I just tried Dolby Vision 2 – it looks great and is a superpower for budget TVs

You’ve probably seen the Dolby Vision logo popping up on best 4K TVs over the last few years. It’s Dolby’s HDR format that uses metadata the creators provide to tweak the picture frame-by-frame so it always looks its best. I won’t buy a TV without Dolby Vision at this point – it’s pretty much the best of the best. So when I first heard about Dolby Vision 2, I was excited.

Now, I actually got a chance to set my peepers on it at CES 2026, and let me tell you: it does not disappoint.

• Want all the nitty gritty details? Read this: Dolby Vision 2 is going to be a huge upgrade for TVs – here’s what’s coming to a screen near you

Dolby Vision 2 didn’t just look better than the original – it actually made the first-gen Dolby Vision look a bit washed out and murky by comparison. Shadows were richer, highlights popped, and colour just felt right. But while the improved picture quality on flagship panels is all well and good, what really floored me was what this tech can do for cheaper TVs.

Dolby’s big trick with Vision 2 is rethinking how metadata gets used. Dolby Vision 2 basically takes the instructions creators and studios bake into your favourite shows and films and translates them in a way your TV can actually understand. Previously, budget sets often botched HDR entirely. Not because they’re hopeless, but because they didn’t have the horsepower or the tuning to do anything meaningful with all that Dolby Vision metadata. Dolby Vision 2 fixes that by taking the specs of the TV itself into account, so that Vision 2 adapts accordingly.

There’s clever stuff happening under the hood, too. A feature called Precision Black uses the TV’s contrast limitations to make dark scenes clearer, while Light Sense reacts to the brightness of your room (on TVs with light sensors) and tweaks saturation to keep things looking natural. It’s dynamic, it’s responsive, and crucially, it works even on hardware that shouldn’t be this clever. Watching two TVs side by side, it was a huge difference. As Dolby told me “It can make a $400 TV look like a $1000 TV without changing the panel.”

However, there’s a catch. Dolby Vision 2 needs a specific chipset – which, right now, is only the MediaTek Pentonic 800. So if your favourite TV brand doesn’t slot that into their latest set, you’re out of luck. Some newer sets already have this chip, and will get Vision 2 as a software update. That’s a shame, since it means you’ll likely need to buy a new set in order to get Vision 2. But it does sound like there’s so much new going on under the hood that a new chip is needed – older versions can’t quite hack it.

Dolby Vision 2 Max will be the higher-tier version on premium TVs. It pushes the envelope even further by letting creators dictate motion smoothing frame-by-frame so you can say goodbye to AI motion smoothing for good. Creators need to go back and add that metadata manually, and I don’t think many editors will be jumping at the chance to revisit their back catalogue just for the sake of motion clarity on a mid-range TV. But new content will support it from the outset.

The original Dolby Vision rollout was slow, but eventually caught fire. I expect it will be a similar story with Vision 2 in terms of sets that support it, but there’s already a huge catalogue of Dolby Vision content you can enjoy. As for which sets you can enjoy it on, Hisense will bring it to the 2026 UX, UR9, and UR8 Mini LED models, with more to follow via OTA updates. TCL’s X and C Series will get it too, also via OTA, and TP Vision’s Philips OLED811, OLED911 and OLED951 sets will come equipped out of the box.

• Related: I just experienced the best Dolby Atmos sound and you’ll never guess where

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