What are Micro RGB TVs and why are they in every single place at CES 2026?

Micro RGB TVs first arrived final yr with little fanfare and a complicated title, so you could have mistaken it for different panel tech or not even observed. That’s not prone to be the case this yr, although — it’s the recent new “luxurious” show know-how and is in every single place at CES 2026. So why will we even want these new TVs and the way are they totally different from OLED, Micro LED and Mini LED fashions? Right here’s the way it works and the way it compares.

A short historical past of flat panel show tech

To raised perceive Micro RGB, it helps to see how flat panel show know-how has advanced during the last 20 years. The primary LCD TVs used liquid crystals that turn into clear to mild when voltage is utilized, letting a rear backlight shine by means of as a pixel. These pixels mix to create transferring or nonetheless pictures, with shade created through an RGB filter layer positioned in entrance.

The principle drawback is that LCD crystals let some mild partially leak by means of, so blacks are darkish gray as an alternative of pure black. And for a backlight, early LCD TVs used a white display lit by dim and power-hungry fluorescent lights, which brought on uneven mild distribution. And at last, the RGB filter shade layer decreased a panel’s brightness.

The subsequent step up, then, was to make use of LED backlights as an alternative, positioned at first on the edges of the white display after which later instantly behind it (the primary TV with this tech was Sony’s 2004 Qualia). That added the advantages of upper brightness, decrease energy consumption, improved shade steadiness and even mild distribution. It additionally allowed particular person dimming zones that enhance distinction by permitting near-pure blacks in shadow areas of a picture.

Quantum dot (QD) know-how got here on the scene round 2013 with Sony’s Triluminos televisions. This kind of LCD panel employs a semiconductor nanocrystal layer (somewhat than an RGB filter layer) that may produce pure monochromatic crimson, inexperienced, and blue mild when struck with a blue backlight. Not like earlier LCDs, they provide greater brightness and shade accuracy because of the purity (narrowness) of the bottom RGB colours. The perfect-known TVs utilizing this tech are Samsung’s QLED fashions.

The most recent evolution of QD LED know-how is Mini LED. That mixes the accuracy of quantum dot tech with lots of and even hundreds of LED dimming zones. These fashions provide excessive brightness and shade accuracy together with good distinction, however nonetheless don’t ship excellent blacks and might show “blooming” in scenes with shiny factors of sunshine resulting from leakage into neighboring pixels.

Each of these issues have been solved with OLED know-how, which first got here in the marketplace in 2007 with Sony’s XEL-1 mannequin. The panels are made utilizing sheets coated with natural LEDs, every paired with a transistor that may swap the LED on or off. On common OLED TVs, OLED pixels are white and a filter layer generates colours, a lot as with LED TVs. Nonetheless, with QD-OLEDs, OLED pixels are blue and shade is created through a quantum dot layer, like LED QD shows. The most recent model of QD-OLED featured on a number of new screens at CES 2026 (Samsung’s Fifth-gen QD-OLED) makes use of an RGB stripe sample to cut back shade “fringing” on textual content.

That is the primary, and nonetheless the one extensively commercialized TV tech that may swap its mild supply off on a pixel-by-pixel foundation, permitting excellent black ranges and near-infinite distinction. Nonetheless, resulting from their natural nature, OLED TVs undergo from a scarcity of brightness and the potential for “burn-in” that may kill pixels.

There’s one other sort of self-illuminating tech referred to as Micro LED. Reasonably than natural, it makes use of microscopic inorganic LEDs to kind the person pixel components. These can be turned on or off individually, so they provide the identical pure blacks and sky-high distinction as OLED. On the identical time they’re doubtlessly brighter than OLED and don’t undergo from burn-in. The tech remains to be prohibitively costly to fabricate, although, so none have arrived to market aside from Samsung’s The Wall, which prices a cool $40,000.

Micro RGB

Earlier than speaking about Micro RGB, let’s take a look at shade house and gamut each for HDR, which makes use of the BT.2020 commonplace, and SDR, generally related to the REC.709 commonplace. REC.709 is good for normal HD content material like TV broadcasts and YouTube movies. It might show a restricted set of colours and brightness is usually capped at 100 nits.

BT.2020, nevertheless, is designed for high-end HDR streaming and 4K or 8K content material creation (through Dolby Imaginative and prescient, HDR 10 or HDR10+). It has a a lot wider shade gamut, which means it might probably show a greater variety of colours and an even bigger chunk of the seen shade spectrum. It’s additionally designed for considerably greater brightness ranges of 1,000 nits or extra.

To attain the colour accuracy required for BT.2020, TVs should have extraordinarily correct crimson, inexperienced and blue pixels. Up till final yr, essentially the most color-accurate TVs used quantum dot know-how and achieved a most of round 85 % BT.2020 protection (some projectors can cowl one hundred pc or extra of the BT.2020 spectrum as they use RGB lasers to create colours).

