(Credit: LG)
LG is tipping one of its biggest product debuts for CES 2026 a few weeks early. The flagship Micro RGB evo is LG's first RGB LED TV, which uses a new backlight technology that's picking up steam among some of the most promising and expensive TVs I've seen yet.
Typical LED TVs use white or blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to illuminate their liquid crystal display (LCD) panels. The LEDs are used solely to provide light, while the LCDs, which don't emit any light themselves, control the color of each pixel. The LEDs can be individually dimmed or are arranged into zones that can be dimmed depending on whether the content being shown is bright or dark, but they don't have any effect on color. RGB LED TVs light up their LCD panels with clusters of red, green, and blue LEDs, each of which can be brightened or dimmed to best fit not only the brightness but also the color of what's being shown.
According to LG, the Micro RGB evo can cover the full BT.2020 color space, a range of color much wider than the DCI-P3 digital cinema color space or the Adobe RGB visual production color space. BT.2020 is the standard that defines the theoretical full range of color that 4K and 8K are capable of, a bar that off-the-shelf displays haven't been able to reach.
That's why most content is mastered to more limited spaces like DCI-P3, and why I compare TV color ranges against that standard. Any TV that can fully cover BT.2020 is achieving a feat that would have been considered nearly impossible three or four years ago.
RGB-LED technology is very new, but it's quickly picking up speed along TV manufacturers. Hisense and Samsung released RGB LED TVs this year, the Hisense 116UX and Samsung Micro RGB TV. I tested and reviewed the 116UX, and it impressed me, offering the brightest picture with the widest color range I've measured in any TV so far. It doesn't cover the BT.2020 color space, but it comes relatively close, and Hisense never claimed it could cover that range. I haven't tested Samsung's Micro RGB TV yet, but the brand claims it can cover BT.2020 just like LG does with its Micro RGB evo.
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Both TVs also highlight their use of micro-LEDs rather than mini-LEDs like the 116UX. Just like how they sound, micro-LEDs are even smaller than mini-LEDs, which means that more can be placed behind the LCD panel and, in theory, each LED cluster can more precisely control just how many pixels they light up. The big compromise all LED-lit TVs make, and a reason why dimmer OLED TVs are prized, is that there are exponentially fewer LEDs than pixels they illuminate. Because every LED lights up an entire patch of the LCD panel, a haze or aura along the edges between bright and dark objects can be seen. This is called light bloom, an effect that can be reduced by adding more and smaller LEDs, but not completely eliminated. OLED TVs like the Editors' Choice-winning LG C5 and G5, on the other hand, individually control the light output of each pixel, so they don't display any light bloom.
These distinctions can get confusing because the micro-LEDs in LG and Samsung's RGB LED TVs don't quite make them "micro-LED TVs" as the term has previously been used. Before this new backlight technology popped up, micro-LED TVs were screens that didn't use LCD panels at all, and instead had clusters of red, green, and blue micro-LEDs each assigned to a single pixel. This was a promising technology itself, but with the exception of massive, bespoke TVs that easily cost $100,000 or more, like Samsung's The Wall, it has remained limited to digital signage in commercial installations.
This doesn't mean RGB-LED TVs will be very affordable anytime soon, though. LG has not announced any pricing for the Micro RGB evo, only that it will be available in 75, 85, and 100 inches. However, the 116-inch Hisense 116UX is currently $24,999 and its smaller sibling, the 100-inch 100UX, is available for $9,999 while the 115-inch Samsung Micro RGB TV is $29,999. I would be very surprised to see LG's Micro RGB evo sold for less than $10,000.
We'll probably see more RGB-LED TVs at CES 2026. I'll be on the floor in Las Vegas to get a close look at all of them, so stay tuned for more.