First look: Sony unveils stunning next-gen RGB LED technology

In Tokyo, FlatpanelsHD previewed Sony's new RGB LED backlighting technology for LCD TVs, set to launch later. The technology delivers stunning pictures with expanded color and brightness.

At CES 2025 in January, we witnessed Hisense and TCL's first RGB miniLED technology for LCD TVs, while Samsung went as far as to brand its new LCD TV as "RGB microLED" – not to be confused with true RGB microLED displays.

Sony, on the other hand, has been quietly developing its unique RGB LED backlighting technology for LCD TVs over the past three years, and the Japanese company is confident that its approach will set a new benchmark in the market. Sony plans to start mass production of RGB LED "in 2025", which we interpret as late 2025, but calls it "2026 technology", giving a rough timeline for when to expect the first RGB LED LCD TVs from Sony on the consumer market.

Notably, Sony avoids labeling its technology as 'RGB miniLED' or 'RGB microLED', simply calling it 'RGB LED'. However, after seeing prototypes in action, FlatpanelsHD can confirm that the light emitting diodes (LEDs) are very small. You can see for yourself in the side-by-side comparison photos with a miniLED LCD TV further down in this article. Try not to get too caught up in the marketing lingo.


What is RGB LED?
Sony describes the technology as "a new display system incorporating an independent drive RGB LED with a high-density LED backlight that can individually control three primary colours – R (red), G (green), and B (blue)".

This differs from current LED or miniLED backlights in LCD TVs, where the LEDs are blue and rely on a quantum dot layer in front to convert blue to red and green, as shown below.


 Left: QD-miniLED LCD. Right: RGB LCD

With individual red, green and blue (RGB) LEDs, Sony's engineers demonstrated how the new backlighting technology significantly expands the color space to 90% Rec.2020, achieves peak brightness levels of up to 4000 nits, and improves viewing angles. Additionally, it improves energy efficiency while delivering deeper blacks and better contrast through advanced zone dimming.

While QD-OLED TVs can already reach around 90% Rec.2020 color, Sony's new RGB LED technology achieves overall higher brightness levels, resulting in larger color volume. Sony presented these color volume measurements to illustrate the improvement, though FlatpanelsHD has not yet independently verified them.

 Color volume of popular display technologies. Photo: Sony

Why is Sony's RGB LED better than the ones from Hisense, TCL and Samsung? According to Sony, its experience dates back to 2004 when it introduced the first RGB LED backlight in an LCD TV. Building on that foundation, Sony has been developing its own video processor and circuitry specifically for the new system. To commercialize the technology, it is partnering with MediaTek, Rohm and Sana Optoelectronics.

Sony further explained that its RGB LED system offers 66-bit backlight control (22 bits for each RGB channel). When combined with the LCD panel's 10-bit control per RGB channel, this results in a 96-bit system, said Sony. For comparison, the company's current flagship Bravia 9 features 22-bit miniLED backlight control.


 General benefits of RGB LED. Photo: FlatpanelsHD

 Plus Sony's special sauce. Photo: FlatpanelsHD

Sony's RGB LED looks stunning
At Sony's Tokyo headquarters, FlatpanelsHD got a firsthand look at hand-built RGB LED LCD TV prototypes, including an impressive 75-inch model.

Here is a close-up of the actual LED module. Notice the red, green and blue (RGB) LEDs within each tri-LED.


 Notice the red, green and blue (RGB) LEDs. Photo: FlatpanelsHD

These LED modules were integrated into an RGB LED backlight placed behind an LCD TV panel.

So how did the prototype TV look? Simply put, it was stunning – undoubtedly next-level performance for LCD TVs.

In terms of color reproduction, QD-OLED comes closest. However, the prototype not only matched the color gamut of QD-OLED but also delivered significantly higher full-screen and peak brightness than the Sony A95L used for comparison. As a result, bright colors in HDR content looked more impactful and very pure. The HDR highlights sparkled with intensity, driven by the very high peak brightness.

One demonstration featured a scene from the Aladdin live-action movie in HDR, where colors appeared brighter and more saturated than on the QD-OLED TV. Another scene from Frozen, dominated by blue tones, revealed improved viewing angles versus current LCD TVs. This is because the red and green LEDs were essentially turned off in the blue scene from Frozen, which minimizes crosstalk, reducing color impurities when viewed from an angle. The effect will vary depending on the colors in the scene, but Sony's demo convincingly demonstrated the difference through a special setup where Sony could switch between RGB LED control and having all RGB LEDs on at the same time. While the improvement in viewing angles was noticeable, some limitations remain. It is still not OLED-level.

