Samsung Micro RGB: the color revolution that challenges OLED is finally within everyone's reach

Samsung took us to its headquarters in Frankfurt to mainly showcase its new Micro RGB technology panels, which denotes a new type of microscopic LED backlighting.

Micro RGB is not the same as Micro LED, and this distinction is important. Both technologies use microscopic-size LEDs, but in completely different ways. In pure Micro LED, each single LED is an autonomous pixel that emits light and color independently, without liquid crystals or filters: it is an entirely self-emissive display, comparable to an OLED but with inorganic LEDs. In Samsung's Micro RGB, however, the micro-LEDs are not the panel's pixels: they are the backlighting. The panel is still an LCD with its layer of liquid crystals that modulates the light, but the backlighting is made of microscopic red, green, and blue LEDs.

To understand the technological leap, it is useful to retrace the evolution of backlighting in LCDs. In traditional televisions, LEDs emit blue light coated with yellow phosphors to simulate white. In QLED and Neo QLED panels, including Mini LEDs, the backlighting is still blue but passes through a layer of quantum dot that converts part of it into red and green: the mix of the three produces a high color volume white, richer and more precise. The colored filters of the LCD panel then cut out the final colors. The Micro RGB completely eliminates this step: the backlighting is already composed of separate red, green, and blue LEDs that directly emit the correct color for each area. In these panels, color is pure at the source, and the LCD panel filters allow a clean band to pass through. The result is a chromatic purity that quantum dot systems cannot achieve.

What is Micro RGB technology and how does it work

Each luminous point of the panel consists of three separate LEDs (one red, one green, and one blue), each smaller than 100 micrometers (less than a tenth of a millimeter). Each of these "diodes" is actually a trio consisting of 9 Micro LEDs: three red, three green, and three blue. The colors are generated directly at the source, without the need for filters. The result is superior color purity, without color mixing between the channels.

Unlike previous generation Mini LEDs, Micro RGB are small enough to have a very high number of local dimming zones: the 65-inch model would have about 5,000 effective control zones (or 15,000 if counting each individual LED of the RGB trio). This allows for extremely precise brightness control, with minimal halos and deep blacks, although it does not reach OLED's pixel-per-pixel level.

Samsung's evolutionary path in LED TV displays (2009), QLED (2017), QLED 8K (2018), Neo QLED (2021) to Micro RGB (2025–2026) was illustrated in detail at the exhibition panels of the event we attended in Frankfurt at Samsung's local headquarters, where each generation was presented with its own "key benefit": from "Slim & Energy Efficient" in 2009 to the "Dynamic Color" of Micro RGB.

The Micro RGB AI Engine: the intelligence driving the pixels

Hardware technology alone is not enough: managing tens of thousands of RGB LEDs accurately requires enormous computational power. Samsung developed the Micro RGB AI Engine Pro, a dedicated chipset capable of performing 8 trillion operations per second, precisely to fulfill its task, which is to optimize brightness, contrast, and color distribution in real-time and frame-by-frame.

The system also includes the Micro RGB Color Booster Pro, a process that analyzes the color distribution in incoming videos using real-time AI classification, identifies low-luminance areas, and applies targeted color enhancement. There is also RGB Light Control Tech: the system analyzes the images, detects where RGB light profiles overlap (creating unwanted color mixing), and actively reduces the overlap. In other words, it learns from the content to refine control over time.

Completing the picture is the Real Depth Enhancer, which extracts foreground objects and controls the Tone Curve to simulate a greater depth of field in order to make the images more three-dimensional and natural.

Coverage near 100% BT.2020: what it means for the user

BT.2020 is the reference standard for Ultra HD colors, representing a much wider color space compared to the DCI-P3 used in cinemas or the sRGB of common monitors. Covering or nearing 100% means that the television can emit colors with greater saturation that cannot be reproduced with previous technologies, including the best OLEDs. Samsung has received VDE certification for complete BT.2020 coverage with its Micro RGBs: it is approximately 40% larger than that of OLEDs. During the event, a specific demo (“Neon Colors Demo”) was presented to showcase colors outside the DCI-P3 perimeter such as fluorescent reds and greens that OLEDs simply cannot reproduce faithfully. A test “BT.2020 Spatio-Temporal Noise” demonstrated the TV's ability to differentiate adjacent colors even beyond the DCI-P3 gamut.

This achievement is made possible by the optimized design of the LED spectra: each R, G, B channel has a narrow band well-separated from the others, maximizing the purity of the produced color. In the exhibition panel dedicated to gamut assessment, a visual comparison between the spectrum of a traditional QLED and that of Micro RGB immediately highlighted the difference: narrower bands mean more saturated colors and a larger gamut triangle in the CIE diagram.

Micro RGB vs OLED: who wins and on what

The question everyone inevitably asks is: Is Micro RGB better than OLED? The honest answer is: it depends on what you watch and under what conditions. What is certain is that even Samsung's QD-OLED 2026 televisions (S90H series) have made significant progress: 25% more brightness compared to the previous model (S90F) thanks to improvements in color filter and emitting layer, and a 20% reduction in consumption (from 61W to 49W on the 48 inches). Motion vector noise reduction is managed through a dedicated NPU, with AI analyzing the error between Motion Estimation and Motion Compensation. Furthermore, the Anti Glare technology is now integrated into the chemistry of the next-generation panels, which allows for the retention of OLED's