TV terminology has gotten a bit more confusing. Recently, most high-end TVs could be distinguished as OLED or QLED models. Then, mini-LED backlights entered the mix, and most TVs with that technology also use QLED. Now, MicroLED has become a common term, and it’s being used in two entirely different ways, so we’re here to demystify the moniker and help you understand how it fits in with similar-sounding TV technologies.
Back to Basics: Understanding LED vs. Mini-LED vs. QLED
To explain MicroLED, we must first take a step back and understand the basics of light-emitting diode (LED) technology.
An LED is basically a very tiny light bulb (most modern light bulbs comprise bundles of LEDs). LEDs are used in most TVs as the backlight for the liquid crystal display (LCD) that produces the picture. The LCD controls the colors of the individual pixels of the screen but doesn’t generate any light, and LEDs behind the panel make the pixels glow. The LEDs are much bigger than the pixels, so each one lights up many pixels at a time. This can cause light bloom, where light bleeds over edges and makes some pixels look lighter than they should, producing a glow or halo effect.
Sylvox’s 110-Inch Pro Cinema, a mini-LED TV on display at CES (Credit: Will Greenwald)
Good LED TVs have many zones and can control the brightness of each zone to improve contrast. TVs that use a large number of tiny LEDs to form hundreds or thousands of individually adjustable zones are called mini-LED TVs. They’re still LED TVs, just with smaller LEDs and in greater numbers.
The LEDs that light up these TVs are almost always one color. White is the standard color for cheaper LED TVs, though higher-end QLED TVs use blue. QLED is short for QD-LED, or quantum dot LED. Quantum dots are tiny particles in the LCD layer of high-end TVs that react to and change blue light into a much wider range of color than typical LCDs can show with white light alone. Most mini-LED TVs are also QLED TVs.
OLED: Tiny Glowing Cells
If you want to get the lighting perfect on a pixel-by-pixel basis, you need to use a different type of display technology. OLED stands for organic light-emitting diode, and is mechanically and chemically wildly different from the LED and LCD combinations discussed above.
The LG Evo G4 is one of the best OLED TVs we’ve tested (Credit: Will Greenwald)
OLED TVs basically act like glowing LCD panels, where each pixel is a tiny cell that doesn’t just change color but also generates its own light. This technology is considered some of the best because it can show an incredible range of colors with perfect black levels on screens that are much thinner than LED-lit LCD panels can be due to their backlights. Some of our top TV picks, like the LG Evo G4 and the Panasonic Z95A, are OLED models.
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MicroLED: A Display Tech With an Identity Crisis
That brings us to MicroLED, which seems to be having an identity crisis of late. The concept has been used for some time now, particularly by Samsung’s very expensive and niche The Wall video display. More recently, the term reentered the scene with a new definition courtesy of Samsung’s RGB MicroLED TV proof of concept announced at CES 2025.
Let’s start with the more well-established version. MicroLED screens like The Wall take LEDs to a pixel level, using an individual cluster of tiny colored lights for each pixel they show. Like OLED, they do not use an LCD panel. When you see a huge glowing video billboard, it’s probably made of red-green-blue (RGB) LEDs the size of light bulbs spread out over dozens or hundreds of feet. Putting that display technology in a more “reasonably” sized TV in the range of 100 to 150 inches—as Samsung did with The Wall—requires shrinking those lights down, a process that is extremely difficult and expensive.
TCL’s MicroLED TV at CES (Credit: Will Greenwald)
The Wall is currently available in a 146-inch 4K version for $220,000, while a 110-inch version of The Wall in 2K resolution is $80,000. Hisense recently said that it’s getting into the MicroLED TV arena with its 136MX. It hasn’t announced pricing, but Hisense has told me that it should be cheaper than The Wall, which still means the high five digits at a minimum. TCL also has a MicroLED TV, the 163-inch X11H Max, which launched last year in China for around $110,000. In other words, a MicroLED TV is out of reach for most consumers.
