Much like the audio industry’s compression-driven loudness war, which reached its distortion-fueled apex (and not the good kind) with Metallica’s Death Magnetic in 2008, the television industry has been having its own battle the past couple of years: the brightness war. Sparked by the introduction of HDR and its higher brightness mastering levels, brands began to push display technology to achieve the necessary light output for HDR movies.
As we hit the 10th anniversary of HDR’s introduction (to the consumer space, at least), 2025 felt like a new crescendo in the “who can be brighter” back-and-forth between brands. Not only did we get our first 5,000-nit TVs (albeit under very specific settings) from TCL and Hisense, we also got a big step forward in OLED technology with Primary RGB Tandem technology from LG Display. It was only a short while ago that TVs were struggling to hit 2,000 nits — now they are capable of more than twice that brightness.
While I don’t think the brightness war has reached its Death Magnetic moment, 2025 could be a precursor to such a reckoning.
TV tech reaches new heights
The biggest TV technological achievement we saw in 2025 was Primary RGB Tandem panels in displays from LG, like the LG G5, the Panasonic Z95B, and the Philips OLED950 and OLED910 (neither of which is available in the US or Australia). It was a significant change in OLED panel composition, moving 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 from the OLED panel (LG Display claims up to 4,000 nits) and color purity.
Not to be outdone, companies like TCL and Hisense followed in the footsteps of Sony and its Bravia 9 from 2024, increasing the capability of mini-LED displays to staggering levels….