What are Micro RGB TVs and why are they all over the place at CES 2026?

Micro RGB TVs first arrived with little fanfare and a complicated title, so you will have mistaken it for different panel tech or not even seen. That isn’t prone to be the case this 12 months, although — it’s the recent new “luxurious” show expertise and is at . So why can 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 quick historical past of flat panel show tech

To higher perceive Micro RGB, it helps to see how flat panel show expertise has developed over the past 20 years. The primary LCD TVs used liquid crystals that develop into clear to mild when voltage is utilized, letting a rear backlight shine by as a pixel. These pixels mix to create transferring or nonetheless photos, with coloration created through an RGB filter layer positioned in entrance.

The principle drawback is that LCD crystals let some mild partially leak by, 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 triggered uneven mild distribution. And at last, the RGB filter coloration layer lowered 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 straight behind it (the primary TV with this tech was ). That added the advantages of upper brightness, decrease energy consumption, improved coloration 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) expertise got here on the scene round 2013 with Sony’s Triluminos televisions. This sort of LCD panel employs a semiconductor nanocrystal layer (fairly than an RGB filter layer) that may produce pure monochromatic pink, inexperienced, and blue mild when struck with a blue backlight. In contrast to earlier LCDs, they provide larger brightness and coloration accuracy because of the purity (narrowness) of the bottom RGB colours. The perfect-known TVs utilizing this tech are Samsung’s QLED fashions.

The newest evolution of QD LED expertise is Mini LED. That mixes the accuracy of quantum dot tech with tons of and even 1000’s of LED dimming zones. These fashions provide excessive brightness and coloration accuracy together with good distinction, however nonetheless don’t ship excellent blacks and may show “blooming” in scenes with shiny factors of sunshine resulting from leakage into neighboring pixels.

Each of these issues had been solved with OLED expertise, which first got here in the marketplace in 2007 with . 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 coloration is created through a quantum dot layer, like LED QD shows. The newest model of QD-OLED featured on (Samsung’s Fifth-gen QD-OLED) makes use of an RGB stripe sample to scale back coloration “fringing” on textual content.

That is the primary, and nonetheless the one broadly 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 may be one other sort of self-illuminating tech known as Micro LED. Fairly than natural, it makes use of microscopic inorganic LEDs to kind the person pixel components. These may also be turned on or off individually, so they provide the identical pure blacks and sky-high distinction as OLED. On the similar time they’re probably 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 , which prices a cool $40,000.

Micro RGB

Earlier than speaking about Micro RGB, let’s have a look at coloration area and gamut each for HDR, which makes use of the BT.2020 customary, and SDR, generally related to the REC.709 customary. REC.709 is right for normal HD content material like TV broadcasts and YouTube movies. It may possibly show a restricted set of colours and brightness is mostly capped at 100 nits.

BT.2020, nonetheless, 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 coloration gamut, which means it may show a greater variety of colours and an even bigger chunk of the seen coloration spectrum. It’s additionally designed for considerably larger brightness ranges of 1,000 nits or extra.

To attain the colour accuracy required for BT.2020, TVs should have extraordinarily correct pink, inexperienced and blue pixels. Up till final 12 months, essentially the most color-accurate TVs used quantum dot expertise and achieved a most of round 85 p.c BT.2020 protection (some projectors can cowl 100% or extra of the BT.2020 spectrum as they use RGB lasers to create colours).

That brings us to Micro RGB (also called ), essentially the most superior LED panel but. In contrast to the uniform white or blue backlights discovered on Mini LED fashions, it options individually-controlled, exact pink, inexperienced and blue LED backlights that shine by a liquid crystal layer. It additionally provides extra native dimming zones. The online result’s larger coloration accuracy and higher distinction than common Mini LED shows, however with probably 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.

To this point, there may be one and just one Micro RGB TV in the marketplace, . The colour accuracy is spectacular with 100% protection of the difficult BT.2020 HDR customary, an industry-first and large leap over quantum dot tech. Which means it may produce billions of colours natively and show the next share of them within the seen spectrum than any TV so far.

Samsung not noted just a few 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 doubtless round 3,600). The corporate additionally didn’t disclose the entire brightness in nits, however the determine must be spectacular given the potential of Micro RGB.

We had been gobsmacked with the MR95F Micro RGB mannequin in individual. Engadget editor Sam Rutherford stated 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 gorgeous $29,999 price ticket.

A few different producers together with 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 corporations may have Micro RGB tech at CES 2026?

Fortunately, the variety of Micro RGB TVs is about to dramatically improve. Earlier this month, Samsung a full lineup utilizing the expertise with 55-, 65-, 75-, 85-, 100- and 115-inch display sizes, saying they’d set “a brand new customary for premium dwelling viewing.” These units may also provide 100% BT.2020 HDR protection beneath a brand new certification customary known as Micro RGB Precision Shade 100. Whereas definitely prone to carry extra cheap costs than the primary mannequin, they’ll in all probability nonetheless be Samsung’s costliest TVs when launched later this 12 months.

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

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

It was attention-grabbing to match LG’s Wallpaper and different OLED units with the brand new Micro RGB tech, with our editor Devindra once more being amazed. “LG already announced its Micro RGB set just a few 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 stated. “All through quite a lot of clips, colours regarded splendidly wealthy, and the general texture of the photographs regarded surprisingly life-like.”