Sony’s True RGB: challenging OLED dominance
Sony invited me to London to explain why RGB Mini LED will win out over OLED. Akiyama Hideki’s been given the task of proving this. He’s an engineer – and is hailed as the best backlight developer in the world.
The TV world’s new prodigy stands in a darkened hall in London, flanked by a reference monitor worth as much as a small car. It’s called the Bravia 9 Mark II – an RGB Mini LED TV or, as Sony now calls it, True RGB.
The man who’s guiding us journalists through the technology is called Akiyama Hideki. He’s not a big speaker, not a marketing person, not a director in a suit with a PowerPoint smile. He’s an engineer. To be more precise, he’s the Senior Manager of Engineering at Sony’s headquarters in Tokyo, where he’s responsible for developing the backlight for LCD TVs. And judging by everything I heard that day, he’s probably one of the most brilliant people in television.
Ultimately, he’s said to be one of the main players responsible for shaping how we’ll enjoy our films and TV shows at home in the future – thanks to his new algorithm.
The day consists of a one-hour presentation and a long afternoon filled with demos, discussions and interviews. Not once does the marketing buzzword of the decade, «AI», come up. Not even by accident. In an industry where even foam rollers are now «AI-powered» (no joke!), this is practically an act of rebellion.
That’s exactly what I love about it.
RGB Mini LED: what’s behind the name?
Let’s get right to the heart of the matter. RGB Mini LED. And why it has what it takes to outperform OLED TVs in the premium segment. By the way, it’s not just Akiyama (or Akiyama-san, as the folks at Sony call him here) who claims that – I’ve been saying it too ever since I got to see the Bravia 9 Mark II behind closed doors at IFA last year.
Right off the bat, you should know that every LCD TV has a backlight. It provides the pixels with light and determines how bright, high-contrast and true-to-life the image looks. In conventional Mini LED TVs, this backlight consists of blue LEDs. Their light’s then converted to white by a phosphor or quantum dot layer – and to a particularly pure white in the case of quantum dots. Colour filters then split this white light back into red, green, or blue with pixel-level precision, depending on what’s needed to mix the colours you see on the TV.
RGB Mini LED does things differently. Instead of a single blue LED, the backlight now contains one red, one green and one blue sub-LED. Each one can be controlled individually, by itself. Sony demonstrates this at the event using two TVs from which the pixel layer’s been removed, leaving only the backlight.
On the left is a Mini LED TV with blue LEDs. Quantum dots later convert the blue light into pure white. On the right is an RGB Mini LED TV, where the LEDs themselves can produce red, green and blue light.
That’s more than just a clever technical feature. The reason? If the colour’s already nearly perfect in the backlight, the colour filter in front of it has less to correct – delivering a more precise, purer and more vibrant result on the screen (the lower TV in the video above). Ultimately, the colour’s no longer created just in front of the backlight, but inside it.
And it doesn’t stop at richer colours and better angles of view – blooming’s also significantly reduced. In other words, the halos that typically appear when bright objects are displayed against a dark background. Here’s an example to illustrate exactly how it works – a red lantern against a black background.
In a conventional Mini LED TV, the backlight behind this lantern emits white light. The light-emitting crystals in the LCD pixels that are supposed to remain black block the light as much as possible, but some of it always gets through. That’s the blooming we see. In an RGB Mini LED TV, on the other hand, the backlight behind the red lantern is already glowing red. This red light is by its very nature less bright than white light, and is therefore better blocked by the light-emitting crystals. Blooming doesn’t disappear completely – but our eyes notice it much less.
The RGB Mini LED isn’t exactly new. Hisense unveiled its version at CES back in January 2025. This was also where Samsung even debuted a massive 115-inch model featuring Micro RGB priced at 30,000 Swiss francs. But the fact that Sony’s chosen the brand name True RGB today, in 2026, rather than simply RGB Mini LED like everyone else, is no coincidence.
It’s a statement of intent.
An algorithm that Akiyama wrote from scratch
Over the years, all the talk about colour accuracy, contrast and volume has somehow shifted to the backlight. That’s exactly why Akiyama, the backlight engineer, is suddenly the most important person in the room.
When he talks, things get technical. But it’s worth sticking with it, because what he’s speaking about is probably the main thing that sets Sony’s True RGB apart from the competition – its sensing algorithm. And this is both the trickiest and the least exciting feature to explain.
