At IFA 2025 I finally had a chance to see Sony's next-generation RGB mini-LED TV technology in action – my colleague Al Griffin managed to get his eyes on it previously, but I'd missed out until now.
This technology has a backlight behind a grid of pixels, like any LED LCD TV; but here, instead of the backlight being one color of LED, each element is made up of red, green and blue LEDs. This means the core colors of the picture are coming straight from the backlight itself, and so need much less color filtering than on most LCD TVs.
This means they're more efficient, brighter, and should offer a much wider color range.
I saw Sony's prototype TV in direct comparison to a high-end regular mini-LED TV TV, a QD-OLED TV, and a W-OLED TV, where I could see what it really does well in all cases. Though a warning for this article, Sony wouldn't allow me to take any photos of the demo, or the RGB TV unit at all – but it did let me take a photo of this technical demo, which is a portion of the TV's backlight, show how it can generate individual colors.
The big benefit is clearly going to be brightness and color vibrancy – even compared to the high-quality mini-LED TV, there was a clear step up in full-screen brightness capabilities, and in the richness of colors almost across the board.
All the TVs we viewed were in a vibrant mode, which plays into the hands of this tech that offers big color depth, but the tech really was a clear step up in the sheer boldness of what it can do with more stylized, animated video – as well as adding more (but still realistic) punch to skin tones and sky in real-world footage.
The extra brightness is great for daytime viewing – this thing is going to look incredible for sports, and will have no problem overcoming reflections in the room.
One of the more interesting questions is how well it'll handle dark tones. Sony has always said this tech should do better than regular mini-LED for reducing light leakage from highlights to dark areas in some scenes, and a demo of Black Widow showed this off – the regular mini-LED showed a white halo around a red light piercing an all-black background, but the RGB TV displayed an even more vibrant red with no halo, because its backlight is showing actual red light, which is absorbed by the black area more easily.
However, in our early in-depth viewing of the only RGB mini-LED TV coming out this year, we found that near-black shadowing tones were actually a real struggle for it – so I'm very keen to see if Sony's implementation of the technology can do better. If not, the best OLED TVs will still be the go-to for cinematic contrast, even if RGB mini-LED offers big brightness without blooming.
Sony made a point of explaining how it's putting more advanced image processing than ever into this upcoming TV, to make the most of the tech, so perhaps its version will be fine. Only time will tell, whenever the full version is eventually unveiled.
After the demo, I got to speak to Sony's Daisuke Nezu and Shoji Charlie Ohama about the new technology – and I had some other questions about the direction of the TV industry. Here are the highlights.
When is your RGB TV coming?
Shoji Charlie Ohama: "We'll try our best, but 2026 seems a fairly firm date. Publicly we've announced that it's going to start production in 2025, so within this calendar year, and then you can probably imagine that we're not gonna produce something now and then launch two years from now."
So at CES 2026 probably?
SCO: "I think we're refraining from the same exact date at the moment."
What will you tell your customers about the difference between RGB TVs and your OLED TVs?
SCO: "There are a few of the things we could highlight – but, of course, brightness is one. At the same time, there are a lot of benefits. We couldn't show you today, or give you exact data for it, but the power consumption is another one.
"Even today, mini-LEDs do have a power consumption advantage over OLEDs, but, that will be further enhanced with an RGB because being able to have three, smaller LEDs in comparison to the typical white or the blue LEDs helps us to be more efficient in terms of controlling the 'dials', which does give us a better efficiency in terms of power.
"And, the other thing is scalability. OLED has been in the market for how many years now, and it's still stuck at 97 inches, and 97-inch is still in a very, very high price point in comparison to the 83 or the 77-inch. So the scalability is gonna be one of the advantages as well when it comes to RGB LED.
"Also the peak brightness, plus the fact that the color volume is strong at peak brightness. That's also gonna be a very, I think, easy to understand message."
Sony has said its aim to get close to accuracy of your 4,000-nit professional mastering monitor. Does the extra brightness of RGB make a big difference in getting closer to the reference monitors?
SCO: "Oh yes, of course. So you know there's not much content that's actually produced in 4,000 nits at the moment, because the capability of TVs today is limiting. So the creators, whatever they see in the master monitor, they can't really replicate it in the living room because of that limitation, but once the TV starts to become more capable, being able to reach that 4,000 nits, creators are going to want to be able to deliver their intent into the living room. So it is going to be really important that we are widening the capability of the creator's intent to be more visible in the living room."
Do you think there is a mainstream appetite for 100-inch and bigger TVs when they cost such a premium?
