Sony Bravia 7 II (K55XR75M2) review

Sony’s enthusiasm for OLED seems to have cooled off in 2026, and the Bravia 7 II is clear proof of that.

While this isn’t the first time Sony has flirted with sidelining OLED for its own take on the latest backlit panel technology, its new True RGB range is certainly the biggest push it's made to date.

Serving as the step-down model in a duo of new RGB Mini LED TVs, the Bravia 7 II hopes to tempt prospective OLED buyers away with the promise of higher brightness and purer colours, all while directly addressing the traditional shortcomings of backlit TVs

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It’s a bold strategy, and after the move didn’t quite pay off when we compared the Bravia 9 Mini LED to the Bravia 8 OLED back in 2024, we’re somewhat surprised to see Sony attempt it again.

So, with the power of hindsight guiding it, has Sony developed a backlit TV that can tempt home cinema fans away from the enticing mid-range OLEDs on offer, or has it stumbled at the same hurdle again?

Price

We have the 55-inch Sony Bravia 7 II in our test tooms, which typically retails for £1999 / $2100 / AU$2999, though some discounts are already appearing.

Sony also sells the Bravia 7 II in a wide array of sizes, ranging from 50- to 98-inches; you can find pricing for the full range below:

It’s worth noting that the 55-inch Bravia 7 II’s launch price isn’t far off the 55-inch Bravia 7’s £1899 / $1900 / AU$2935 launch price; that feels like a pretty fair price increase considering the panel technology upgrade.

However, the Bravia 7 II is, unfortunately, priced higher than the LG C6 at 55 inches. Originally £1700 / $2000 / AU$2995, the C6 can now be found widely for £1499 / $1700 (it seems to be sticking to its launch pricing in Australia). As our current frontrunner for the best TV that we’ve tested this year, this OLED could prove to be a rather pesky thorn in Sony’s side.

Moreover, Sony’s Award-winning Bravia 8 II QD-OLED TV is now widely available for £1799 / $2600 at 55 inches, down from its launch price of £2499 / $3500. Australian availability, however, seems spotty, and pricing looks to have remained at AU$3299.

It may not seem entirely fair to compare this TV to a 2025 model, but Sony’s release strategy means that the Bravia 8 II will remain in the lineup for the foreseeable future. The price of the 7 II will drop throughout its lifespan, but this launch pricing does reveal Sony’s approach to positioning this TV.

With a launch price higher than that of the LG C6, Sony clearly thinks that RGB Mini LED is a comparable or better technology than OLED. In fairness, LG priced the C6 quite competitively, and aggressive discounts since launch means that it’s unlikely that the Bravia 7 II will ever undercut it.

Design

The Bravia 7 II sports an interesting and, if we’re being honest, slightly odd blend of aesthetic choices.

We’ll start with the positives, and the “clear” star here is the new transparent centre stand. Sony has traditionally opted for feet at either end of its TVs, so it already scores points for the convenient central pedestal design as it can be placed on narrower TV units with ease.

However, it’s the transparent part that we’re really excited about. Sony has employed some clever cable management and a one-way plastic panel that refracts light to make it look like no cables are hanging below the TV, and almost as if there’s no stand at all.

It’s hard to describe without seeing it (we’ve tried our best to do it justice with our photography), but the word “magic” was being thrown around the TV testing room upon placing the Bravia 7 II on one of our test benches. It really does give the impression that the TV is floating in place, and the slender bezels around the display help to sell the sleek illusion.

Slightly less awe-inspiring is the rest of the TV’s chassis. It’s when we look at this TV side-on that we’re reminded it’s not an OLED. At 5.4cm in depth, the Bravia 7 II is a fairly chunky set, although Sony has been clever enough to make that thickness mostly uniform throughout with a pleasing taper at each end of the set, ensuring that the TV wears this extra heft fairly well.

Sony has used this opportunity to refresh the included remote, and the new handset ticks practically all of our boxes. It features sharper corners and brings back the backlit buttons and USB-C charging port that were both curiously rescinded on the Bravia 8 II’s remote despite being available on previous generation Sony TVs.

Sony also scores bonus points by using its eco-conscious SORPLAS material here, which is also featured in the main chassis of the television.

Features

We’ve already established that this TV is using the latest panel technology on the market, and it’s only the second RGB Mini LED TV to enter our AV testing room, after the Hisense UR9.

For those not in the know, RGB Mini LED drops the white backlight and Quantum Dot colour filter layer in favour of individual red, green and blue Mini LEDs in pursuit of better brightness, colour accuracy and blooming control.

This isn’t the first time that Sony has made a huge bet on Mini LED. 2024’s Bravia 9 featured a hugely customised Mini LED system, which was powered by Sony’s XR Master Backlight Drive in conjunction with the XR Processor.

