What display technology will be able to replace OLED? At CES 2025, the largest high-tech show in the world, Samsung seems to have a lead. The (provisional) name of the technology is “RGB Micro LED”, we explain.
Thumbnail: First RGB Micro LED television, on the official CES website
OLED, still dominant in the world of high-end screens
The principle of OLED is quite simple to summarize. This display technology offers a real break with the LED televisions found in most homes. The idea is to do without a backlight panel and to project the image using pixels that emit their own light. A black pixel being an off pixel, we thus obtain a perfect contrast, called “infinite”. OLED also allows for much thinner televisions, better viewing angles, the end of halo effects (blooming)… in short, it is still the best in technology today. display.
Every year, OLED improves and becomes more and more impressive. Screen burn-in problems have become extremely rare, OLED is breaking brightness records, the price of panels is likely to soon fall thanks to new innovations (like TCL’s Inkjet OLED). It is therefore really difficult to say that this technology which still does not seem to have reached its glass ceiling could soon be overtaken by a new way of displaying an image on a screen. Yet, Samsung has just unveiled a serious competitor to OLED at CES 2025: RGB Micro-LED.
Be careful not to confuse Micro LED, Mini LED and RGB Micro LED
This may seem crazy to you, but yes, there are now two, or even three, technologies with more or less the same name on the market. Until now, Micro-LED was called the most premium display technology in the world. Basically, these are microscopic diodes that, like OLED, emit their own light. This technology is extremely fragile, heats up enormously, and costs an arm and a leg. Count around 100,000 euros for a 100-inch Micro-LED television. Only certain manufacturers, including Samsung, provide Micro-LED TVs for special requests from footballers or other very wealthy customers.
The just-announced RGB Micro-LED works differently. This time, there is indeed a backlight panel. Except that here, the backlighting uses much smaller diodes than normal. There, the most knowledgeable among you will say that this technology already exists, that it is very widespread and that it is called Mini-LED. Effectively. Tell yourself then that RGB Micro-LED is a kind of “super Mini LED”.
-Mini-LEDs are approximately 40 times smaller than the diodes of conventional LED TVs. RGB Micro LED diodes are 3 times smaller than Mini-LEDs. We can therefore place three times as many on a screen of the same size, in order to control them ever more finely (and therefore achieve a contrast level close to the infinite contrast of OLED, eliminate blooming concerns, consume less… ). This is why Samsung is talking about Micro-LED despite the fact that it is not really the Micro LED technology that we already know. It’s much smaller than “Mini”, so it’s “Micro”.
And the “RGB” in all this? We’re coming there. Usually, a TV’s backlight is a uniform color, usually blue. We place color filters over this blue backlighting in order to display all the other colors. Well, RGB Micro-LEDs would be capable of producing the 3 primary colors separately.
image credit: shutterstock
Performance, date and price of the first RGB Micro-LED TVs
Contrast, color accuracy, viewing angles, brightness and even energy consumption (advertised as 20% more efficient)… RGB Micro LED televisions should break records in all areas. Obviously, no one outside of Samsung engineers has been able to probe and take measurements of the first RGB Micro-LED televisions, which are only at the prototype stage. We can’t wait to see what it’s really all about.
In terms of release date, it seems that Samsung could market the first RGB Micro-LED televisions as early as 2025, by increasing its 8K range. Three sizes will be available for this first model, giant formats of 75, 85 and 98 inches. Price-wise, we don’t have anything specific but don’t expect for a second to pay a 4-figure sum. At JVTECH, we imagine that even the smallest format should cost at least €12,000 at launch. But hey, we are not safe from a pleasant surprise.
