I saw Sony's first 'True RGB' TV in action compared to a studio monitor and Sony's best OLED TV — and based on early measurements, Sony might finally bring 'reference' HDR performance to your home | Tech Radar
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I saw Sony's first 'True RGB' TV in action compared to a studio monitor and Sony's best OLED TV — and based on early measurements, Sony might finally bring 'reference' HDR performance to your home
And the Sony Bravia 7 II brings similar tech at a lower price
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The Sony Bravia 7 II (left) and the Sony Bravia 9 II (right) (Image credit: Future)
After more than a year of teasing, Sony has finally announced its first 'True RGB' TVs, which use an RGB mini-LED backlight. They're called the Sony Bravia 9 II and Sony Bravia 7 II, and I got to see the Bravia 9 II in action.
Sony first showed us its RGB tech back in March 2025, and then showed it to us again in September, and the again a couple of months ago. It's kind of a relief to finally see it in a product that people will be able to buy.
The Sony Bravia 9 II is the highest-end model, and will be available in multiple larger sizes, while the Sony Bravia 7 II is notable for being the first RGB TV to come in a 50-inch size, which will make it interesting competition for the smaller options among the best OLED TVs — 55 inches was the smallest size of RGB set we'd seen so far.
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They're not cheap, though — here's the size and price breakdown of these TVs (Sony was only able to supply UK prices at the time of writing):
RGB TVs use an LCD panel with lights behind it, like other mini-LED TVs, but the backlight can change color to better match what the pixels in front are supposed to show. Each mini-LED in the backlight includes individual red, green and blue sub-pixels to create the range of hues.
This enables a wider color range within the pixels, and requires less color filtering to do it, so the panels can have fewer layers, which helps with efficiency.
Here's the backlight of the original Bravia 9 (left), the backlight of the Bravia 9 II (right), and the what the final image would look like (Image credit: Future)
Sony has combined this with its X-Wide Angle Pro wide viewing angle, as well as a new anti-reflective system. Sony refused to give any information about the anti-reflective layer, but it looked to me like a matte element is involved, given that the lights in the demo room created a sheen on the screen.
The Bravia 9 II has a more powerful backlight system than the Bravia 7 II, but I didn't see them compared in real scenes directly, and Sony doesn't tend to discuss that kind of technical information too deeply.
What I did see was the Bravia 9 II compared to the Sony Bravia 8 II QD-OLED TV, the Sony Bravia 9 mini-LED (original non-RGB flavor), and Sony's reference studio monitor that's used for pro film grading — though sadly I couldn't take and share photos of the comparison.
Ever since the Bravia 9 was first announced, which was shortly after Sony rolled out its current studio reference monitor that reaches 4,000 nits of brightness, Sony has been pushing the idea that it wants its TVs to be able to perfectly replicate the HDR experience of the reference monitor.
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Sony believes that more movies will be mastered for 4,000 nits of brightness now that there's a suitable 4,000-nit monitor (1,000 nits has been by far the most common mastering level), and so to replicate the full tonal range of these movies properly, TVs should also be able to hit 4,000 nits of peak brightness.
This hasn't been possible in any of Sony's previous TVs, and it's quite obvious when you turn the tone mapping off that you lose a lot of detail in bright highlights when compared to the studio monitor… but Sony's demo showed that the Bravia 9 II lost much less detail in those areas in a direct comparison with all four screens.
It still wasn't able to exactly recreate the reference monitor, but it was by far the closest to recreating the pure reference image for HDR tones — and in color for some scenes, though this was much less clear-cut, with the Bravia 8 II putting in a strong showing in this case, and the Bravia 9 occasionally looking closer in certain scenes.
Sony declined to say what the actual brightness of the TV is expected to be, but happily we've had access to a pre-production unit to be able to measure this ourselves.
The Sony Bravia 9 II is a bit of a brightness beast (Image credit: Future)
The Bravia 9 II is capable of 3,990 nits in Professional Mode (which is the most accurate mode, and is closest to the Filmmaker Mode that we usually like to test in) in a 10% HDR window — so yes, it's basically capable of that promised 4,000-nit paradise.
Even more impressive is its fullscreen brightness in this mode, which we measured at 827 nits — that's around double the fullscreen brightness we got from the similarly priced LG G6 OLED TV.
For comparison, we measured the Sony Bravia 8 II OLED at 1,439 nits in a 10% HDR window and 183 nits of fullscreen brightness. We measured the Bravia 9 (original) at 1,871 nits in a 10% window and 495 nits fullscreen.
We've also had the chance to measure the Sony Bravia 7 II's brightness, and that delivered 2078 nits in Professional Mode in a 10% HDR window, so we can expect the HDR performance of the Bravia 9 II to have clearly strong impact — although the Bravia 7 II actually delivered over 900 nits of fullscreen brightness in our measurements, so it actually beats its big sibling there.
The Bravia 7 II looks super-rich despite its more limited performance (Image credit: Future)
These measurements were taken on pre-production units, as I mentioned, so we'll make sure that the final versions test the same — but they're impressive numbers.
The big question is whether the contrast and dark-tone performance will be as good. It looked strong in Sony's brief demos, but the company is unlikely to have shown me anything that might indicate color bleed from the RGB backlight, so we look forward to digging into that too.
Other things to note about the Bravia 9 II include its use of Sony's Acoustic Multi-Audio+ tech, which means powerful built-in speakers that now include up-firing speakers for more height in Dolby Atmos or DTS: X soundtracks.
On the downside, however, the TV still comes with only two HDMI 2.1 ports (out of four ports in total). Sony is basically the only manufacturer launching new high-end TVs with only two HDMI 2.1 ports, and it's frustratingly limiting if you plan to connect a soundbar as well.
I also want to highlight the fun new stand design of these TVs. The main panel of the stand is made from a light-bending material that lets through the tone of what's behind it, but not specific details.
I'm very impressed with my early looks at the Bravia 9 II and Bravia 8 II — they're both very premium TVs, but the 9 II looks like it could compete hard with Samsung to offer the best TV for brighter rooms with its huge brightness and anti-reflection tech, but with Sony's meticulous attention to accuracy.
And I'm really keen to get my hands on the little 50-inch Bravia 7 II, because it could offer the premium competition to the LG C6 at this size. Stay tuned for our full reviews later.
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