Sony also makes large MicroLED displays, but unlike Samsung’s The Wall, they aren’t even remotely feasible for home theaters. Sony’s Crystal LED video walls are specifically for large installations like in retail stores or museums.
RGB (Micro)LED: Tiny Colored Light Bulbs
Creating confusion, Samsung’s RGB MicroLED concept shown at CES uses color LEDs for its backlight system, instead of white or blue ones. To be clear, this is an LCD TV, so it’s very different from The Wall, which uses RGB LED clusters on their own, with no LCD panel, to form the picture. Hisense’s 116-inch TriChroma LED TV (116UX) uses the same idea as Samsung’s RGB MicroLED concept: Color LEDs that can improve the range and accuracy of the panel they’re lighting. Sony has also jumped on the trend, recently announcing a “new display system” that utilizes RGB LEDs for a TV’s backlight.
Samsung’s RGB MicroLED TV at CES (Credit: Will Greenwald)
Each RGB LED can be brightened or dimmed to push colors beyond what the LCD can show on its own. These LEDs are still based on backlight zones (Samsung said its RGB MicroLED TV has 80,000), so colors aren’t boosted pixel by pixel.
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We won’t know exactly how good these new colored backlight arrays can look or what drawbacks they might have until we can test them in more controlled environments, but early observations are promising. Adding RGB colors to the mix can potentially turn the effect of light bloom into color bleed, but with so many tiny LEDs, it’s difficult to notice it unless you’re pressing your face against the screen. The colorful demonstration footage I saw from Hisense and Samsung at CES didn’t display any apparent color bleed. They both looked extremely vibrant and comparable with high-end OLED TVs at a glance. Press events and trade shows aren’t suitable situations for seriously judging picture quality, though, so I’m eager to get these TVs in PC Labs for further analysis.
TL;DR: All the Different LEDs
Hisense TriChromia 116UX, which uses RGB LEDs and an LCD panel (Credit: Will Greenwald)
So, to sum things up: Samsung has an RGB MicroLED TV concept that is completely different from its own The Wall MicroLED TV. Hisense has its own MicroLED TV that is like Samsung’s The Wall, as well as a TriChroma TV that is not a MicroLED TV but is very similar to Samsung’s RGB MicroLED TV. Sony has MicroLED displays, but they’re strictly for large installations and not home theaters. Sony is also working on an RGB LED panel, but hasn’t announced an actual TV using it yet. And TCL has its own MicroLED TV that isn’t an RGB LED TV.
If you’re still confused, I don’t blame you, so here are the key terms to know:
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LED: The tiny bulbs that light up most TV screens.
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LCD: The color-changing panel that LEDs light up on most TV screens.
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Mini-LED: Really tiny bulbs that light up most TV screens.
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QLED: Extra tiny particles in the LCD panel work with blue LEDs to show wider colors. Can be mini-LED, but not necessarily.
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OLED: Not LED or LCD, but a premium TV display technology that works like both put together, controlling color and light.
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MicroLED: Really, really tiny bulbs. Works more like OLED in concept than LED since it controls both color and light and doesn’t use an LCD panel. Extremely expensive.
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RGB LED: Really, really tiny bulbs not quite small enough to show each pixel. They control both color and light but work with an LCD panel to enhance the panel’s colors and contrast.
Should You Buy a MicroLED TV?
Well, unless you have $100,000 or more to throw around, no. Conventional MicroLED TVs are more expensive than even the biggest OLED TVs and are really only available as part of home theater installations priced in the six digits. Samsung’s RGB MicroLED TV is still only being teased and doesn’t have any official retail launch details. Hisense will be rolling out its TriChroma TV later this year, but it also doesn’t have pricing info yet. Sony, meanwhile, doesn’t even have a name for its version of the technology yet, so that’s going to be a while, too.
Beyond price, the big question is how well these TVs perform. We’ll have to wait a bit longer before we know whether they deliver on their promise.
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About Will Greenwald
Lead Analyst, Consumer Electronics
