LG says “OLED is still king” – and I agree (at least for now)

Last week, I spent the day looking at several of LG’s new 2026 TVs alongside members of the company’s product development team. During that day, one phrase kept popping up: “OLED is still king”.

It’s not a great surprise to hear this from LG. While it was coming from members of LG Electronics rather than the panel-producing LG Display division, the fact remains that the LG organisation as a whole is more heavily invested in OLED technology than any of its rivals.

So, while LG is launching an RGB Mini LED TV this year (somewhat disingenuously under the name ‘Micro RGB’), there’s a sense that the company is responding to market pressure rather than leading with conviction. LG is positioning this MRGB set below its flagship OLED models – and possibly even below the C6, though that will only become clear once pricing is confirmed.

According to LG’s Maarten-Joost Möller, the brand’s MRGB TV is “for people who want to have a huge TV with a lot of brightness”.

“It's specifically a big TV,” he continues, and the one to buy “if [someone doesn’t] want to spend the money on an OLED, because a 90-inch OLED, or even a 75-inch [OLED], sometimes is exceedingly expensive for some people.”

To emphasise the point that this is a pure play for brightness and vibrancy (the MRGB95 can hit a claimed peak brightness of 4000 nits and can reproduce almost 100 per cent of the BT.2020 colour space), LG would demonstrate its RGB Mini LED set only in its Vivid mode during the event.

But while LG clearly has a vested interest in defending OLED in the face of the “OLED killer” claims being made by many of its rivals, I actually rather agree with its “OLED is still king” sentiment.

Now, I haven’t yet seen all of the new RGB Mini LED TVs coming this year, and I’m yet to see TCL’s rival Super Quantum Dot sets in the flesh. But nothing that I have seen over the past 12 months – including some very advanced prototypes – has convinced me that OLED is even particularly close to being toppled as the premium TV tech of choice.

Yes, many of these TVs can go brighter than most OLEDs. And thanks to new RGB LED architectures, they can often reproduce a wider colour volume. But, ultimately, they are all still backlit TVs, and in my view, that immediately puts them on the back foot compared with the self-emissive pixels of OLED.

However advanced Mini LED becomes, it is still fundamentally managing a backlight. Having smaller LEDs increases contrast. Having more dimming zones reduces blooming. Improved optical layers enhance viewing angles. But it’s all mitigation.

OLED, by contrast, doesn’t need to manage light – it simply produces it at a pixel level.

Each pixel is lit individually, so it’s like having 8.3 million dimming zones with perfect, bloom-free contrast, and viewing angles that are more or less flawless. There’s no haloing to suppress, no light bleed to tame, no backlight algorithm trying to guess what should be dark.

Watch a dimly lit corridor scene in Alien: Romulus and the difference becomes clear. The inky blacks of deep space, the pinpricks of harsh industrial lighting, the subtle gradations in shadow – with OLED, those elements coexist naturally. With even the best backlit sets, you are often aware, however faintly, of the system working behind the scenes to keep blooming and grey haze at bay.

These qualities, to me, are far more valuable than another thousand nits of peak brightness. They make for a more immersively cinematic experience, where you’re entirely focused on the film rather than the technical gymnastics your TV is performing to mask the drawbacks of its panel technology.

That’s not to say OLED is perfect. Peak brightness still trails the most extreme Mini LED sets, and very large panels remain expensive. If you want a 100-inch screen with stunning brightness for less than the price of a new car, RGB Mini LED currently can’t be beaten.

But for overall balance – contrast precision, viewing angles, black depth, and cinematic authenticity – OLED still leads.

There’s still every chance that one of this year’s RGB or SQD Mini LED TVs will surprise me and genuinely challenge OLED’s dominance. I hope that happens – competition drives progress, and better picture quality is good for everyone. I’m just struggling to picture it.

OLED will be beaten one day – perhaps by real Micro LED if it ever becomes affordable. But that day isn't today – and I don’t yet see it on the horizon.

For now, at least, I’m inclined to agree with LG.

OLED is still king.

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