I may well have just witnessed the future of high end TV displays. Behind the scenes, at IFA 2025, Sony is previewing its new RGB LED TV technology, and it looks extraordinary.
Capable of astonishing brightness, with an expanded colour volume and huge dynamics, RGB LED makes regular Mini LED, as well as OLED, look rather ordinary.
Daisuke Nezu, Senior General Manager and Head of Home Product Business, suggests it’s the most significant TV development since OLED.
“RGB panel technology holds enormous potential to redefine how content is experienced,” he says.
This is the first European outing for Sony’s next-gen prototype, and marks a long awaited return to the Berlin tech fair.
Shoji Ohama, Head of Home Entertainment, Sony Europe, tells me he had to make a choice whether to take the panel to CEDIA Expo in Denver, or showcase it in Berlin. Europe won.
The new RGB LED display reimagines the traditional LED backlight and does away with a Quantum Dot filter, instead deploying a full RGB LED diode array.
The approach brings greater colour volume and brightness. Sony claims coverage of over 99 per cent of the DCI-P3 colour space and approximately 90 per cent of the BT.2020 standard. Another benefit is exceptionally precise backlight illumination, delivered with outstanding HDR intensity, and a peak brightness of an extraordinary 4000 nits.
The company staged its unveiling on a mocked-up film set, complete with Sony Venice camera, workstations and grading monitors – a pointed reminder that Sony operates across the entire cinematic production chain, from capture to playback.
Sony believes only it can claim the depth of expertise required to properly translate cinematic intent to the living room, and I’m inclined to agree.
My overriding impression of the RGB LED screen was one of striking vibrancy. Unlike conventional Mini LED or OLED panels, which can be hampered by brightness and colour purity, this new approach radiates hues that appear freshly mixed, like paint straight from the tube.
Sony claims RGB LED offers four times the color volume compared to QD OLED. Proprietary Color Booster technology enhances colour and brightness even further. Sony’s expertise in backlight control is clearly coming into its own here, maximising the new system’s potential.
One demo sequence, a close-up of a burning, sparking inferno, looked so real the image appeared to radiate heat. Its colour density and intensity appeared closer to real life than anything I’ve seen on a consumer television. High-intensity highlights, demonstrated with clips from Frozen 2 and Life of Pi, were delivered with astonishing luminosity and precious little haloing that can so often plague HDR displays.
As I watch slack-jawed, Gavin McCarron, Technical Marketing Manager for Sony TV Europe, stresses the complexity of the technology, stresses the complexity of the technology.
Sony’s heritage in cinema and broadcast remains its defining advantage. The RGB LED prototype was driven by the company’s proprietary XR Backlight Master Drive and powered by a control processor co-developed with MediaTek, with additional engineering input from partners like ROHM and Sanan Optoelectronics. This infrastructure allowed the screen to map luminance with unusual subtlety.
McCarron offers up a naked RGB LED panel, and invites me to take a closer look.
“There’s three teeny, teeny, tiny little LEDs (in each miniscule diode), and each is 22 bit. So that’s 66 bits. Add that to a10 bit panel with three colours in there, and that’s another 30 bits – so there’s 96 bit panel control in total, and that requires a huge amount of processing power.”
Significantly, Nezu-san also made the point that the benefits of RGB LED are easily scalable. Sony isn’t looking to out inch its rivals with preposterously large screens. Instead it’s thinking of real world sales, with a road map set to usher in 55- and 65-inch variants. This focus on mainstream premium sizes suggests Sony wants RGB LED to compete directly with OLED and Mini LED as a core offering, not a niche showpiece.
Sony has yet to confirm when the first RGB LED TVs will arrive in stores, though 2026 seems likely.
There is history here, too. Two decades ago, Sony’s Qualia 005 was the first LCD TV to use an RGB LED backlight, which allowed for a wider colour gamut and deeper contrast than traditional CCFL-lit LCDs. That model was clearly ahead of its time, an antecedent of the RGB LED panel that blew me away in Berlin.
Sony’s oft repeated mission is to bring the ‘creator’s intent’ into the home with as little distortion as possible. From what I saw in Berlin, RGB LED might well be the technology to finally deliver that promise without caveat.
If the production models arrive with even a fraction of the prototype’s impact intact, well-heeled TV enthusiasts will have something remarkable to look forward to in 2026.
About Post Author
Steve muses and reviews home entertainment technology for Channel News, Soundmag, Trusted reviews, T3, TechRadar, Home Cinema Choice, Ideal Home and the i newspaper. He’s also the editor of professional home cinema website Inside CI. He’s on Twitter and Instagram as @SteveMay_UK