Adventures in AV: Brace yourselves – we're entering a new era of TV tech confusion

2026 will be the year of the RGB Mini LED TV. Thanks to wanton obfuscation from TV manufacturers, though, that won’t necessarily be very clear.

RGB Mini LED is the next evolution of Mini LED, which, you’re probably aware, takes traditional LED backlighting and replaces the chunky, old-fashioned LEDs with vastly smaller ones.

Because the LEDs are so much smaller, loads more of them can be crammed into a backlighting system, resulting in better light control and, therefore, better contrast.

On standard Mini LED TVs, the LEDs are generally blue, and their light is passed through filters to create different colours. The difference with RGB Mini LEDs is, as you’ve probably guessed, that the LEDs themselves are red, green and blue.

When done correctly, the main advantages of RGB Mini LED technology are purer colours and extra brightness (which in turn creates even greater contrast).

Is RGB Mini LED an OLED-beater? It’s too early to tell, as most brands are launching their first sets that use the technology this year. I’m inclined to think it’s going to work better in the mid-range bracket, with OLED’s perfect blacks and pixel-level contrast control keeping it on top; but that’s beside the point for now.

The actual point is that RGB Mini LED technology is exciting stuff. So why are several brands avoiding using the real term for it and instead trying to make you think you’re getting something even more advanced?

I’ve sort of answered my own question there, haven’t I?

What’s in a name?

Look, I’ve got no real issue with TV brands using fancy names for what is ultimately quite boring terminology. But what I don’t like is when brands try to pretend a TV is something it’s not.

So, for example, Samsung’s original launch of ‘QLED’ TVs way back in 2017 really got my goat.

Why? Because the ‘QLED’ name had already been applied to a future panel technology involving self-emissive Quantum Dots – in other words, a true rival to self-emissive OLED technology. Here, though, Samsung was applying the name to backlit TVs with a Quantum Dot layer, almost certainly in order to place it on the same pedestal as OLED in potential buyers’ minds.

Samsung’s use of the term ‘Neo QLED’ to describe its Mini LED TVs, though, was fine in my book. Once the use (misuse, in my mind) of QLED was established, adding a word such as ‘Neo’ to denote the next technological evolution was just funky branding.

But why am I bringing this all up now? Because two brands are launching their RGB Mini LED TVs using the word ‘Micro’ rather than ‘Mini’.

RGB Mini LED and Micro LED are not the same thing

You see, Micro LED TVs already exist. They are currently ridiculously expensive, but they are available to buy right now. Samsung, LG and Hisense all currently produce genuine Micro LED TVs.

What makes a Micro LED TV ‘genuine’? It’s when the pixels are self-emissive, as they are with OLED and the aforementioned ‘true’ QLED.

Genuine Micro LED is generally seen as the eventual successor to OLED. All of that lovely pixel-by-pixel contrast control combined with greater brightness, purer colours and no risk of burn-in or degradation over time. I have seen it in action several times over the years, and I’m very much a believer.

But Samsung and LG – yes, two of the very same manufacturers that produce true Micro LED TVs – now also have other, less ‘true’ (at least in my opinion) Micro TVs on their books.

LG’s first RGB Mini LED TV is the MRGB95, which the brand is referring to as a ‘Micro RGB Evo TV’. Samsung, meanwhile, has its R95H ‘Micro RGB TV’.

To be absolutely clear, these are not TVs with self-emissive, Micro LED-derived pixels. These are backlit TVs that use very small RGB LEDs. You know, like RGB Mini LED TVs.

The argument appears to be, at least in LG’s case, that because the LEDs these TVs use are smaller than those in Mini LED models, the ‘Micro’ element is fair game.

I’d argue that there are lots of words for ‘very small’, and choosing ‘micro’ sure looks like an effort to blur the lines between these backlit RGB LED TVs and real Micro LED TVs.

It’s certainly the case that this has already caused a fair amount of confusion among us tech journos, so what possible chance does the average punter have? I posit that it's very little.

Interestingly, Hisense is very specifically sticking with the ‘RGB Mini LED’ name for its TVs in this arena, because it feels using the word ‘micro’ would be disingenuous.

On the other hand, it is adding the word ‘Evo’, which must be infuriating to LG – but that’s all good fun, if you ask me.

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