very much a pipedream for ‘normal’ people), I’ve not seen anything that has even momentarily suggested to me that it is overall better than OLED.
Until now.
Sony has yet to officially announce its new 2025 TVs, but, in a highly unusual move, it has just announced that it is working on next-gen RGB LED backlighting technology that won’t see the light of day until 2026 – and I have already seen it in action.
In fact, I’m one of the first people who doesn’t work for Sony to have seen the company’s RGB LED prototype in the flesh – just as I was when it was developing the bespoke Mini LED backlight technology that would eventually become the brand's 2024 flagship TV, the Bravia 9.
When I wrote about my experience with that previous prototype, I noted that it certainly had some advantages over OLED, particularly in terms of brightness, but that it didn’t seem to entirely overcome all of the issues associated with backlit TVs. Having now put the Bravia 9 through our rigorous review process (twice, in fact!), we know for certain that it’s better than OLED in some regards but slightly compromised in others.
The demos I have seen of the new RGB Mini LED prototype in Sony’s Tokyo HQ – though too limited to draw final conclusions – suggest that it has all of the advantages of its Mini LED progenitor without the same compromises. I’ve seen the A95L QD-OLED TV, which is my personal favourite TV available right now, used as a reference in numerous TV demos, and this is the first time I have felt it has been beaten across the board.
But before I get into the detail of those first-hand impressions, just what is RGB Mini LED? And what makes Sony’s implementation different from that of its rivals?
RGB LED and the Sony difference
While Sony is currently referring to its new prototype as ‘RGB LED’, it could just as easily use the term ‘RGB Mini LED’ because this is a natural progression of Mini LED technology.
Mini LED takes the basic premise of Full Array Local Dimming – rows of LEDs that shine light through a colour panel and are grouped into zones that can be brightened or dimmed independently – but vastly shrinks the LEDs and increases the number of independent dimming zones to improve contrast.
RGB Mini LED is like that, but instead of the LEDs being white, they’re red, green and blue. The general idea is that, because the colour is coming directly from the backlight, it’s possible to achieve brighter, more accurate colours with greater consistency at different brightness levels and mitigate at least some of the ‘blooming’ issues associated with backlit TVs.
Now, Sony is far from the only brand working on RGB Mini LED technology – several of its rivals, including Hisense and TCL, announced RGB LED TVs at CES in January – but it does feel that it has a significant advantage: better backlighting.
The Mini LED backlight that I saw way back in 2023 in prototype form and that went on to feature in the Bravia 9 is more advanced than what other brands are producing in several ways – a major one being how granularly it controls the current and therefore brightness of its dimming zones. This results in a more natural and nuanced picture performance. And this technology is now being applied to this new RGB LED backlight.
The Sony RGB LED prototype in numbers
So, let’s dig into the numbers associated with the Sony RGB LED prototype I saw last month in Tokyo.
It’s a 75-inch screen that is very much a ‘development mule’ rather than a finished TV – just as you would expect. Its backlight, which I have seen exposed, is covered in tiny ‘bubbles’ that look very much like those you would see in a standard Mini LED backlight. Look closer, though, and you can see that each bubble contains three LEDs – one each for red, green and blue – rather than a single white one.
The 75-inch prototype (figures will vary depending on the size of the TV) has 96,000 LEDs in total, and therefore 32,000 of these ‘bubbles’. These are arranged into groups of eight, all of which are controlled in unison – i.e. they must all simultaneously be the same colour and brightness.
So, yes, that means the TV has 4000 independently dimmable zones, which is more than double that found in the 75-inch Bravia 9 Mini LED TV. And these zones are coloured rather than white.
As mentioned, it’s how Sony controls its Mini LED backlight that makes it special, and there’s a step up here, as well: the Bravia 9 has 22-bit backlight control and a 30-bit panel; this RGB LED prototype has 66-bit backlight control and a 30-bit panel.
Those are big numbers, to be sure, but how does Sony’s RGB LED TV look in action?
Eyes-on with the Sony RGB LED prototype – colour me impressed
After a breakdown of the approach and a close-up look at the ‘naked’ backlight, it was time to have a look at the RGB LED prototype in action. Sony had set it up flanked by an A95L and the Bravia 9.
