Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
TechRadar
TechRadar
Carrie Marshall

Get ready for 'True RGB' TVs – Sony's OLED-busting next-gen TVs seem to have a name, and they won't be alone

A close-up of an RGB mini-LED unit from an RGB TV backlight, showing the individual red, green and blue sub-pixels.
  • Sony has trademarked "True RGB" for TVs in Japan and Canada
  • Sony is expected to launch RGB mini-LED TVs in early 2026
  • It'll join models from TCL, Hisense, Samsung and a secret LG TV too

Sony's preparations to launch its RGB LED TVs have taken a big step forward: they seem to now have a name. It's likely that they'll appear under a "True RGB" banner. That's according to The Walkman Blog, which spotted Sony trademarking the phrase in Japan and Canada for "LED displays, television sets and televisions".

We've been following RGB LED TVs with great interest for some time now, and Sony showed off its take on the tech much earlier this year – describing it as a "2026 technology".

We took another look at Sony's RGB LED TV more recently, and interviewed Sony execs about the technology. They were cagey about an exact launch date, but didn't explicitly rule out an appearance at CES 2026 in January.

Sony has yet to permit us to take a photo of the TV prototypes we've seen, but allowed us to snap this picture of an example of the RGB LED tech that the company is using – this is roughly what's going on behind the pixels. (Image credit: Future)

What's so great about RGB LED TVs?

The big benefit here is brightness and precision: RGB LED TVs are much brighter than typical OLEDs, and require less color filtering than other kinds of LED TV, with less light bleed from bright areas to dark areas.

They're great for daytime viewing, and can be considerably more energy efficient than some other TV type, and Sony told us that the tech is also very scaleable.

"OLED has been in the market for how many years now, and it's still stuck at 97 inches, and 97-inch is still in a very, very high price point in comparison to the 83 or the 77-inch," Sony told us. "So the scalability is gonna be one of the advantages as well when it comes to RGB LED." Sony even suggests that power users with high-spec projectors will be tempted by the tech.

2026 looks like it's going to be the year of RGB LED TVs, with new models launching in a range of sizes to target both affordable and highly premium price points. Hisense is launching a range of models from 55 to 100 inches at extremely competitive prices as well as its monster 116-inch 116UX, whose launch price was $24,999 / AU$39,999 / €28,999 (roughly £25,000).

TCL is making RGB LED TVs too, announcing two next-gen models in September 2025, the Q9M and Q10M Ultra. The Q9M RGB TV is the most affordable of the pair, with a price starting at 7,999 yuan (about $1,150 / £830 / AU$1,700) for the 65-inch version.

Those TVs are currently exclusive to the Chinese market but we're expecting US availability to be announced at CES, with UK and European availability following shortly afterwards.

Samsung has announced its first micro-RGB TV, a 115-inch model with a price tag of roughly $32,000 / £24,000 / €28,000 / AU$49,750; that's currently available in South Korea but Samsung has confirmed it's coming to the US next.

Some firms haven't officially announced anything but have had some of their RGB plans revealed anyway: in November LG announced that it had won a CES innovation award for a mysterious new TV: a "premium LCD TV with Micro RGB technology".

We're very impressed with what we've seen of micro-RGB and RGB mini-LED TV, and it's also impressive to see how quickly the new tech has gone into production. While micro-RGB remains incredibly expensive the much more affordable RGB mini-LED tech looks like it could give OLED a real run for its money in the coming months.

Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!

And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.