Sony’s new RGB Backlight Master Drive Pro is the next evolution of this technology, and it reportedly supports “unprecedented colour volume, precise colour gradation, and a significantly wider viewing angle” on Sony’s new True RGB TVs.

The company’s Triluminous colour system also evolves into RGB Triluminous Max, which the company says can deliver a colour range in line with the Bravia 8 II, while offering the brightness increase of RGB Mini LED thanks to its Luminance Booster feature.

In true Sony fashion, the Japanese AV giant hasn’t given away any official figures regarding brightness levels or dimming zones, but we count 340 dimming zones in our 55-inch Bravia 7 II review sample.

Interestingly, that’s considerably fewer zones than other backlit TVs we’ve tested recently — including the Award-winning 65-inch TCL C7K, which sports 1008 dimming zones.

As with previous Sony TVs, the Bravia 7 II supports HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision, but not HDR10+.

Moving on to the sound system, Sony has outfitted the 55-inch Bravia 7 II with a 40W sound system, comprising two full-range drivers and two tweeters. The TV prompts you to perform an automated room calibration during set-up, which allows the TV to adjust the sound output to best suit your viewing environment.

This TV supports a range of Dolby and DTS audio formats, including up to Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. For those looking to bypass the built-in speaker system (we’ll explain why you may wish to do that shortly), the HDMI eARC socket allows for external audio devices to be connected.

On the subject of HDMI, the Bravia 7 II only sports two full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 sockets, alongside two HDMI 2.0 ports. They all support ALLM, but only HDMI 3 and 4 support 4K/120Hz gameplay and VRR.

This has been the case for many previous Sony TVs, but in a year in which more TV manufacturers than ever are offering three or more full-bandwidth ports (Hisense and Philips join Samsung and LG this year), the Bravia 7 II is lagging behind its contemporary competition even more than its predecessors did.

Moving on to streaming, the Sony Bravia 7 II doesn’t throw any curveballs here either. Google TV remains the operating system of choice, and we don’t find any obvious missing apps or software stumbles of note.

Generally speaking, Sony’s software feels a bit more robust this year, with less lag and a pleasing new My Cinema interface. This takes the pressure out of changing your TV’s picture and sound settings by presenting three easy-to-interpret modes within a charming visual interface. These modes are: Director’s Cut, Daytime and Dialogue.

The second and third options boost brightness and visibility for watching in ambient light and enhance vocal clarity, respectively, but the aptly titled Director’s Cut is our favourite of the trio. It essentially works in a very similar way to Filmmaker Mode on other TVs – Sony famously refuses to put Filmmaker Mode on its models, instead offering its own Professional picture mode – by applying picture settings that best provide an “as the director” intended picture performance.

Picture

Sony has to justify this backlit TV's expense for it to stand above its self-emissive OLED competitors, and, for the most part, the Bravia 7 II does a pretty good job. This is easily one of the best backlit TVs we’ve ever tested, but it’s not completely picture perfect.

We put the TV through its paces using our thorough product testing procedures; we’ve hooked up our reference 4K Blu-ray player to the TV and raided our library of 4K discs, and we have two comparison TVs on hand to judge the Bravia 7 II against. The first is a lower-priced mid-range OLED, and the second is Sony’s very own Bravia 9 II – the step-up model in Sony’s new True RGB range.

We’ll start with the positives as there are many of note. As a whole, the Bravia 7 II delivers much of what we like from Sony’s other recent televisions, in part thanks to Sony’s excellent picture tuning.

There is a suitable sense of balance and subtlety to the image, ensuring colours are presented with punch and saturation without verging into overblown territory. Foliage in Civil War appears pleasantly verdant without inching into highlighter-green, and a golden sunset appears appropriately rich and warm.

Sticking with Civil War, we find motion handling to be particularly impressive. Sony has long excelled in this area, and the Bravia 7 II continues that tradition. Camera pans are smooth and composed without drifting into the soap-opera effect, while fast-moving objects such as the jets flying over the Charlottesville military camp remain clean and well defined. The Bravia 7 II can't quite match the near-instantaneous response of OLED, but we rarely find ourselves distracted by blur or judder during films.

Most impressive, though, is the solidity and depth on display here. Sony is renowned for capturing three-dimensional depth via the Bravia XR Processor’s ability to analyse the focal point of the image, and generate depth information around it. This system is utilised excellently on the Bravia 7 II, as evidenced when we watch the Matera sequence in No Time To Die.

As Bond crosses a bridge towards a cemetery, there is a tangible sense of solidity that we rarely see in non-OLED TVs, and the backdrop of the Italian vista seems to stretch far into the horizon. These combine to greatly aid immersion, resulting in an image that draws us in with ease.