So I ask Akiyama to make it as simple as possible for me. He laughs briefly – then pauses to collect his thoughts. I can tell right away that he’s not used to talking to journalists like me. In his world, he’s more used to dealing with engineers. They speak his language. Me? Not so much. He gives it a go anyway, and I listen intently as he speaks, trying to figure out what it all means.
Source: Sony
Red, green and blue LEDs behave completely differently from a physics standpoint, he begins. Red LEDs, for example, lose efficiency when they heat up. Green LEDs, on the other hand, don’t respond linearly to an increase in current – so X more current doesn’t automatically mean X more light. «But blue LEDs are our friends,» he says with a smile. They’re the most stable of the three, and are also the reason why Mini LEDs use blue LEDs as a backlight before the light’s converted to pure white.
To put it in a nutshell: red, green and blue LEDs behave completely differently from a physics standpoint. That doesn’t sound like a big deal. But it is. To understand why, we need to take a step back.
Let me give you an example. A rich yellow appears in a pixel when its red and green subpixels light up together, but the blue subpixel doesn’t. A soft pink needs a lot of red, a little green and some blue. And a perfect neutral grey – the most challenging colour of all – can only be achieved when red, green and blue are balanced in exactly the right ratios. If the balance is off, the grey’s no longer grey. It has a slight greenish, reddish or bluish tint.
It’s precisely these ratios that are lost when the physics of the LEDs are ignored. Because red, green and blue behave so differently – depending on temperature, operating time and current – the correct ratios are changing all the time. A shade of grey that looked perfect when the device was switched on appears slightly off after an hour of use. The image you see no longer matches what the filmmakers intended.
This is exactly where Sony’s sensing algorithm, which Akiyama wrote from scratch, comes into play. It monitors the voltage, current and heat of each individual LED in real time – and continuously adjusts the control settings. That’s more than just dimming. It’s constant compensation. «This algorithm has been the most challenging project of my entire career at Sony,» the engineer adds.
Then Akiyama takes out a sheet of paper and a pen, and begins to draw diagrams. He gives a running commentary: «To get this shade of pink, I’d have to reduce the red to 80 per cent, but since the red LEDs are currently running at a temperature of 45 degrees and have lost some efficiency as a result, I’m giving them an extra two and a half per cent of power so the result still comes out right.»
«That’s crazy,» I say. «We’re talking about thousands of diodes measuring mere micrometres, all of which are monitored and controlled simultaneously. You’d need an incredibly powerful processor for that.» Akiyama smiles. It’s no coincidence that Sony’s considered the industry leader when it comes to TV processors. And this pays off here.
And now we’ve reached the crux of the matter. Samsung, LG and Hisense, of course, also control their RGB LEDs individually. But real-time compensation’s beyond their capabilities, «because they don’t have the sensing algorithm», as Akiyama confirms. This means their versions of RGB Mini LED will never achieve the same colour accuracy as Sony’s True RGB. So that’s the rather complicated theory.
True RGB. It all makes sense now!
Why Sony waited
Sony could’ve launched its RGB Mini LED TV sooner, says Akiyama. The first prototype was already around back in 2021. But it would’ve been nearly impossible to sell, because it was simply too big, too loud and too unfinished. On the sidelines of the event, I also spoke with Charlie Ohama, Sony’s Head of Home Entertainment for Europe – and he remembers it well: «Our goal isn’t to be the first for the sake of it. Our goal’s to be the first to perfect RGB Mini LED.»
You can read more about my conversation with Charlie – where we cover True RGB, changes in the TV market and much more – in a separate interview coming out in the next few days.
Source: Sony
«Our goal isn’t to be first. It’s to be true,» is also written on a presentation slide. Later, I ask Akiyama what that means in practice – and where the real limits lie.
He makes grand promises, as you’d expect. Using measuring devices, I’m shown that the Bravia 9 Mark II has exactly the same power consumption as Sony’s QD-OLED TV, the Bravia 8 Mark II, but with twice the brightness. The colour volume, the number of colours a display can show simultaneously at different brightness levels, is twice as large as that of conventional Mini LED displays and four times as large as that of QD-OLED displays. And colour gradients, such as those seen in sunsets, are also said to be significantly smoother thanks to the improved processor.
Akiyama does, however, openly admit one thing: white text on a black background – such as in subtitles – remains a challenge. That’s hardly surprising, as the backlight is still white and True RGB’s still an LCD TV, with all its physical limitations.
But what a TV it is.
I write about technology as if it were cinema, and about films as if they were real life. Between bits and blockbusters, I’m after stories that move people, not just generate clicks. And yes – sometimes I listen to film scores louder than I probably should.
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