The launch of a 115-inch television for $32,000 may seem like a luxurious ploy, but in the realm of next-gen display tech, it’s more of a statement of technological ambition. A recent trademarking of the “True RGB” name by Sony in both Japan and Canada indicates the firm’s preparation for a serious foray into the world of RGB mini_LED TVs in the first quarter of 2026, amongst a steadily growing list of competitors such as LG, Samsung, Hisense, and TCL.
While traditional LED backlight displays rely on white or blue LEDs filtered through color, the RGB LED and microRGB displays introduce the use of separate red, green, and blue LEDs, each of which is controlled individually. For the RGB miniature LED display, the size of each LED is approximately 100-200 micrometers, while microRGB reduces the size below 100 micrometers. This significantly improves the brightness and color accuracy of displays compared to both traditional LEDs and OLED displays. As the displays no longer depend so much on the color filter or quantum dot layers, the colors are produced more accurately, and these displays are suited perfectly for HDR content.
Sony’s own demonstrations this year have optimized their displays with increased color volume, wider viewing angles, and improved energy efficiency when compared with conventional displays, the company explained. The technology has already indicated its scalability benefits by stating that the current limitations on OLED displays have been to remain below the 97 inches mark with hefty price tags. This is because the new technology is still scalable from 50 inches to very large displays like the massive 115 inches.
The kind of engineering required to make this huge jump, @RedGordonMMM tweeted, is not for the faint of heart. This type of engineering requires a lot of work and is very difficult. So what kind of engineering challenges are entailed by this jump? High-precision RGB backlights involve the intricate alignment of thousands or even tens of thousands of micro-LEDs, writes Cnet’s Emily Murphy. For example, she continues, its main model Micro RGB evo LCD display features ‘more than a thousand dimming regions’ for its backlight, powered by the Alpha 11 AI Processor Gen 3 with Dual Super Upscaling. This kind of processing power is clearly required for the complicated adjustments required by three separate channels of LEDs for each zone to provide the right amount of luminance and chromaticity for the display, writes Murphy. LG claims a color gamut of 100% of BT.2020, DCI-P3,
Samsung takes its micro-RGB technology even further to reach an even higher density by employing sub-100 μm emitters to support the display of the full BT.2020 color gamut in full-screen measurements. Despite retaining the LCD panel type, the layout comes close to the color capabilities offered by emissive technologies such as OLED or microLED, but without the potential for burn-in and reduced brightness that come with OLED displays. But micro-RGB panel production requires even more stringent tolerance requirements regarding the positioning and cooling of the LEDs, due to the increased sensitivity to heat and current variations of the sub-100 μm devices.
Other key trends are the emphasis of Hisense on offering affordable products with an upcoming RGB mini LED TriChroma series going from 55 to 100 inches and powered by the HiView AI Engine X with support for a maximum of 165Hz and anti-refection coating. Hisense is also an early adopter of Dolby Vision 2 with the MediaTek Pentonic 800 processor, the world’s first processor to integrate Dolby Vision 2. All this could result in increased use of RGB LED in the display industry, not limited to the premium segment.
TCL’s Q9M and Q10M Ultra RGB TVs, unveiled in September 2025, are an example of how it is meant to be marketed in the mid-range segment. Starting at around 1,150 USD for its 65-inch model, it is significantly less expensive compared to its bigger cousins from both Samsung and Hisense. Though it is only going to be marketed in China at first, it’s likely going to be unveiled at CES 2026 in both the US and Europe.
On the engineering front, another strength of RGB LED displays over OLED technology is their scalability. The current barriers for OLED technology in producing large-scale displays are a consequence of their limitations in depositing matrix layers uniformly on a large surface. The advantage that RGB LED backlights offer is that of using inorganic LEDs for backlight, thereby making scaling easier for them.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that traditional limitations of LCD displays remain, such as halos around bright objects, less impressive viewing angles than OLED displays, and less perfect blacks. Nevertheless, displays featuring RGB Mini LED and Micro RGB backlighting begin to work on overcoming these drawbacks with enhanced zone light control, decreased light bleed, and sophisticated dimming algorithms. For home cinema enthusiasts and early adopters, 2026’s crop of True RGB, Micro RGB evo, and TriChroma displays mean not just another upgrade cycle but a whole new architecture of LCD illumination to redefine performance/cost versus panel size relationships within high-end TVs.
