CES 2026 felt like the year television manufacturers stopped asking you to glance and started demanding a stare. Floor-to-ceiling prototypes, new display chemistries and an avalanche of AI features turned the show into a vivid (and sometimes loud) argument about what a TV should be: a piece of art, a gaming billboard, a smart-home brain—or all of the above.
Micro RGB: color fidelity gets its glow-up
The big technical story was Micro RGB, a.k.a. RGB Mini LED: an LED-backlit LCD that swaps the old white (or blue) backlight for individually controlled red, green and blue LEDs. That change matters. By producing pure red, green and blue at the backlight level, Micro RGB can hit color gamuts that previous quantum-dot panels only dreamed about. Engadget and on-floor demos made the point plainly—Samsung’s early MR95F model already claimed 100% coverage of the demanding BT.2020 color space, and the company rolled out a broader Micro RGB lineup (55–115 inches) that it says will meet a new Micro RGB Precision Color 100 bar.
What this isn’t: a replacement for self-emissive tech. Since Micro RGB still uses an LCD layer, pixels can’t switch fully off the way OLED or Micro LED can, so perfect black and pixel-level contrast remain out of reach. What it does offer is brighter, richer color at scale—valuable for big screens, HDR content, and anyone who wants their greens and reds to sing without washing out highlights. Hisense and LG have their takes too; LG is promising Micro RGB “evo” models with thousands of dimming zones and full BT.2020 coverage, while Hisense pushed larger RGB Mini LED modules and even a gargantuan 163‑inch Micro LED prototype that adds yellow to the mix (RGBY) to expand perceived nuance.
Size fetish: the 130‑inch flex and the return of wallpaper thin
If CES had a physical theme, it was "bigger." Samsung casually lifted the curtain on a 130‑inch Micro RGB prototype—the sort of screen that dominates a living room like a piece of modern art. The R95H concept aims to do more than be enormous: gallery-inspired mounting, audio tuned into the frame, and a software layer (Vision AI Companion) that promises conversational search, live translation and generative wallpapers.
Not everyone chased sheer scale. LG quietly reintroduced its Wallpaper line with the W6: a 9‑millimeter-thin OLED that hangs flush with the wall, uses a smaller Zero Connect Box 2.0 to remove cable clutter, and supports high-refresh 4K signals (up to 165Hz on HDMI). Reviewers at The Verge noted LG’s efforts to bump brightness (a quoted 20% increase over the G5) and add 12‑bit color processing to reduce artifacts—subtle refinements that matter when you’re trying to convince people to trade a living-room wall for an art-grade TV.
The AI splurge: convenience or clutter?
Almost every vendor had an AI story. Samsung’s Vision AI Companion is a particularly bold example: generative wallpapers, conversational search, Microsoft Copilot access, and other third-party integrations. Fox Business flagged HDR and AI features in Samsung’s 130‑inch announcement, including support for HDR10+ ADVANCED—a new HDR flavor that Samsung is backing and which ties into the company’s broader display strategy.
But not everyone on the show floor loved the AI additions. A Verge column pushed back on the rush to stuff TVs with camera-enabled workouts, telehealth demos, and always-listening assistants. The critique is familiar: TV sales are flat, so manufacturers pile on features in hopes of creating new reasons to buy. Sometimes those features are genuinely useful; other times they feel like marketing noise layered on a majestic panel. If you want to see how device makers are trying to make AI act on your behalf in other corners of tech, Google’s recent moves to make AI 'agentic' across search and services are a related trend and worth watching Google AI Mode’s agentic booking experiments.
Who wins and who pays?
There’s a practical question under all the demos: cost. Early Micro RGB sets were premium-priced—the 115‑inch MR95F started life with a sticker near $30,000—so expect the first wave of Micro RGBs to sit at the high end. Samsung’s prototype and HiSense’s RGBY Micro LED flexes suggest manufacturers believe enough wealthy buyers, commercial clients, and design-forward homeowners exist to justify the investment.
At the same time, manufacturers are layering features to broaden appeal. Thin-as-wall Wallpaper models, higher refresh rates for gamers, and AI assistants that promise more helpful search are attempts to bridge the gap between aspirational products and everyday use. And for buyers who just want a smart hub rather than a $20k panel, streaming devices remain a sensible alternative—devices like the Apple TV still do a lot of the heavy lifting for a fraction of the price.
A restless industry
CES 2026 was less about a single technological revolution than a rearrangement: Micro RGB raises the bar for color and scale; ultra-thin OLED keeps the design-focused crowd interested; and AI features show manufacturers scrambling for new hooks. Some of these hooks will stick—better color and higher brightness for HDR will matter to content creators and cinephiles—while others will fade if consumers start to view them as intrusive. Either way, the TV is no longer just a display. It’s a battleground for color science, industrial design, and the future of embedded AI.
If you want to follow the standards and formats shaping that future, Samsung’s HDR19+ push and rival HDR formats are part of the wider technical chessboard affecting content creators and streamers alike; Samsung’s HDR10+ ADVANCED announcement is one piece of that larger puzzle Samsung Unveils HDR10+ Advanced to Rival Dolby Vision 2.