When a company like Sony labels its latest generation of displays with superlatives like “deliver our brightest picture,” “largest color volume in Sony history,” “most authentic color ever,” “biggest revolution Sony has had in TV in decades,” and “best picture quality in Sony’s home TV history,” you should expect something radical and revolutionary. And Sony’s new True RGB LED displays deliver!
Getting to this point didn’t happen by chance or overnight, but through a steady progression of technological advancements and milestones. The first Sony Trinitron TVs, released starting in 1968, were revolutionary in how they extracted color, but the genesis of the True RGB technology traces its roots back to the Sony Qualia 005 released in 2004, which features the industry’s first RGB backlight. Sony further evolved the technology by implementing its Backlight Master Drive technology in 2016, and advanced it again with 2024’s launch of the BRAVIA 9, which added XR Backlight Master Drive with LEDs controlled by 22-bit Driver ICs.
Technology has finally caught up to make this year’s launch of True RGB LED possible.
True RGB: The Future of Color
Traditionally, LED displays have used either a white or blue backlight passing through a color filter to produce color. While effective, this has inherent limitations in producing the full spectrum of colors, as well as limits in color brightness and color volume, and contrast restrictions. Sony’s True RGB is a next-generation backlight technology using thousands of tiny, independently controlled red, green, and blue LEDs driven by Sony’s proprietary RGB Backlight Master Drive Pro. By individually controlling the brightness of these densely packed RGB LEDs with 22 bits per color, control is more precise. This enables purer color reproduction, enhances brightness, expands contrast, and provides consistent viewing performance across wider angles. All of this is powered by Sony’s latest-gen XR Processor, using AI scene recognition and frame analysis to optimize color, contrast, and clarity. Because Sony is independently processing each LED color, they call this technology True RGB.
Brighter, Richer, More Colors
Our eyes can see approximately 10 million distinct colors, but TVs haven’t been able to reproduce all of them. With dramatically increased color content and volume, Sony’s True RGB TVs can reproduce colors with more intensity and purity than ever possible before, and deliver colors previously unseen on residential displays. The new flagship BRAVIA 9 II exceeds the color volume of the BRAVIA 8 II QD-OLED — winner of the 2025 Value Electronics’ “King of TV” shootout — by four times, and the original BRAVIA 9 by two times. This allows the displays to reproduce shades of green in grass, vibrant neon reds, and tropical turquoise blues with a realism never before seen on a residential display. And the enhanced color volume means even the brightest parts of the image with bright specular highlights, such as the colors in a sunset, aren’t clipped, losing detail. This all means more natural-looking images that get closer to recreating the reality of everyday living.
Blacks with Depth and Texture
While the importance of absolute black in video levels can’t be minimized, in reality only 13% of viewers watch in the same +/- 5 nit darkened environment as color grading studios. The majority of viewers watch with higher ambient lighting that would be best suited to all the benefits True RGB LED delivers. However, just because these new displays can get very bright doesn’t mean they can’t produce cinematic black levels. With the precise, 22-bit independent control over each LED, they can rival OLED black levels, delivering blacks with more texture and detail than what OLED can deliver. Beyond producing deep blacks with rich shade, gradation, and detail, True RGB also delivers subtle detail even when a scene is dimly lit, automatically adjusting the nuances in dark areas without crushing blacks, revealing hidden depths in images like never before.
Say Goodbye to Blooming
Blooming, or halo-ing, refers to light leaking from the backlight that’s not part of the image. This has traditionally been a challenge for LED and MiniLED TV technology because the backlight uses white or blue light. For example, if you have a red flame, you might end up with a hazy, glowing white or blue halo around its edges, which can not only be distracting, it can also crush contrast and detail. With the True RGB backlight, because the backlight is the same color as the object, that glow is going to be subtly red like the flame, just as it would be in real life. This produces a more natural effect that aligns with how our eyes perceive glowing light around a bright object in the real world. This means that dark scenes are recreated without loss of expression or gradation, and fewer unwanted light-bleeding artifacts, resulting in a more natural, immersive, and realistic image.
Best Picture at Every Seat
Mini-LED and QLED displays create color using a backlight plus phosphor or quantum dot layers which then pass through the LCD layer to modulate pixel brightness. This is fine when viewed head-on from the sweet spot, but when viewed off-axis, colors can shift due to the LCD structure, and contrast can suffer from image washout. Sony’s RGB LED creates color through the LED and LCD layer, meaning colors stay consistent even at wide viewing angles. And with the X-Wide Angle Pro screen, color and contrast stay vivid and natural even when viewed from an angle. This ensures consistent brightness and contrast across the screen at wider viewing angles, delivering the same stunning picture regardless of seat.
Unique to the BRAVIA 9 II is Sony’s Immersive Black Screen Pro, Sony’s best-ever anti-glare technology that minimizes reflections and glare no matter the room’s lighting. Unlike traditional anti-glare treatments or coatings that can sacrifice black level, contrast, clarity, and/or color, the Immersive Black Screen Pro is an exclusive, non-glare and low-reflection panel featuring a patent pending nano structure layer capable of maintaining contrast and black level even with ambient lighting.
Lens to Living Room Experience
Beyond just making the brightest and most color-filled images in the company’s history, the real drive behind Sony’s True RGB technology is fully recreating the director’s intent, bringing the true culmination of Sony’s “lens to living room” story. Sony’s commitment to cinematic picture quality is inspired by its BVM-HX3110, a 30-inch professional studio grading monitor which is used extensively in cinema mastering and color grading. All Sony BRAVIA TVs are designed to faithfully preserve creator intent through advanced picture processing and cinematic accuracy to the best of their capabilities. However, the BRAVIA 9 II is unique in that it matches the intent and the peak luminance from the BVM-HX3110 which is rated at 4,000 nits. With True RGB, the BRAVIA 9 II can produce the same color brightness and volume as the studio reference monitor. This faithfully reproduces the delicate hues and subtle gradations of light across every corner of the display, most accurately delivering the content creator’s intent. Because the blacklight is also full color, it delivers maximum color volume even at maximum brightness, more accurately creating specular highlights and keeping bright objects like the sun full of color instead of just bleaching out into a bright white.
Sony’s True RGB lineup is available in sizing options from 50-inch all the way to a truly immersive and cinematic 115-inch, making it capable of fitting any size you’re looking for in a living room, media room, or bedroom space. Also new for 2026, Sony is introducing PRO models of both BRAVIA 7 II and 9 II displays. These sets feature identical video performance, but include an extended limited warranty with advanced replacement, Enhanced Voice Zoom 3 for clearer dialogue, and added Sony Pictures Core movie credits.
With Sony’s new True RGB LED technology, the future of color is here!
