Sony’s first RGB TV is a statement piece

The first wave of RGB LED TVs are fighting for their place in the TV hierarchy. They have to outperform OLED TVs in brightness and color (because they can’t match the contrast of OLED), and they have to outperform regular LED TVs in everything (because their price is so high). It’s time for Sony to shake things up with the Bravia 7 II, which is next to the flagship Bravia 9 II. Both RGB LED lighting and Sony always top-notch processing.

RGB TVs like the Bravia 7 II use red, green, and blue LEDs instead of blue or white LEDs for backlighting. This allows an RGB LED TV to display more, and brighter, colors without relying heavily on color filters. Sony controls each LED individually, allowing its TV to better manage color mixing.

The main drawback of RGB LED technology is type crosstalkwhen one race bleeds into the next race. This happens because the red, green, and blue LEDs provide light for a zone that contains several pixels. If more pixels are supposed to be red, then the backlight will produce red light and rely on the color filter to capture the correct colors for the remaining pixels in the area. But sometimes the red affects the non-red pixels, especially if they are light or white.

Meanwhile, the different models are more visible in the tests, and while driving the Bravia 7 II through many tests, I saw evidence of it. A green rectangle can create a subtle halo in the surrounding area – and it happened with many colors, not just green.

But test systems are designed to produce errors. And apart from this oddity, I only saw a couple of color combinations, none of which were significant. The most popular was the app tiles on my Apple TV. The blue of Prime Video’s tiles went a little too white, and on the NASA program the logo’s tiles were colored red.

In movies and TV shows, there was very little dialogue available. I can wax and wax poetry about the red of Snoke’s throne room and make some changes to his skin in a few frames of The Last Jedi when I rested I looked at the pixels from the foot, but the reality does not matter. As I sat back and watched, there was no point at this point The Last Jedior Mad Max: Fury Roador the F1 Canadian Grand Prix where I felt left out of the game because of the different races.

Instead, in Professional photo mode, the Bravia 7 II creates a beautiful picture with everything. Along with color crosstalk that wasn’t an issue, colors and grayscale in SDR are surprisingly accurate, with the exception of some red errors, which fill it up. The light grays in HDR are a little brighter than they should be, but they’re not too bright, and colors look bright. The Bravia 7 II is also capable of 2,200 nits brightness. is not the same as Image of TCL X11L light missiles, or even LG G5 OLED from last year, but it’s bright enough for an ordinary living room. And with most of that still being noted at 1,000 nits, Sony’s latest still has plenty of head light.

One of the advantages of RGB backlighting is the ability to display more colors, and in testing, Sony measured 88 percent of the BT.2020. There are very few products that use those colors, so while the potential is amazing, it doesn’t matter unless you see something. Planet Earth II it is made specifically for it. The Ecuadorian forests are lush and green, and the bright blue of hummingbirds is visible from the window. It looks similar to This UR9 in these pictures, although the Sony is very accurate. However, until we get more videos and popular TV shows in BT.2020 instead of P3, there is no benefit.

When using the Professional mode on the Sony, there is an interesting menu option that allows you to change the lighting from color to white light. If the small color bleeds on the tiles of the Apple TV app is bothering you, changing it from color to white will eliminate the problem. But doing so also affects the spread of the color gamut, reducing it from 88 percent to 73 percent for BT.2020 and down to 91 percent for P3. The combination of the choice is smart, because I’m not sure what its function is other than the strangeness of seeing the difference in performance between color LEDs and white light.

Beyond the graphics, the 7 II has some good, and some less impressive, design options. Starting off with a cooler is the stand, which has a front cover that hides the cables that hang on the back while still showing off the sleek design. It’s a fun and exciting way to manage cables.

An unfortunate choice was to only have two HDMI inputs supporting 4K at 120 Hz, one of which is an eARC port. As other TV manufacturers include support for all four inputs, this is a miss for Sony. It doesn’t make or break the TV, but if you plan to connect a music player or AVR to the eARC HDMI port and want to connect more than one game or PC for high-res gaming, it’s not possible.

The Bravia 7 II also has a brilliant screen. The backlighting doesn’t make the rainbow as spectacular as I’ve seen on TCL and Hisense TVs, but the screen doesn’t dim the brightness. The Bravia 9 II has a dim, low-focus panel, so if you have a room with lamps or ceiling lights you’re concerned about, it’s a better choice — at least $1,000 more.

Which brings us to the price. Sony has always sold its TVs better than other manufacturers, and this trend continues. The 65-inch Bravia 7 II for my review is $2,600. It’s $600 more than Hisense’s top-end RGB LED TV, the UR9 (once Hisense they lowered the price after they were released), and $500 more than the Samsung R85H. I haven’t had a chance to test the R85H yet, but I can say that even for $600 more, the accuracy and better processing of the Sony Bravia 7 II is worth it over the Hisense.

If I could control the daylight in my room, I would still choose an OLED like the LG C6. Regardless of the RGB backlight technology, the Bravia 7 II (and any other RGB LED TV) is still an LCD TV. It can get better, but it can’t compete with the pixel-level resolution and high contrast that OLED offers.

As more RGB LED TVs come out and are reviewed, we’ll have a better idea of ​​how they perform against the real thing and whether crosstalk concerns are real or just marketing gimmicks from competitors. But one or two things are certain: either the type of crosstalk is not a problem, or Sony has found a way to make it harmless with its design. Despite some nitpicks like the bright screen and limited HDMI 2.1, the Bravia 7 II is a great TV with a beautiful picture.

Photography by John Higgins/The Verge