The general sense of nuance and sophistication extends to how the Bravia 7 II manages its backlight. When this TV is in its element, it becomes possible to forget that this is a backlit TV, as the RGB Mini LED system doesn’t distract or detract from the experience.

This extends to general blooming control, which is extremely impressive by prevailing standards. In a shot from Oppenheimer in which the nuclear bomb testing site is lit up at night by a series of spotlights, we find that the halos of light that we’ve seen time and time again on other backlit TVs have been strictly confined. There is still a very faint amount of blooming, but this is leagues ahead of other LCD TVs that we’ve recently tested.

However, it’s unfortunate that the Bravia 7 II does fall behind the OLED competition when it comes to contrast. Those spotlights don’t punch through with much vigour, resulting in highlights looking rather flat and dull.

This is also evident in the introduction of Alien: Romulus, as the TV is evidently dulling the pinpoint stars to maintain the integrity of the black backdrop of space.

Comparing this with a cheaper OLED, we find a night-and-day difference, as the inky black depths of space contrast wonderfully with focused pockets of brightness.

Furthermore, the introduction of Blade Runner 2049 reveals a strange colour volume issue with darker content. The black background — which, we should note, is still a very dark shade of grey on this TV — and text seem to battle, with the normally vibrant red “replicants” word showing as more of a greyish-pink.

As the text continues line-by-line, the TV seems to really struggle with colour consistency, as the white text fades into shades of peach and grey, worsening with each line of text that appears.

We suspect that this challenging scene is tripping up the RGB Mini LED backlight and, more importantly, the algorithm that deduces where to place highlights and colours, resulting in a form of colour bleeding that influences the surrounding text.

It's worth noting that the Bravia 9 II exhibits very similar behaviour, too, suggesting that this is currently a characteristic of Sony's implementation of RGB Mini LED rather than an isolated issue with the Bravia 7 II. We also find that the Bravia 9 II delivers punchier highlights, which tracks with its higher overall brightness capabilities — but you can find out more about that TV in our separate review.

Viewing angles could also be better. While our OLED reference retains colour purity and detail when we look at it from wider angles, the Sony washes out when we move past a point that’s not all that far from the “sweet spot”.

This is, ultimately, where we have to acknowledge that while the Bravia 7 II is a very good backlit TV, it’s still subject to some of the inherent drawbacks of LCD technology.

You can pick up a very capable OLED for similar or, in many cases, less money than the Bravia 7 II, which affords you better sharpness, perfect contrast and zero blooming.

Sound

Sony’s entire Bravia TV lineup, from the flagship Bravia 8 II to the three-star Bravia 3, have all fared well when it comes to sound. Despite this, Sony seems to have taken a different approach with the Bravia 7 II, and it's a step backwards rather than a step forwards.

Dipping back into Civil War, we find that while there is a good sense of clarity and detail, the sound system seems to struggle dynamically. It all sounds quite forward and a touch shouty, with voices also missing a touch of tonal variety and subtlety.

Blade Runner 2049’s famously difficult chapter two sequence, meanwhile, is often handled in a very specific way by Sony TVs; they tend not to dig too deep into the bass (while still dealing a decent-enough dose of low-end punch) as to avoid any sort of obvious distortion.

It’s a tradeoff that we think has worked particularly well, but it seems as though Sony has tried something new with the Bravia 7 II. Bass feels more present here, but it also comes across as quite hollow and lacking in rhythmic timing or tonal variety. The tense build-up of chapter two instead feels a bit flat as a result.

Swapping in Sony’s Award-winning Bravia 8 II, which employs an actuator-based sound system, we find that everything sounds more natural and directional, with bass sounding more controlled.

We’ll apply our usual advice here and recommend pairing the Sony Bravia 7 II with a soundbar or surround sound system if you are planning on picking one up.

Verdict

Sony’s step-down RGB Mini LED TV is a compelling backlit TV in many ways. The company’s excellent picture processing is clearly on display, and the new panel technology really does help to rectify some of the shortcomings that come with “traditional” Mini LED.

However, you’ll notice that we’re singling out the fact that this is, at the end of the day, a backlit TV. While Sony has worked hard to try to make us forget that by minimising blooming and making black depths more convincing, there are certain OLED-specific qualities that the Bravia 7 II can’t quite match.

While we wouldn’t consider this to be an issue if Sony had positioned this TV as a cheaper alternative to OLED, the fact of the matter is that you can get a better-equipped OLED TV for less money.

If you’re totally against OLED, then the Bravia 7 II is probably one of the best backlit TVs we’ve tested, but for most people, the performance doesn’t quite feel representative of the price tag.

SCORES

• Picture 4
• Sound 3
• Features 4

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