The Display Buzz Out Of CES Next Week Will Be About Micro RGB. So What Is It, And Should You Care?

December 30, 2025 by Dave Haynes

CES opens next week in Las Vegas, and even though it is very much a trade show oriented to consumer and not business products, it often offers glimpses at what electronics will find a way into business applications like digital signage and, more broadly, ProAV.

Along with a torrent of stupid shit that will attract media and influencer cameras – robots that dance and make matcha lattes, and gadgets that will never make it beyond trade show stands – there will, as always, be lots and lots of TVs.

There will be scale – as in who has the biggest TV. But there will also be new-ish terminology that will get their big moments. The one that appears to be ready for its close-up at CES 2026 is Micro RGB, which LG is debuting, Samsung and Hisense already have, and Sony may trot out.

Confused by yet another term? You can look at it like this: micro RGB TVs are LCD panels that are using mini or micro LED as the backlights, but instead of white/blue LED backlight arrays, these displays use red, green and blue LEDs to drive better color. As has been the case for a while now, these premium TVs use something called local dimming, with roughly 1,000 zones.

Earlier generations of LCDs use LEDs around the edges and then backlight arrays with perhaps dozens of LEDs to generally illuminate the LCD layer. Local dimming means small and specific zones of a display are illuminated and controlled – so for a scene that’s black in some sections, the LEDs switch off.

These micro RGBs will be big-boy TVs – 75, 86 and 100 inches. It’s B2C tech, but as happens, that stuff tends to drift into B2B. That may be particularly so in 2026, given how consumers are stretched by inflation, generally jittery about the economy, and maybe thinking the 65-inch TV they already have will do for another year.

In a refreshing change from marketing norms, display manufacturers are using the term micro when it actually applies. Specs released for Samsung and LG suggest the LED arrays have individual light emitting pixels that are smaller than 100 microns.

As I have nattered on endlessly in recent years, almost every manufacturer out there has been calling their finest pitch direct view LED products micro LED, when they’re really just using mini LED.

Hisense gets a hat tip for calling its version RGB Mini-LED TVs, given it is using LEDs that don’t meet the generally accepted definition of micro LED. The Chinese manufacturer might also get more traction with consumers, because mini instead of micro tends to mean fewer lights and lower pricing in stores.

Sony’s spin on this tech, meanwhile, is called True RGB.

So what’s the big deal? Color reproduction.

Conventional LCDs use a backlight of white LEDs (or blue with quantum dots) that shines through the liquid crystal layers and color filters of a panel to create visuals. With Micro RGB, the individual red, green, and blue LEDs pass light through the LCD flat panel layers starting with color, leading to finer color accuracy and wide color gamuts.

Or for simpletons like me, they look better.

Will Micro RGB find its way into B2B applications? Maybe. Or probably. Manufacturers are constantly looking for big and shiny new things to put in front of resellers and end-users. Stuff like refresh rates is JUST a bit too nerdy for most people.

The wild card on all this is price. Digital signage, in particular, is about scaled deployments, where unit costs really, really matter.

The business is also about viewing dynamics, and transient audiences. OLED displays are perhaps the best reference point for this. The visuals for those displays are beautiful, but there’s not much evidence the B2B market felt B2B OLEDs’ boosts in color accuracy and gamuts warranted the corresponding boosts in price.

MSRPs may dribble out for LGs products during CES. Their products are smaller and will presumably cost less than what Samsung has so far announced – a 115-inch Micro RGB beast that costs north of $20,000 USD.

There are always customers who want the latest and best, who regard price as a big whatever. But logic and history both suggest most end-users are going to go for the option that looks pretty great and was best of breed … until Micro RGB came along. If it costs maybe half as much, I think they’d generally pass on Micro RGB for now.

As an aside, safe travels to all those digital signage and DooH people who go to CES. I went once, out of curiosity, and haven’t been back. It’s interesting and fun to see all the shiny new stuff, but its relevance to these businesses is pretty limited.

Your Q1 budget would be better allocated to NRF in New York – if you do retail – and to ISE in Barcelona, if you really want to see what’s available and on the near-horizon in ProAV.