Inside the Nanosys meeting room at the Los Angeles Convention Center during Display Week - a prominent annual business-to-business event centered on display technologies - two 85-inch televisions were positioned side by side. One featured a mini-LED panel enhanced with super quantum dots, while the other utilized RGB LED backlighting, representing this year's leading TV innovation. Both displayed identical content simultaneously to underscore the contrasts between these approaches, particularly the shortcomings of RGB LED backlights relative to super quantum dot (SQD) systems that employ blue LEDs.

Note that Nanosys supplied the quantum dots for the first television.

The set on the right, equipped with Nanosys super quantum dots and identified as the TCL X11L by its distinctive striped lower grille, stood opposite what appeared to be the TCL RM9L. Although Nanosys declined to verify the models, my firsthand experience with RGB LED TVs from Hisense, Samsung, LG, and Sony ruled those out. Jeff Yurek, Nanosys's vice president of marketing, explained that both units operated in Filmmaker Mode with native color settings to maximize their color gamut coverage.

For context, RGB LED TVs deploy clusters of red, green, and blue LEDs in zones to generate a dynamic colored backlight tailored to on-screen imagery. In theory, this delivers more vivid, saturated hues than mini-LED TVs like the X11L, which use blue backlights and quantum dots. However, a key drawback is color crosstalk, where the backlight's colored light spills into neighboring pixels or zones of differing hues. This might tint the skin near a bright red shirt or hat with a reddish cast - precisely what the demonstration illustrated.

The demo fed the same video to both screens throughout. A key slide featured three rows: the top two with solid blocks of primary and secondary colors - blue, green, red, cyan, magenta, yellow - and the bottom with thin white crosses on black beneath each block. The top row toggled between solid colors and those with white crosses. On the RGB LED TV, the white cross's appearance lightened and desaturated surrounding areas noticeably. Crosstalk extended beyond the top row, as middle-row colors seeped into bottom-row crosses. This aligns with BT.2020 gamut tests, where the white cross reduced coverage, especially for blue and green points.

Most viewers avoid staring at color blocks for entertainment, but the issue affects skin tones - highly perceptible to human eyes. Colored backgrounds shifted facial skin hues accordingly, as verified by scoping isolated face sections to eliminate visual bias. The skin tone's hue change revealed the background color even when masked.

The SQD TV showed no such crosstalk and superior contrast, thanks to more dimming zones. The X11L boasts up to 20,000 zones, with Rtings reporting 14,400 for the 85-inch version - still remarkable. The RGB LED model had about 8,000 zones, limited by the space required for at least three LEDs (red, green, blue) per zone. Blue-LED-only backlights allow single-LED zones for precise control.

These differences appeared in real footage too. In fast-paced action with rapid cuts, bright colors influenced nearby skin tones. Night scenes highlighted contrast gaps. Viewed alone, the RGB LED TV's crosstalk might seem less obvious, as eyes adapt to flaws. Yet the issue persists regardless of direct comparison.

These concerns aren't novel; experts flagged RGB LED color crosstalk risks since its CES 2025 debut, with worries intensifying alongside 2026 market launches. LG Display, an OLED panel producer competing directly, released videos pre-CES underscoring the flaws.

Naturally, Nanosys and LG Display have incentives to critique RGB tech. One model's performance doesn't represent every RGB LED TV. I observed no crosstalk in my Hisense UR9 review, though repeated exposure to others suggests it might revert to white backlighting under heavy color loads. Advanced processing in forthcoming Sony RGB sets could eliminate the problem. RGB LED remains nascent, with ongoing refinements likely to address these hurdles. Still, for 2026 models, SQD holds the advantage.