In 2026, RGB-Mini LED TVs officially entered the channel for large-scale popularization in the high-end large-screen market. Industry estimates project that global shipments could reach 300,000 to 500,000 units in 2026, with Hisense and TCL leading the pack, followed by Samsung, Sony, and LG.
Although its volume remains smaller than that of overall Mini LED TVs, the RGB-Mini LED architecture has transitioned from technical validation to commercial deployment.
Interestingly, just as the industry chain is pushing full force to reduce costs and expand production for the RGB three-primary color solution, four-primary and multi-primary backlight solutions have been simultaneously brought to the table by leading brands: Hisense RGBC, Skyworth WRGB, BOE RGBX, and TCL CSOT RGBC/RGBN have successively made their debut. A question naturally arises: while three-primary RGB-Mini LED TVs have not yet been fully popularized, why is the industry already exploring multi-primary colors? Based on this, this article will explore three issues: the industrial logic of multi-primary solutions, the latest layouts of leading brands and the supply chain, and key technical challenges and evolution directions.
Why Pursue Multi-Primary Colors Now?
Looking back at the century-long history of display technology, the industry has always been trapped in a paradox: pursuing ultimate picture quality often means sacrificing human eye comfort, and vice versa. Even though RGB-Mini LED has achieved breakthroughs in picture quality with high brightness and high contrast, and its overall performance surpasses that of traditional OLED, it is still limited by the physical spectral architecture of the three primary colors, possessing inherent technical shortcomings.
Specifically, the RGB three-primary color solution has a spectral gap in the critical cyan band of 480-500 nm, which needs to be simulated by mixing blue and green. Lacking the support of precise color rendering from independent sub-pixels, this not only leads to grayish and compressed layers in scenes like the sky and ocean, but also causes a high proportion of short-wave blue light in local pictures and a decrease in spectral continuity, objectively reducing the comfort of long-term viewing.
The implementation of multi-primary backlight technology is essentially about precisely making up for the core shortcomings of the RGB three primary colors. It is an upgraded version of RGB-Mini LED, achieving three major key technical breakthroughs: 1) Color gamut structure completion: By filling the gap in the cyan band, the traditional triangular color gamut is expanded into a polygon, significantly improving the saturation and transition layers of cyan and adjacent colors, substantially closing the gap with the BT.2020 standard.
2) Healthier viewing experience: RGB-Mini LED itself can avoid high-energy short-wave blue light through wavelength design. With the introduction of the fourth primary color, it can further compress the proportion of harmful blue light while maintaining or even improving the color gamut, reducing the risk of visual fatigue during long-term viewing.
3) Adding degrees of freedom for simultaneous light and color control: Upgrading from 3 dimensions (R, G, B) to 4 dimensions (R, G, B, C), color fidelity in high-brightness areas is optimized, reducing color banding. In short, RGB brought LCD into the era of color backlighting, and multi-primary colors build upon this to repair the spectral defects that the three primary colors cannot solve, representing a natural extension of LCD picture quality approaching its theoretical limit.
Leading Brands Simultaneously Bet on Four-Primary Color Technology
In the high-end TV market, picture quality has once again become the main axis of competition. While OLED consolidates its high-end reputation, the LCD camp is relying on the generational upgrade of Mini LED backlight technology to find differentiated entry points in brightness, color gamut, and lifespan. As mentioned earlier, multi-primary technology is not a brand-new route of blind trial and error by the industry, but a spectral-level refined upgrade initiated in the wake of RGB-Mini LED opening up the commercialization path for color backlighting.
With the rapid popularization of RGB-Mini LED, the gaps in parameters such as the number of dimming zones, peak brightness, and basic color gamut will converge rapidly, intensifying homogeneous competition. Against this backdrop, multi-primary backlighting has become a core means for brands to break out of involution, create generational technical differences, and seize the right to speak in the high-end market. Therefore, leading brands choose to simultaneously deploy multi-primary technology at the initial stage of volume production of RGB-Mini LED solutions, rather than waiting for RGB-Mini LED to be fully popularized before following up. From the currently publicized brand layouts, Hisense, Skyworth, and others are accelerating the promotion of four-primary color products.