That brings us to Micro RGB (also called RGB Mini LED), essentially the most superior LED panel but. Not like the uniform white or blue backlights discovered on Mini LED fashions, it options individually-controlled, exact crimson, inexperienced and blue LED backlights that shine by means of a liquid crystal layer. It additionally gives extra native dimming zones. The online result’s greater shade accuracy and higher distinction than common Mini LED shows, however with doubtlessly larger brightness than OLED. Since every pixel nonetheless can’t be turned on and off like OLED or Micro LED, although, distinction falls in need of these applied sciences.

Thus far, there’s one and just one Micro RGB TV in the marketplace, Samsung’s 115-inch 4K MR95F mannequin. The colour accuracy is spectacular with one hundred pc protection of the difficult BT.2020 HDR commonplace, an industry-first and big leap over quantum dot tech. Which means it might probably produce billions of colours natively and show a better proportion of them within the seen spectrum than any TV up to now.

Samsung disregarded a couple of key specs just like the native dimming zone rely, solely saying that it has 4 instances greater than its similarly-priced 115-inch Q90F QLED mannequin (so possible round 3,600). The corporate additionally did not disclose the whole brightness in nits, however the determine must be spectacular given the potential of Micro RGB.

We have been gobsmacked with the MR95F Micro RGB mannequin in individual. Engadget editor Sam Rutherford mentioned it produced “stunningly wealthy and vivid colours that put Samsung’s different top-tier TVs to disgrace,” together with the aforementioned Q90F. It additionally got here with an equally beautiful $29,999 price ticket.

A few different producers together with HiSense have additionally launched RGB Mini LED fashions much like Samsung’s Micro RGB, however they differ barely in that the RGB modules are bigger than those discovered on Samsung’s newest TVs.

Which firms may have Micro RGB tech at CES 2026?

Fortunately, the variety of Micro RGB TVs is about to dramatically improve. Earlier this month, Samsung introduced a full lineup utilizing the know-how with 55-, 65-, 75-, 85-, 100- and 115-inch display sizes, saying they’d set “a brand new commonplace for premium house viewing.” These units may also provide one hundred pc BT.2020 HDR protection beneath a brand new certification commonplace referred to as Micro RGB Precision Coloration 100. Whereas definitely prone to carry extra affordable costs than the primary mannequin, they’ll in all probability nonetheless be Samsung’s costliest TVs when launched later this yr.

And on Sunday, Samsung additionally revealed a 130-inch Micro RGB prototype meant to showcase the know-how. As soon as once more, it blew us away partially simply due to the massive measurement, but additionally as a result of unimaginable “shade accuracy and richness,” as Engadget editor Devindra Hardawar put it. “I couldn’t assist however discover how everybody simply appeared a bit shocked, just like the monkeys from 2001 seeing the monolith for the primary time,” he added.

On the identical time, LG introduced its first Micro RGB “evo” TV lineup in 75-, 86- and 100-inch fashions. The corporate can be promising one hundred pc BT.2020 shade gamut protection and mentioned the units may have over a thousand native dimming zones for shade management. Not solely that, it mentioned that its new TVs will ship one hundred pc protection in SDR modes as effectively, each for Adobe RGB and the problem P3 commonplace.

It was attention-grabbing to check LG’s Wallpaper and different OLED units with the brand new Micro RGB tech, with our editor Devindra once more being amazed. “LG already introduced its Micro RGB set a couple of weeks in the past, however that did not put together me for standing in entrance of the 100-inch demo TV it dropped at CES,” he mentioned. “All through quite a lot of clips, colours appeared splendidly wealthy, and the general texture of the pictures appeared surprisingly life-like.”

For its half, Hisense additionally unveiled a lineup of “evo” TVs that it calls RGB Mini-LED as an alternative of Micro RGB. It is providing them at two value factors, referred to as the UR9 and UR8, with sizes starting from 55 as much as 100 inches. The corporate is promising a good wider shade gamut than Samsung and LG with as much as 110 % BT.2020 protection and “shade management attaining 134 bits,” the corporate mentioned.

On prime of that, HiSense had a shock up its sleeve with the launch of an infinite 163-inch Micro LED TV to compete with Samsung’s The Wall. The corporate truly calls it RGBY Micro LED, as a result of it introduces a fourth yellow shade into the RGB combine. The rationale, based on the corporate, is that yellow expands the colour spectrum “the place human imaginative and prescient perceives essentially the most nuance.”

Replace January 5, 2026 at 5:18 PM: The article now consists of details about HiSense’s newest RGB Mini LED and Micro LED TVs.