I was instantly stunned by the vibrancy of the prototype. It was clearly so much brighter than the A95L, and while the gap between the prototype and the Bravia 9 in pure brightness terms was smaller, the improvement in bright colours was huge.
A standard Mini LED TV inevitably loses some colour volume as the intensity of the white light being shone through its Quantum Dot panel increases, and a QD-OLED model such as the A95L can’t go bright enough over a large area to reproduce the most vibrant colours. The RGB LED prototype has no such problems, though; it has all of the brightness of the Mini LED model – and the colour is coming from the backlight itself, so there is no dilution as things get brighter.
On top of those benefits that come from the raw materials, Sony has also developed a new ‘Colour Boost’ technology, which can essentially redistribute the power from the LEDs that aren’t being fully used into those that are. So, if an image demands a lot of blue, the TV can boost its blue LEDs by diverting power away from the red and green LEDs.
This was demonstrated by Sony using a clip from Frozen in which Elsa (while singing, of course) wields her powers in a pitch black space. The intensity of the blue crystals she produces was much greater on the prototype than either of the current TV models, yet the background remained perfectly black.
I was slightly concerned that this Colour Boost technology might result in some unevenness in colour reproduction – I wondered if pure red, green and blue might end up being more intense than mixed colours – but I saw no evidence of this in the demo sessions. In the Frozen clip, Elsa was wearing a pink dress, but this seemed perfectly in balance with the blue of the crystals. In a later clip from the live-action remake of Aladdin, which featured an expansive palette, all of the colours leapt from the screen in an equally dynamic fashion.
Importantly, while brightness and colour vibrancy were the most initially striking parts of the demo, I didn’t feel as if I was being battered by unrealistic vividness. While I was of course seeing the prototype at its most dynamic, the punch was controlled, and subtler colours – skin tones, for example – looked just as clean and natural as they did from the Bravia 9 and A95L. Granular control of colours is just as big a deal here as increased colour intensity.
Bonus upgrades to viewing angles and blooming
But it is neither the colour subtlety nor the punch that have made me really excited about Sony’s new RGB LED technology. It’s actually what it does to off-axis viewing and backlight blooming that I think is most valuable – and the reason that I think it could end up surpassing OLED in the hearts of TV nerds like myself.
Sony had an ingenious way to demonstrate this: the backlight of the RGB LED prototype could be switched from its RGB mode to pure white. In RGB mode, the colours of the prototype were more vibrant, consistent and ‘full’ than they were from the Bravia 9, even when I was viewing the Bravia 9 straight on and the prototype at an angle. There was little to no discernible washing out of the image as I moved around the room. We’re talking near-OLED levels of consistency in terms of viewing angles.
To illustrate the part that the RGB backlight was playing here, Sony flicked it into white mode. Viewed straight on, the prototype’s picture barely changed, but when I stood at an angle, there was an immediate and substantial loss of colour volume and contrast, and the image became dull.
Part of the magic here isn’t that there’s no blooming at all, but that any bloom is in the colour of the object on screen, so (as demonstrated using a clip from Black Widow), a bright red light doesn’t have a distracting white halo – it has a natural, red glow.
The early verdict – and where does Sony go from here?
As should be very clear by now, I was hugely impressed by Sony’s RGB LED prototype. It’s true that Sony could have been masking some flaws (there was no demonstration in a pitch black room, for example), but the upgrades over the Bravia 9 and my beloved A95L were so stark, and the apparent downsides so hard to spot, that I can’t help but be really excited for the tech to go on sale.
But when will that be? And in what form?
Well, Sony isn’t being secretive about its desire to launch an RGB LED TV in 2026, but it is being coy about what the TV will be called and where it will sit in the range. Having seen it in action, though, I would be amazed if this didn’t become the new Bravia 10 flagship.
My instinct is that it will sit above the Bravia 9, which will continue to use Sony’s standard, home-grown Mini LED technology for the time being. But Sony clearly has big plans for RGB LED, and in the long run it could replace Mini LED and perhaps even OLED and QD-OLED throughout its range. I should be angst-ridden at that prospect – but I’m actually rather excited.
