The Sony Bravia 9 II is perhaps the most impressive backlit TV I’ve ever seen. And yet, after spending time with it in Tokyo a couple of months ago (here’s my Bravia 9 II hands-on), I still don’t think I would swap my OLED for it.
That might sound odd, considering the Bravia 9 II is in many ways exactly what the TV industry has been promising us for years. It’s dazzlingly bright, remarkably controlled, deeply cinematic and, in terms of colour reproduction, genuinely closer to a studio mastering monitor than maybe any other TV I have tested.
In lots of ways, Sony’s new RGB Mini LED flagship feels like a glimpse of the future.
But my time testing it also reinforced something I have long suspected: no matter how sophisticated backlight technology becomes, there may still be certain image qualities that only self-emissive pixels can truly deliver.
To be clear, I’m not writing off RGB Mini LED. Far from it. In fact, I think the Bravia 9 II has every chance of proving to be the best LCD-based TV ever made once we get a final production sample in for a full review.
Nor am I claiming that OLED is objectively ‘better’ in every regard. The Bravia 9 II can hit 4000 nits in its most accurate mode, which is an astonishing achievement, and Sony’s new RGB backlight system appears capable of delivering exceptionally rich, accurate colours at brightness levels that OLED simply can’t currently match.
But the more impressive RGB Mini LED becomes technically, the more I find myself frustrated by the ways in which it still can’t match OLED.
The big one, for me, is solidity.
OLED TVs tend to produce images with a density and three-dimensionality that’s difficult to quantify but immediately obvious when you see it. Objects appear more tangible and more firmly placed within the image. Dark scenes, in particular, have a kind of depth and stability that even the best backlit TVs rarely fully replicate.
My theory – and it is just a theory – is that this comes from OLED’s pixel-level contrast control. Every pixel is independently and precisely responsible for its own luminance, with no need for a backlight system working behind the scenes to decide how bright different areas of the screen should be.
Even the most advanced Mini LED TVs are still, ultimately, trying to approximate that behaviour using clusters of controllable lights behind an LCD layer. Sony’s latest system is probably the closest I’ve seen any manufacturer get, but I’m not yet convinced that any amount of dimming-zone sophistication can entirely reproduce the same perceptual solidity as self-emissive pixels.
Even the most intelligent of backlighting systems can also be caught out in a way that an OLED doesn’t have to worry about, too.
During my testing of the Bravia 9 II, I used the opening text sequence from Blade Runner 2049, which is notoriously difficult for backlit TVs. Here, the Bravia 9 II’s otherwise superb backlight controls visibly faltered, introducing uneven colouring and reducing the intensity of text that should have appeared vividly red.
Now, this was a pre-production sample, and Sony may well improve this before launch. I certainly wouldn’t judge the TV too harshly based on one particularly brutal torture test, anyway.
But the moment still felt telling.
One of OLED’s greatest strengths is consistency. There is very little sense of the TV ‘working’ to create the image. Highlights, shadows and colours simply appear exactly where they should, without drawing attention to the mechanicals behind the picture.
With even the very best backlit TVs, there are still moments when you become aware of the processing and dimming systems juggling competing priorities in real time. And once you notice that, even briefly, you are no longer completely immersed in what you’re watching.
That’s not to say OLED is flawless, of course. OLED TVs are dimmer than the very brightest Mini LED models, and RGB Mini LED’s advocates are absolutely right that the technology can produce more saturated colours at extremely high brightness levels.
I’m just not yet convinced how transformative that advantage is with real-world content.
Most movies and TV shows still aren’t mastered anywhere near 4000 nits, and while extra brightness headroom is undeniably useful in bright viewing environments, the best modern OLEDs are already more than bright enough for most people’s living rooms.
Similarly, greater colour volume is technically impressive, but much of that benefit stems from the ability to maintain colour saturation at very high luminance levels. If content rarely reaches those levels in the first place, the practical gains can feel somewhat pointless outside of demos.
That may change over time, of course. TV manufacturers clearly believe brighter HDR content is coming, and perhaps it eventually will.
But there’s another reason why I think RGB Mini LED matters, and this one is more immediate and convincing to me: screen size.
At 65 and 77 inches, OLED has become relatively attainable. But once you move into truly enormous sizes – 83 inches, 97 inches – OLED remains prohibitively expensive; and models larger than 100 inches don’t even exist.
RGB Mini LED could be the answer to that.
Sony is launching the Bravia 9 II in sizes up to 115 inches, and other brands are going similarly massive with their RGB Mini LED sets (that’s the Hisense 116UX in the photo above). I suspect technologies such as this will eventually make truly gigantic premium TVs far more accessible than OLED ever can. In that sense, RGB Mini LED may end up becoming the spiritual successor to projectors.
And maybe that’s where this all ends up.
For years, the TV industry has searched for a single technology that combines OLED’s contrast and pixel precision with LCD’s brightness and scalability. RGB Mini LED is clearly the closest anyone has yet come to achieving that.
But after seeing Sony’s awesome-looking Bravia 9 II, I’m not sure I believe there will ever be one universal winner.
Perhaps the future of premium TVs isn’t about one technology replacing another entirely. Perhaps it’s about different technologies excelling in different ways, for different people, at different sizes.
At least for now, OLED still feels like the most complete and convincing option for me personally – but I can see why RGB Mini LED might be the better option for others.
MORE:
Read our Sony Bravia 9 II hands-on
Here’s our Hisense UR9 RGB Mini LED TV review
These are all of the best TVs you can buy right now
