Sony has finally announced its full 2026 TV range, and guess what’s missing? That’s right – OLED.
It was long suspected that the brand’s new flagship model would be an RGB Mini LED set to replace the Bravia 9 ‘standard’ LED model. And, sure enough, that’s precisely what we’ve got, in the form of the technically formidable Bravia 9 II.
What I wasn’t expecting, though, was no new OLED in the range at all.
No replacement for the Bravia 8 II is no surprise: Sony works on two-year lifecycles for most of its models, and the company’s awesome QD-OLED set is only a year old.
And I’m beyond expecting a replacement to the A90K, which launched way back in 2022 but appears to have been sentenced to lifetime imprisonment in the warehouses of Amazon, Currys and John Lewis.
I was, though, expecting the Bravia 8 to get a replacement. Now two years old, Sony’s W-OLED model is struggling to justify itself against last year’s LG C5 and the newer C6. Surely a nip-and-tuck upgrade would be worth it, both for Sony and consumers who want meaningful choice when buying a step-down/mainstream OLED TV.
Alas, though, there’s not a single new OLED in Sony’s new range, with all three of its existing models expected to run for at least another year.
And that’s prompted in me a dreadful thought: what if Sony plans never to launch another OLED TV? Sadly, the more I think about it, the more I feel that’s a very realistic possibility.
It’s all about profit, of course, which is understandable; it’s saddening nonetheless.
You see, Sony buys all of the panels for its OLED TVs from its rivals: it buys the W-OLED panels for the A90K and Bravia 8 from LG, and the QD-OLED panels for the Bravia 8 II from Samsung.
This, inevitably, eats into the money the brand can make from these OLED TVs, especially while it tries to compete on price with those brands that both make the panels and sell the TVs.
Meanwhile, Sony’s Home Entertainment division, which is responsible for the design, development and manufacture of its TVs (and home theatre products), is about to become a joint venture between Sony itself and TCL, the latter of which will hold a 51 per cent share.
TCL is, of course, the biggest manufacturer of LCD TV panels in the world. It’s famously uninterested in OLED where TVs are concerned, and while it is in the process of building a huge factory where it will produce OLED panels via inkjet printing, these will be for smartphones, tablets and laptops, at least in the first place.
So, once the Sony/TCL joint venture begins operations at the start of 2027, will it have any interest in buying expensive OLED panels from its rivals so that it can produce Sony OLED TVs from which it receives very little profit? Or will it entirely focus on producing TVs using the in-house panel technology supplied by the TCL side of the merger?
Sadly, it’s not hard to imagine the answer to that one.
Of course, Sony says it is very much not done with OLED, and I sincerely hope that’s true, as I’m yet to test a backlit TV that beats an OLED overall. But Sony also needs to operate as a business, which means making profits. And that, I suspect, means saying goodbye to OLED.
With any luck, I’m wrong, but if the Bravia 8 II really does turn out to be Sony’s last OLED TV, at least it’s an awesome one.
MORE:
Check out our Sony Bravia 9 II hands-on and Sony Bravia 8 II review
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