◇ Hisense: Launched the Linglong Four-Core True Color Backlight technology at the beginning of 2026 (a technical solution combining an RGB three-primary color panel with an RGBC four-primary color backlight). In June, it globally debuted the RGBX multi-primary display technology, comprehensively upgrading to a full-link architecture of an RGBC four-primary color panel plus an RGBC four-primary color backlight, elevating the color gamut to over 130% BT.2020.
◇ TCL: Aggressively promoting the SQD-Mini LED solution at the terminal end. Its subsidiary TCL CSOT has showcased the RGBC/RGBN solution (BT.2020 ~131%) at SID 2026, which is currently in the technical prototype demonstration stage.
◇ Skyworth: Released the Natural Light Display Technology system during AWE 2026, adopting an RGB + full-spectrum white light architecture to achieve independent control of WRGB four colors. The first multi-primary new product is scheduled to hit the market in August of the same year.
◇ BOE: Debuted the 85-inch UB Cell 5.0 RGBX Ultra TV, adopting a dual four-primary color fusion of "panel RGBC + backlight RGBC", and jointly refined an exclusive adaptation system with Hisense.
◇ International Brands: LG has only listed multi-primary colors as a long-term reserve for flagships above 100 inches. (Note: Samsung and Sony are currently focusing on the three-primary RGB-Mini LED.)
From the perspective of market demand, current ultra-high-definition streaming, film and television production, and next-generation game content all use the BT.2020 wide color gamut and Dolby Vision HDR as master production standards, and professional monitors also use this as the core benchmark. Multi-primary technology can highly restore the color intent of the content master, precisely matching the high-end needs of audio-visual enthusiasts and professional creators. This is also the core market driver for leading brands to accelerate the implementation of this technology, essentially securing a position in the high-end picture quality track in advance and establishing industry technical standards.
Evolution Directions and Practical Challenges of Multi-Primary Backlight Technology
At this stage, multi-primary solutions are mostly dominated by "RGB + fourth color (cyan)", with some brands adopting an "RGB + white light/transparent color" architecture; however, whether it will move towards more complex RGB+N combinations still depends on cost-effectiveness and ecosystem maturity.
From industry information, the main bottlenecks of multi-primary solutions are concentrated in three aspects:
1) Materials and processes: The core difficulty in the production and manufacturing of cyan LED chips lies in epitaxial growth. Extending the wavelength requires the introduction of high-indium materials, while the introduction of high-indium materials will destroy the epitaxial layer crystals and is prone to decomposition at high temperatures. This leaves an extremely narrow space for the process window, making production more difficult than that of green LED chips and blue LED chips.
2) System complexity: Each additional primary color requires new chips and driver circuits, and the reconstruction of light mixing algorithms, color management 3D LUT tables, and AI real-time correction mechanisms, causing cost and yield pressure to multiply.
3) Ecosystem adaptation: Existing SDR/HDR content, interfaces, and color gamut standards are based on three primary colors. The hardware advance needs to be compensated by multi-primary to RGB mapping and calibration at the manufacturer's end. Waiting for the content ecosystem to catch up is a medium-term challenge.
However, Academician Ouyang Zhongcan pointed out that the number of primary colors is an engineering approximation, and display backlighting will gradually approach RGB+CY, RGB+CMY, and even full spectrum from three primary colors. The technical accumulation of RGB-Mini LED is the key foundation for China's display industry facing the era of Micro LED and large-screen development.
Conclusion
Expert Insight Research believes that the essence of multi-primary technology is to supplement the human eye's sensitive spectral range by adding primary colors such as the fourth color on the basis of RGB three-primary color direct-emitting backlighting, breaking through the geometric limit of the three-primary color gamut, and achieving full-spectrum color restoration closer to the real world. It is the next stage direction for the evolution of LCD backlighting. In the short term, multi-primary colors will not completely replace existing technologies, but will coexist and develop complementarily with solutions such as RGB three primary colors and QD-Mini LED for a long time.
In the long run, the upgrade of display backlighting from "engineering-simplified three primary colors" to "naturalized multi-primary colors" is an inevitable trend for the ultimate picture quality and differentiated competition in the industry. The core focus of competition in the future high-end TV market will concentrate on the ability to balance multi-primary picture quality gains with cost, yield, and supply chain maturity, which is also the key for brands to seize industry discourse power.