CES 2026 may will be over, but there was one company we didn’t hear much from, and that was a bit of a surprise, particularly in the world of TVs.
We saw big screens from Samsung and more big screens from LG, and there were also big screens from Hisense, as well. If you’re counting, that’s three of the major TV brands launching big new televisions, with one missing in action: Sony.
For the longest time, the Sony Bravia has been seen as one of the premium displays you can find, taking Sony’s quality approach to panels and blending it with an understanding of colour and sound it has thanks to all that time building gear, and its heritage and history in making films. It all goes a long way into building solid and capable gear.
But this year, Sony’s Bravia was a bit of a no-show, and in late January, we now have a reason why: Bravia this year and henceforth isn’t going to be the same sort of thing it used to be.
Rather, Sony appears to be teaming up with TCL for the next generation of Bravia screens, whatever they end up looking like.
Sony and TCL announced this week that the two will be partnered for home entertainment, with TCL holding a fraction more of the shares in the relationship, something that will be a joint venture between the duo.
The new company coming out of this will essentially still produce Sony products with the “Bravia” name from 2027 onwards, but will use TCL’s display technology, basically giving Sony TVs a bit of a fighting chance in a growing market it may not have the research to fight back in.
Already, the expectation is that the Sony and TCL collaboration will go beyond simply name, with Sony’s picture quality and image processing handling things under the hood, as well as Sony’s expertise in audio doing the heavy lifting for speakers, while TCL brings the display technology.
In terms of what this means for Australians keen to see Bravia screens today, a guess would be that 2026 will be a little bare and may only keep some of last year’s Sony Bravia offerings in market. We might even see some similar entrants to the previous year.
Ultimately, whatever “new” Sony Bravia models come out of this new TCL relationship probably won’t be on the cards until sometime next year.
