2025 was the beginning of the end of the TV brightness war

Much like the audio industry The loudness war is driven by compressionwhich reached its distortion-fueled peak (and not the good kind) with Metallica Magnetic death It’s 2008, and the TV industry has been fighting its own battle for the past two years: the brightness war. Raised introduction Human development report With higher brightness mastery levels, brands are starting to push display technology to achieve the light output needed for HDR movies.

As we approach the 10-year anniversary of the introduction of HDR (in the consumer space, at least), 2025 seemed like a new escalation in the “who can be brighter” back-and-forth between brands. Not only did we get our first 5,000 nits from TVs (albeit under very specific settings). TCL and HisenseWe’ve also taken a big step forward in OLED technology with LG Display’s core RGB Tandem technology. Just a short while ago, TVs were struggling to reach 2,000 nits – now they’re able to more than double that brightness.

While I don’t think the brightness war has come to an end Magnetic death At this moment, 2025 may be a precursor to such a reckoning.

TV technology reaches new heights

The biggest TV technology breakthrough we’ve seen in 2025 was the basic RGB Tandem panels in LG’s displays, such as LG G5the Panasonic Z95Band Philips OLED950 and OLED910 (Neither is available in the US or Australia.) It was a major change in OLED panel configuration, going from a three-stack panel consisting of a yellow layer sandwiched between two blue layers to a four-stack design with a red-blue-green-blue layer configuration. This greatly improved the potential light output of the OLED panel (LG Display claims up to 4,000 nits) and color purity.

Not to be outdone, companies like TCL and Hisense have followed in the footsteps of Sony and its partners Bravia 9 As of 2024, the capacity of small LED displays has increased to astonishing levels. Improvements have also been made in backlight control, combating LED TVs’ biggest drawback – black levels that suffer from light bloom – bringing their black level performance closer to that of OLED displays. Both Hisense and TCL have expanded the local dimming capability of their TVs, and TCL has also reduced the optical distance between the backlight and the screen, further reducing blooming.

2025 also saw the introduction of new TV technology into the consumer market. The Mini-LED technology found (literally) behind high-end and mid-range LED TVs uses white or blue LEDs with quantum dots or color filters to create colored light. But at CES 2025, Hisense showed off its new RGB mini-LEDwhich uses small red, green and blue backlight LEDs. TCL recently announced its own RGB mini LED device – the Q10M – which will be released for the first time in China. Samsung showed off its own version of the technology, but it gave it a name Micro RGB Because the individual backlight is smaller (this should not be confused with the emissive micro-LED technology that Samsung has been developing for years). When I saw him in August he was absolutely amazing. The TV has incredible brightness and vibrant colours. Sony is also developing RGB TV technology, which is confirmed to debut in spring 2026.

The potential of this RGB technology is huge, but the manufacturing and processing challenges required mean they are all very expensive, ranging from $12,000 to $30,000, depending on manufacturer and size. However, I expect a lot of exciting news at CES 2026 — and in the following months — about more TVs with mini-RGB (or micro-RGB, in Samsung’s case). For example, when I spoke with Samsung at its micro-RGB TV reveal event, it said there were exciting things on the horizon for the TV. That might mean more manageable sizes (perhaps a 65-inch model), even if it doesn’t mean more accessible prices. The fact that micro-RGB LEDs are so small may allow them to be packaged together in smaller TVs. Here’s hoping.

When is brightness enough?

With all these technological innovations comes the possibility of higher brightness. This can be helpful in combating ambient light in a sunny living room, but can also cause squinting if the light is too bright in a dark environment.

Excess brightness is not inherently bad. But if we already have 5,000 nits capable mini LED TVs, which should theoretically be able to display HDR content at 4,000 nits (currently the highest level of brightness mastery), is there a need to keep going even further? Since OLED still lags behind Mini-LED when it comes to brightness, we’ll likely see continued improvement there. But if small LED manufacturers are pushing brightness just to be able to say it’s the brightest, a better use of resources would be to develop better image processing and improve black level performance.

At the height of the loudness war, compression—the tool relied upon to make audio tracks louder—became overused, shrinking dynamic range, robbing music of its nuances. Loud for the sake of being loud has ruined many recordings. Fortunately, the industry as a whole has backed away from that a bit, mainly due to loudness specifications from streaming services (which have their own set of issues). In the same way, an image that is bright for the sake of being bright is as harsh on the eyes as an overly compressed audio track is on the ears. There will come, sometime soon, a moment when the matter will be pushed further.

What it comes down to is how well the TV can handle all the brightness it can handle. Will He Blast Us With Light – a visual version of Magnetic death – Or will she use her processing to give us dazzling highlights? The answer is not how bright the TV is, but how well its brightness is used to create an attractive picture that dazzles and entertains us.