If you ask most AV enthusiasts what the best display technology is right now, they’d probably respond with some variant of OLED panel. However, one of the best TV makers in the world has decided that OLED is not the way forward, and instead brings us RGB LED technology.
In mid-March of 2025, Sony unveiled its RGB LED technology. It’s not the only company pushing this OLED alternative, with Hisense aiming to launch RGB mini- and micro-LED TVs in 2025. So why are these companies bucking the OLED trend?
Sony’s RGB Backlight Tech Explained
Just in case you need a refresher, the main difference between OLED and LCD panels is that OLEDs are emissive. In other words, each OLED pixel emits its own light. This means that it can switch itself off and offer perfect black levels, among a few other advantages. LCDs need a “backlight” and one of the primary ways LCDs have improved over the years has been about backlight innovations as much as improvements to the liquid crystals.
Early LCDs used a simple CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp) backlight with an internal reflector to spread the light around. As you might imagine, this was awful, and I still remember the cold and hot spots on my first LCD monitor being so bad that I thought there was something wrong with it.
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Since then, LCDs have been upgraded with LED backlights, which were placed all around the edges of the screen, so that it was far more evenly lit. Then the backlights were also added directly behind the screen, which allowed for neat tricks like local dimming. Now miniLED screens put hundreds or thousands of LED lights behind the screen, allowing for very precise local dimming, which improved contrast and black levels immensely.
However, so far all of these LED backlight solutions have used a white (or blue) LED source. RGB LEDs replace this white LED with an RGB LED that can be any color. This means that the LED behind a given set of pixels is being driven with the same color light as the pixel is meant to produce and removes the need for color filters.
If you take the LCD layer off completely, then an RGB miniLED backlight would look like a low-res version of the original image. With enough LEDs, the image is still recognizable!
Better Color Accuracy at Wider Angles
The Sony display demoed by the company promises 99% of the DCI-P3 color spectrum, and 90% of the next-gen BT.2020 spectrum. Making these displays some of the most color-accurate screens money can buy. With fewer layers of stuff in the display stack, and much more pure color to boot, the image looks vibrant, accurate, and maintains its color purity from a wider set of angles.
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More Brightness, No Burn In
The less stuff you have between the light source and the surface of the screen, the brighter the image can be. Hisense’s RGB LED TVs are slated for 2025 promise a peak brightness of 10,000 nits! That is way beyond the brightest OLED panels, even LG’s tandem OLED that was demonstrated in January 2025, which maxes out at 4,000 nits.
While LCDs can have image retention, they are far, far less prone to it than OLEDs, and the brighter you run an OLED, the greater the chances of permanent image retention or “burn-in”. So RGB LEDs will absolutely smoke OLEDs when it comes to brightness, with virtually none of the risk.
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A Lack of Bloom To Rival OLEDs
One of the big issues with LED LCDs, even the latest miniLEDs, is “bloom”. This is when light from the backlight in the bright part of an image spills over into the dark parts. Even on LCDs with thousands of dimming zones, you can see this when there’s something very bright next to something very dark.
For example, my iPad Pro has a mini-LED screen, and if the brightness is turned up you can see bloom around white text on a black background, such as with subtitles or the end-credits of a movie. In content, you’d see this with laser blasts in space, or a big spotlight in the night sky.
RGB LEDs significantly reduce bloom thanks to the precise control of the brightness and color of each RGB backlight element. So you get contrast levels closer to that of an OLED, but you still get the brightness and color purity advantages.
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Cheaper Large Panels
Perhaps the biggest deal of all is price. While I expect Sony’s Bravia 10s to have a price that will make your eyes water even more than the nits rating, the fact is that RGB LED tech will be cheaper than OLEDs, especially as you scale up to larger panel sizes. While the price of smaller OLEDs (e.g. 55-inches or smaller) has come down significantly, making bigger OLEDs is hard, and when you get to around 100-inches prices go practically vertical.
So don’t be surprised if TVs larger than 100 inches are dominated by RBG LED technology in the future, because getting 90% of what OLED offers at a much lower price will likely be too hard to resist.
OLED Still Has Tricks up Its Sleeve
With all that said, it’s not like OLED technology will stand still or is in major trouble. OLED’s perfect black levels, lack of bloom, and contrast levels are still better and will likely always be better. So those who are absolute sticklers for those elements of image quality will still buy them. Manufacturers are working on the issue of burn in and making it less of a problem with each new generation of screen.
LG B4 OLED
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$700
OLED still has faster pixel response rates too, and lower latency (under the right circumstances), so gamers are also another audience who’ll likely want OLED technology to stick around. QD-OLEDs are upping the game when it comes to color vibrancy and gamut as well.
Ultimately, having different display technologies duke it out for supremacy is good for you and me, because it means better TVs and monitors at lower prices.