SCO: "You'll be surprised. I mean, at the moment, the global market of TV is kind of stagnant, it kind of hit the peak during COVID years and then it's been pretty stagnant, afterwards. But if you look at the super-size – like, a super large screen-size TV – it's continuing to grow almost triple digits year over year.
"I mean, do I want a 100-inch TV? I don't think I can afford it… No, maybe I can afford it, but I don't think I can fit it in my living room. But you'll be surprised that there are many consumers who are replacing their 65 or 75-inch TV with, like, a 98-inch – because if you think about a TV life cycle, normally it's about five to seven years.
"Five years ago, when they paid for a 65 or 75-inch, these actually were more expensive than today's 98-inch. The large screen size being more affordable is allowing customers to buy. Of course, not everyone can do it, as I said, but there are a lot of consumers switching from just a 65 or even 55 into a super-large 98 or above."
Do you think the improved color volume of this TV tech, being closer to what projectors can do, will help persuade people to choose giant TVs over projectors?
SCO: "I don't think it's comparable, because at the end of the day, projectors have a very big disadvantage of brightness. At a certain brightness, the capability of projectors has a certain level of color volume – but when it comes to 4,000 nits, there is no such home projector. Being able to deliver [the color volume] you've seen over there in the demo room at 4,000 nits is incomparable.
"At the same time, if I were to compare the TV to a projector, one of the important things about projector is about scalability, you know? There's not much of a limitation, right? Once you pay a certain amount of money, you could even go more than 200 inches of screen size, and TV always had its limitation that's somewhere around 85 inches. But now that the industry is going to, like, 150 inches… you're probably gonna see 130 inches in consumer TVs very soon as well.
"So that kind of scalability in the TV is the potential of RGB technology. We do believe that a lot of the home cinema – the projector guys – will start to convert to TV because of that scalability."
Will you support Dolby Vision 2?
SCO: "Dolby is one of our important partners. Our current TVs are compatible with Dolby Vision and Atmos. So are we in discussion with Dolby? Yes, but at the moment we don't really have a clear statement to make about Dolby Vision 2."
Will the extra processing required to control three LEDs per unit affect latency for something like the gaming mode?
Daisuke Nezu: "I think that the control for the RGB doesn't affect the latency. Currently, Bravia 9, which uses mini-LED and has local dimming and power consumption management implementation, and people enjoy the gaming mode."
Do you expect that RGB will be a technology that changes quickly over time, or will the version you're looking at now be the version we'll have for a few years?
DN: "I think like current price [of mini-LED] has decreased to around €1,000 for 65 inches. It's the cheapest price in the market, and we cannot like tackle with RGB TV this current low price segment. So I still believe that this mini-LED market is there even if we implement RGB TV.
"It should be that if we drive like RGB TV in the industry, then the cost of the LED and chipset will decrease, and we can decrease our market price in the future."
SCO: "When you talk about OLED TV as a device like a panel device, there isn't much customization that a TV manufacturer can do, because it's pretty much a complete panel and the difference between, like, brand A to brand B is the panel control itself. That's pretty much the difference you can make on an OLED panel.
"Whereas when it comes to RGB, it's about the size of LED, how precise you can control it at the same time, how many zones you can develop, and then on an LCD you'll typically have a [open] cell and then the backlight – but in between there's also a lot of films thateach brand could customize. For instance, a good example would be like a [quantum dot] sheet.
"So I think RGB will probably scale pretty fast as an industry, but at the same time, the reason why I'm saying that is because there's so many ways that each brand could have its own uniqueness in terms of RGB technology implementation."
Does the efficiency of RGB LED tempt you guys to use it for an 8K TV, since one of the problems with 8K TVs is the amount of power needed to push light energy through such a dense grid of pixels?
SCO: "I mean, even this year or last year, we haven't launched a new 8K TV, and that's due to the fact that content itself is still scarce. Even at the time of 4K introduction, we did see a lot of 4K coming into the market gradually, but when it comes to 8K the content itself is still very, very scarce.
"So, do we see a demand of 8K in the market? I feel like it's just reducing each year and, so even with RGB technology and being able to, as you said, scale it with an 8K [panel], will that make sense as a technology? It could, but I don't think there'll be a demand for it."
What do you think will be the the one big impact on people who buy an RGB TV and have one at home? What will they talk most about to their friends?
DN: [laughs] "So we have three pillars…"
That's too many pillars!
DN: I think color volume is the biggest part of the RGB TV, and [that will be clear] to the customer.
SCO: "So in other words, I guess we could say that it's as natural as it could get to a real-life experience."
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