Fresh off the announcement desk — rearing its pretty head as early as CES 2025, RGB Mini LED has been brewing behind glass panels for a while now. Samsung, Hisense and TCL all have shown promising candidates under show conditions.

Modern television displays generally fall into two main categories. The first category includes LCD and LED displays, which rely on a backlight and a grid of liquid crystals to modulate the light that reaches the audience. The second category is OLED technology, characterised by its self-emissive pixels that generate their own light, therefore removing the requirement for a separate backlight.

TCL takes over Sony

There are various versions of the LED implementation in the form of Quantum Dots. These panels utilize a Mini LED backlight to enable precise local dimming, while also employing minuscule light-emitting semiconductors for achieving superior color precision and a wider color spectrum. Typically, a Mini LED display includes a layer of blue LEDs. Positioned between this blue backlight and the LCD panel is a QDEF (Quantum Dot Enhancement Film) which captures the blue light energy and converts it, re-emitting it as red and green light.

While this methodology successfully boosts both the display’s maximum brightness and the gamut of its available colors compared to prior systems, it isn’t efficient enough and leaves room for improvement further still. RGB Mini LED on the other hand places independent red, green and blue LEDs into an optical lens behind the LCD panel, removing the need for a QDEF layer. This improves local dimming and dynamic contrast performance since it doesn’t rely on the traditional blue or white backlight, instead it relies on independently controlled red, green, and blue Mini LEDs as the backlight, allowing more precise control over both colour and luminance at the zone level. In typical Samsung style, their version of the tech is being dubbed Micro RGB, hinting at its thousands of microscopic RGB LEDs being used to emit light independently.

Now, Sony takes a different approach to the Samsung and Hisense implementations and their naming is a direct jab at the competitors too! Sony is likely to market its version of RGB Mini LED under the True RGB moniker. Using true red, green and blue diodes as LEDs instead of green and blue diodes that shine light through a phosphor layer, Sony claims to have a much tighter grip on colour accuracy. Having achieved a spacing of 1cm between each diode, Sony’s argument is that making the diode size smaller is less important than diode density and coupled with its newly developed backlight drive, True RGB will rival the so-called “micro RGB” panels too whenever they have a release date. Sony has leaned heavily on tech from its professional monitors used in Hollywood colour grading studios and is determined to get the colours right. 1 of 2 Conventional LED backlight Independent drive backlight

Sony engineers have been chipping away at RGB LEDs since the mid-2000s when they showed off the first Qualia 005, a niche and limited market release only for Japan and US. Production costs meant Sony couldn’t see a sustainable revenue stream then, but come mid-2026 and Sony will definitely be aggressively pushing True RGB as the next big thing. Perhaps, second only to OLED, which still wears the crown for the purists as the tech for absolute blacks and deepest colour fidelity. But only a head to head shootout would result in a fair comment and even then, it’s almost a given that True RGB will trump OLED for outright brightness and the “Nits War”.

The display processes video at high speed and with high precision, using a 96-bit signal. That means it can show deep blacks and bright whites at the same time, while also handling subtle differences in brightness across scenes with lots of mid-tones. In theory, this is the aspect that could trump even OLED panels as they are areas they struggle with, especially at moderate brightness and saturation. The high bit-depth processing also improves viewing angles with colours and brightness staying more consistent even when you’re watching off-axis, way to the side of the room.

How will TCL’s takeover shake up the Sony rollout plan, you’re thinking perhaps? Simple – it won’t. Although TCL has a 51% stake in Bravia Inc., operationally, the two will remain separate brands for the foreseeable future. Sony’s True RGB TVs will likely be carrying a price tag of a premium to differentiate their processing and backlighting implementations, while TCL has already announced several sizes of its Mini RGB TVs for international markets, with sales starting soon. It won’t be until early 2027 that we start seeing true integration between the two giants, and even then, the technology transfer is anybody’s guess.

It’s shaping up to be Sony’s year. If the promise of True RGB holds up, they already have some of the best OLED panels on sale, and with the new TV tech spicing up the holiday season, it’s a good time to be shopping for a new TV. Just don’t jump the gun before True RGB is announced, and we will bring you the inside news here first, so keep an eye out.