2026 is the year of the RGB Mini-LED TV.

Nearly every TV manufacturer, whether it's Samsung, LG, TCL, Hisense, or Sony, has already released or plans to drop some sort of RGB Mini-LED TV over the next few months. The new technology aims to improve Mini LED backlighting by replacing the blue LEDs with multiple red, green, and blue diodes, resulting in an overall increase in color volume and fundamentally changing how the panel produces color.

It's worth noting that some manufacturers refer to the technology by specific brand names, which can make things a bit confusing. For example, Samsung and LG have gone with Micro RGB, while Hisense calls the tech RGB Mini-LED. As is always the case with TV makers, companies are just putting their own marketing spin on RGB Mini-LED panel technology, but the underlying display technology is generally the same across the board, despite the various names.

At a base level, RGB Mini-LED results in more accurate, purer colors, a wider color range, and an overall brighter picture, which is a bit wild given Mini-LED TVs are already brighter than even OLED panels in most cases, one of Mini-LED's key advantages other than generally being far cheaper than OLED TVs.

RGB Mini-LED offers comparable vibrancy to OLED, but lacks the contrast

It also avoids potential burn-in pitfalls

So why should you consider an RGB Mini-LED TV if you're planning to buy a new television in the next few months? While OLED will likely remain the top-tier option for anyone that really cares purely about contrast, thanks to the technology's self-illuminating pixels that are capable of shutting off completely, resulting in excellent contrast and color representation, RGB mini-LED offers better color reproduction, given that the panel technology covers 95% of the BT.2020 color gamut, the color space used by most modern 4K/HDR content. Additionally, RGB Mini-LED technology generally offers wider viewing angles compared to regular LED TVs and Mini-LED TVs.

It sort of comes down to what you value more in a TV — contrast or color (and whether you're concerned about potential OLED burn-in), along with other factors like price, of course. In a way, RGB Mini-LED is a compromise on the core concept of Micro-LED, an extremely high-end display technology that has yet to become mainstream, without going full self-emissive. You still get filter-free color from red, green, and blue LED backlighting, but instead of pixel-level control, the panel technology uses grouped dimming zones.

At the same time, RGB Mini-LED still maintains the same advantage the display technology has always held over OLED: peak brightness. Depending on the manufacturer, some RGB Mini-LED TVs can reach brightness levels in the 4,000-6,000 nit range on the high-end, and 2,000-2,500 nits with more mainstream models that feature the panel technology. I have a mid-range Hisense U8H TV with a mini-LED panel that hits between 1,700-1,800 peak brightness, and at night it can be almost blinding, so I can only imagine what 4,000 nits would look like, especially in a dark room.

RGB Mini-LED TVs will likely come close to OLED quality at a lower price (sometimes)

Some TV manufacturers have already revealed their Mini-LED offerings

It's worth noting that because RGB Mini-LED TVs won't sit at the top of some TV manufacturers' lineups, in a lot of cases, you can get your hands on one for less than you can an OLED TV, continuing a trend that started a few years ago as Mini-LED grew in popularity and started to be widely adopted by mid-range focused TV makers like Hisense. LG is the notable exception to this, with its first Micro RGB TV starting at $5,000.

I recently had the opportunity to take a look at Samsung's 115-inch MR95F Micro RGB TV at a spring preview event. It's big, bright, and extremely expensive, sitting at an astronomical $30,000, but it also gave me a glimpse at what Micro RGB offers, as the tech giant reveals cheaper, more affordable models like the R95H and the R85H (the R95H starts at $3,200 for the 55-inch model, and the R85H costs $1,600 for the 55-inch). Most notably, the color vibrancy of Samsung's Micro RGB technology seemed significantly better than my mini-LED Hisense TV.

Keeping in mind that this demo was in a controlled environment with very specific content designed to make the panel look as good as possible playing on the TV, I still walked away impressed. Additionally, the contrast difference between the Micro RGB TV and the OLED TVs on display at the demo wasn't as significant as I expected, and the Micro RGB television was noticeably brighter, too, even in the well-lit room.

With all of this in mind, if you have your mind set on a new OLED TV, it might be worth exploring an RGB Mini-LED TV as a potential option, even if some manufacturers don't plan to position it as their top-tier display technology.