It’s clear to me that RGB LED TVs are going to dominate CES 2026, and two of the most prominent TV makers have gotten the ball rolling early.
Less than a day after LG announced its first RGB LED TV, the Micro RGB evo, Samsung has revealed an entire line with multiple screen sizes to follow up on the 115-inch Micro RGB TV it released earlier this year. The new Micro RGB TV series will be available in 115, 100, 85, 75, 65, and 55 inches, and it’s the smaller sizes that stand out as the biggest news.
For a quick refresher, RGB LED TVs are a new and growing category, and a more advanced version of LED models. Both kinds of TVs use liquid crystal display (LCD) panels illuminated by light-emitting diodes (LEDs). LCDs generate color for each individual pixel, but they don’t emit light, so they require a backlight. Almost all LED TVs use only white or only blue LEDs, which can be brightened or dimmed to improve contrast but don’t affect the color. RGB LED TVs use clusters of red, green, and blue LEDs that themselves can be individually adjusted to improve not only contrast, but also color range. It’s a very promising technology, and while I’ve only tested one TV that uses it so far, what I saw impressed me. The TV in question, the Hisense 116UX, shows the brightest picture and widest color I’ve ever measured on a TV.
Hisense 116UX (Credit: Will Greenwald)
Incidentally, to avoid confusion, I’m using the term RGB LED to describe the technology. Micro RGB TV is Samsung’s name for its RGB LED TVs, and Micro RGB evo is LG’s moniker for its own. Hisense calls the 116UX an RGB-MiniLED TV, and LG and Samsung’s models apparently use smaller LEDs, hence “micro,” but the fundamental concept for all three is the same: they use backlight arrays of RGB LED clusters.
Neither RGB LED nor regular LED TVs should be confused with organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TVs, which despite the name, utilize a completely different TV technology featuring a single panel that can individually control the light output of each pixel.
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The first RGB LED TVs available at retail, the Hisense 116UX and Samsung Micro RGB TV, are massive and expensive. The 116UX is 116 inches and currently available for $24,999, and even its smaller sibling, the 100UX, is 100 inches and $9,999. The 115-inch Micro RGB TV is pricier than both at $29,999. Shrinking RGB LEDs enough that they can fit on a non-gigantic TV has been one of the biggest roadblocks for the technology, and why MicroLED TVs that only use RGB LEDs without LCD panels, like Samsung’s The Wall, are still a magnitude more expensive and haven’t seen any success outside of commercial installations like digital signage and, perhaps in rare cases, bespoke home theater setups that cost more than the average house.
That’s what really excites me about Samsung offering 55-inch and 65-inch RGB LED TVs in 2026. Not only do most people lack the space for a 100-plus-inch TV, they don’t want to spend five digits on a TV regardless. Samsung hasn’t announced any pricing for its new Micro RGB models yet, but smaller TVs are always cheaper than larger ones (of the same series), and that means these could be the first affordable models to use the technology. I don’t expect it will be cheap; RGB LED backlight arrays are still new, high-end TV technology and demand a premium, but they will probably be closer in price to flagship OLED TVs like Samsung’s S95F ($3,299.99 for 65 inches) and LG’s G5 ($3,399.99 for the 65 inches) than to a new car.
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The Hisense 116UX’s color levels, compared against DCI-P3 and BT.2020 color spaces. (Credit: PCMag)
I haven’t tested it yet, but Samsung has made some very bold claims about the 115-inch Micro RGB TV it already released, and those claims extend to the newer, smaller Micro RGB TVs. Samsung and LG claim their RGB LED TVs can fully cover the BT.2020 color space, a color range far wider than the DCI-P3 digital cinema standards I use when testing TVs, and until only recently considered effectively impossible for off-the-shelf screens. The Hisense 116UX didn’t fully cover BT.2020, but it came closer than any other TV I’ve tested so far, and Hisense doesn’t even make the claims LG and Samsung are. If true, it means RGB LED technology can exceed what even OLED panels, previously considered to be almost universally superior to LED TVs in color, can reach.
LG Micro RGB evo (Credit: LG)
This doesn’t mean OLEDs are going to be obsolete any time soon. Even though OLED panels are also expensive and usually dimmer than LED TVs, they still have a major benefit neither LED nor RGB LED TVs have. For both types of LED TVs, each LED or cluster is much larger than the individual pixels the LCD forms, so they illuminate entire patches of the screen. This causes light bloom, where a haze or aura can appear along the edges between bright and dark objects. The light bloom can be minimized by using smaller and more LEDs, but it still isn’t controlled on an individual pixel level. OLED panels have that level of control, and so they don’t suffer from light bloom. So even if RGB LED TVs become widespread as premium home theater screens, they aren’t going to immediately replace OLEDs, and will probably coexist side by side with them as high-end LED TVs have been doing for the last few years.
Samsung and LG’s new RGB LED TVs will be on display at CES in Las Vegas in January, and I’ll be on the ground there to get a closer look at them. They probably won’t be the only ones at the show, either. Don’t be surprised to see more RGB LED TVs pop up at the show itself!
About Our Expert
Will Greenwald
Principal Writer, Consumer Electronics
Experience
I’m PCMag’s home theater and AR/VR expert, and your go-to source of information and recommendations for game consoles and accessories, smart displays, smart glasses, smart speakers, soundbars, TVs, and VR headsets. I’m an ISF-certified TV calibrator and THX-certified home theater technician, I’ve served as a CES Innovation Awards judge, and while Bandai hasn’t officially certified me, I’m also proficient at building Gundam plastic models up to MG-class. I also enjoy genre fiction writing, and my urban fantasy novel, Alex Norton, Paranormal Technical Support, is currently available on Amazon.
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