Sony is embracing RGB LED, but OLED is staying put

Cinema is coming home

Sony has, for lack of a better word, boasted about its connections to Hollywood. It does, after all, own a film and TV studio in Sony Pictures.

And that foothold within cinema gives Sony knowledge that no other TV brand can really say it has. While other TV brands work with Hollywood studios, especially in the mastering process, films are shot on Sony cameras, mastered on Sony monitors, and beamed onto giant screens with Sony projectors. It knows a thing or two about films.

And it knows what filmmakers want to see. The colours, contrast, brightness, skintones, detail etc is what it wants translated to the cinema screen, and Sony’s job on top of that is to bring that level of performance to your home.

Sony has drilled down this messaging for years as its key advantage, and I wouldn’t want this article to come across as a puff piece, but as TV technology advances, it is impressive to see how close a Sony TV like the Bravia 8 MkII can get to the mastering monitor. It’s not 1:1, but the gap is closing.

And it doesn’t matter which Sony TV you buy, the goal is always the same: to use the TV technology at hand – panels, backlight, colour filters etc, to express the filmmaker’s intent with as much accuracy as possible.

Hot and cold

While other brands refresh their TV line-up each year, Sony is closer to an 18-month cycle. This can be a good thing, as constantly saturating the market with new models can confuse customers and potentially reduce demand.

But Sony’s approach to its OLEDs is a curious one. I’ve written about it before, but there are some models Sony hasn’t updated for more than five years now. It hasn’t launched a small screen OLED since 2022, while others have launched new models each year.

That could be viewed as Sony not being in a hurry or that these models aren’t selling like hotcakes and there’s no desire to release another one, but considering Sony also sells the PS5, it baffles me there’s not an updated 42- and 48-inch OLED screen it can offer to gamers.

Also muddying the waters is the 100-pound gorilla in the room that is LG, which is the leader in OLED TV sales. While Samsung’s entry into OLEDs hasn’t chipped away at LG’s piece of the pie, but everyone else’s.

The naming of the Bravia 8 MkII pours more confusion on Sony’s OLED strategy in suggesting the MkII is a sequel to the Bravia 8, but it’s actually a completely different type of OLED. It should really have its own designated number in my opinion, but it feels as if Sony has squeezed the OLEDs into its line-up.

The current approach to OLED doesn’t scream enthusiasm – it feels very low-key.

The future is red, green and blue

Sony, along with others, seems to be putting faith into Mini LED, with RGB Mini LED making its presence known.

Hisense has been one of the early adopters and aggressive in its strategy – at IFA 2025, there was an 85-inch version, a size I haven’t seen attempted by other brands.

Both Samsung and TCL are making inroads with RGB displays, though the former’s marketing is confusing (Micro RGB instead of RGB Mini LED). Nevertheless, this convergence makes it clear that these TV brands see RGB as the future.

Having seen a few demos of the technology, it has the advantage over OLED in terms of colour volume (brightness of colours), range of colours shown, and the purity of those colours. Red is genuinely red rather than a shade of it, colours leap off the screen and blooming is less of an issue (at least from head-on).

Does that mean it’ll replace OLED? Not yet.

OLED is here to stay – for now

Sony’s main focus is on delivering the creator’s intent to the living room, and as we were told by Shoji Charlie Ohama, Head of Home Entertainment for Sony Europe, they’re not “really too picky on the device itself”; they’re just picky on how to faithfully represent that intent on whichever screen they’re selling to customers.

When I asked the question of whether they’d put their focus into making RGB TVs, Sony reps said they “not really saying we’re going to walk away from anything. We’re just saying that this (RGB) is the right type of device to deliver [the creator’s intent].

So while it seems as if Sony will continue to sell OLEDs, it does not feel as if they’ll pump more resources into creating more OLED TVs. It’d be nice to see a new, smaller OLED; it’d be nice to see a brighter mid-range OLED too.

I’ve no doubt that Sony will continue to make excellent OLED TVs going forward, but the keyword here is potential, and I feel as if Sony’s excited more about RGB than it has been about TV tech for a long time.