RGB LED also improves energy efficiency over miniLED which – as we have argued before – is a key driver in improving picture quality today. Depending on the scene (brightness, color composition, SDR/HDR, etc.), the backlight can dynamically adjust. For example, by turning off the red and green LEDs and only illuminating the blue LED, energy consumption is reduced. The saved power can then either be used to lower overall consumption or to further boost the blue LED's output.


Zone dimming with RGB LED
So, when it comes to color, Sony's RGB LED technology represents a significant step forward for LCD. But what about contrast and backlight control? These aspects are less influenced by RGB LED itself and are instead primarily determined by the number of dimming zones and how they are controlled. This is where Sony’s unique driver and algorithms come into play, which are key advantages, if you ask the company.


 A miniLED backlight (left) compared to an RGB LED backlight (right). On the left side of each TV the LCD panel is in front, whereas the backlight is exposed on the right side of each TV

Sony offered some hints, but FlatpanelsHD did the math: The 75-inch prototype featured 240x128 tri-LEDs, totaling 92,160 LEDs (30,720 red, 30,720 green, 30,720 blue). The tri-LEDs are controlled in clusters of 8, which correspond to 1 zone, resulting in 3,840 dimming zones. With some creative math, it could be claimed that there are 11,520 zones (3x3,840), as the red, green and blue LEDs can be controlled individually within each 8-cluster dimming zone. However, Sony emphasized that the final consumer product may differ from the prototype, so we include the numbers for reference only. For comparison, Sony's current 75-inch Bravia 9 has 2000 dimming zones.

 Also read: Review: Sony Bravia 9 (XR90)

With nearly 4,000 zones, the prototype offers relatively precise backlight control, though it still falls  far short of self-emissive displays like QD-OLED, where each pixel acts as a dimming zone (over 8 million zones for a 4K OLED). This limitation was evident in some demos where the A95L QD-OLED used for comparison performed better in some scenarios. Occasionally, we observed halos around bright objects, and an interesting side effect of the RGB LED is that the halo around a bright object can appear red, green or blue – rather than white – depending on the color of the object in the image.

You can get a good sense of how the dimming zones work from the photos above and below. Now imagine trying to reproduce a tiny, bright star at 4,000 or even just 2,000 nits. It is simply impossible without creating a noticeable halo around it. It is still a situation that forces the luminance of the star to be reduced closer to the LCD panel's native contrast level, as the star is much smaller than the LED dimming zone. For example, with a VA LCD with a 5,000:1 contrast ratio, a star on a 0.01 nits black background could only reach around 50 nits before a halo around it begins to form. The art of any LED zone dimming system is to find a golden middle way.

Zone dimming remains an area with room for improvement in future generations of RGB LED backlights for LCD TVs. Nevertheless, based on the demos, RGB LED overall marks a significant upgrade over the current Bravia 9, which was positioned next to it during some of the demos. It also outperformed the A95L QD-OLED in very bright and colorful scenes, which Sony mainly used. However, we expect a QD-OLED TV to still outperform it in dark scenes and complex picture compositions, particularly when bright objects are very small, such as stars or reflections.


 miniLED backlight (left). RGB LED backlight (right)

Sony's new flagship TVs
As mentioned earlier, Sony refers to RGB LED as "2026 technology", and it is clear that the technology will be reserved for a flagship TV upon release. We speculate that it could be a new Bravia 9 or even a higher-tier TV.

Sony has not disclosed specifics beyond the fact that RGB LED is scalable, with "potential for larger sizes than OLED". The company did not make any promises regarding peak brightness levels for consumer TVs, but given that the prototype can reach 4000 nits it is reasonable to assume they might target this peak brightness, especially considering Sony's previous positioning of 4000 nits as HDR's next frontier last year.

Beyond this, we can only speculate.

One intriguing detail is that an LCD TV with an RGB LED backlight could surpass Sony's current, high-end BVM-HX3110 mastering monitor – which uses dual-layer LCD technology – in both color (90% vs. 83% Rec.2020) and potentially color volume, if the 4000 nits target is achieved. In response, Sony stated that it also plans to implement RGB LED in content creation monitors, allowing Hollywood and other content creators to work with an even wider color palette to be shown on RGB LED LCD TVs, QD-OLED TVs and OLED TVs with 'Primary RGB Tandem' – not cinema projectors.

For now, we wait. Sony's 2025 TV line-up will be announced at a later date.