Micro RGB LED will be the next big thing in TVs, here’s everything you need to know about it
In a few weeks from now, the next generation of TVs will be on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The topic of discussion this year is Micro RGB LEDs, with Samsung and LG already revealing their cards.
On these pages of India Today Tech, we generally talk about phones and AI and computers. TV? Not so much. This is because technology moves slowly in the TV world, with new stuff often arriving every few years, and when that happens, there is again a slight lag in the technology reaching consumers. Whatever the case, 2026 looks like a good year when we’ll be talking more about TV. The technology that powers the displays in our homes is changing in 2026, and while it will first be seen in high-end TVs, we’ll eventually find it at more reasonable prices as well. This new technology is Micro RGB LED.
Quite blunt. But still such are the ways of the television industry. They have never been very good at branding their technology. For now, it’s micro RGB LED. But what is it, and how will it change TV?
Before considering these questions, let’s see what is going to happen. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas – it’s the world’s largest show for home appliances like TVs – various companies will be showing their Micro RGB LED TVs in early January. Two of these, which are also leaders in display technology, have already announced their new TVs. These are LG and Samsung. Both have said that they will have a lineup of premium TVs in 2026 that will be based on Micro RGB LED technology. Samsung is calling this technology RGB Mini LED while LG will be using Micro RGB Evo as the brand name. This technology will be in high-end TVs, which will be positioned alongside OLED TVs.
Micro RGB LED Technology: A Step Toward Micro LED
For more than 20 years, one of the most important tasks in the world of displays and TVs has been the search for functional and viable Micro LED technology. Micro LED is considered a world-beating display technology, capable of producing the best colors, widest dynamic range, brilliant contrast and brilliant brightness. It is considered the best in everything. Now, this technology exists with some commercial displays that have come out in the last few years, but it is still so expensive that it is not yet viable. In fact, there’s no certainty whether it will ever be viable for use in mass-market products, which is why Apple abandoned it last year, after years of research on Micro LED.
Micro LED is still a few years away, with LG and Samsung trying to put this technology into regular LED displays. The result is micro RGB LEDs. The idea is that in regular LED displays, brightness and colors are managed with the help of a blue backlight. But in Micro RGB LED technology, both LG and Sony are going to use LEDs smaller than 100um to generate not only blue backlight, but also red and green backlight. This is going to have an immediate impact on the colors produced by these TVs. They can produce more accurate and richer colors, with both LG and Samsung claiming that their Micro RGB TVs will produce colors covering 100 percent of the BT.2020 wide color gamut. This is a big deal!
And because these TVs will still use regular LEDs – and not OLED – they’ll still have the same superior brightness that regular LEDs provide.
In a way, Micro RGB LEDs are a midway between regular Mini or QLEDs and Micro LEDs. It’s not the best that the TV industry is aiming for, but it’s an improvement on previous technology.
How does this matter, and what about OLED?
Although the improvements that Micro RGB LEDs bring are obvious, there are still some big questions surrounding it. In particular, we still have to see how it compares to OLED, which remains unbeatable in colors and contrast due to its ability to switch pixels completely and individually.
As far as consumers are concerned, in 2026 they can expect to see TVs from LG, Samsung, Sony, TCL and others based on Micro RGB LED technology. These will be high-end TVs – possibly above Rs 2 lakh in India. These will also be the brightest TVs on the market and will produce stunning colors.
But having said that, OLED will still be the best of the best. For example, LG has already hinted about the limitations of Micro RGB LEDs. It says that Micro RGB LED will be present along with OLED in its display lineup. It’s not meant as a replacement, it just shows that OLED contrast ratio dominance continues. OLED TVs will likely become more power-efficient and possibly even cheaper as the technology matures.
Keeping this context in mind, we can imagine the TV lineup of 2026 quite easily. It will look something like this: At the most premium end we will have TVs based on Micro RGB LED and OLED TVs. They will complement each other, with Micro RGB providing better brightness while OLED providing better contrast. Below these there will be mini LED TVs. These will range from around Rs 80,000 to Rs 2 lakh depending on the display size, brand and quality of the panel. At almost the same price, and slightly lower, we will have QLED TVs. And below QLED we will find regular LED TVs.
