Samsung Electronics may have saved the best until last at CES 2025, rolling out a new model on day three of the event that uses a novel RGB MicroLED backlight and is set to launch sometime this year.
The RGB MicroLED backlight TV, which doesn't have an official name or model number yet, appears to be modeled on Hisense’s 116-inch 4K UX TV, which is built on an RGB Mini-LED backlight that’s said to dramatically improve both brightness and colour reproduction compared to standard Mini-LED televisions.
On the other hand, Samsung’s new model uses an RGB MicroLED backlight and it goes up to 8K resolution, making it even more advanced than Hisense’s model.
According to FlatPanels HD, select journalists were treated to a look at the new TV one day before CES 2025 kicked off during the “Samsung First Look” event, but forbidden to talk about it until now. The company showed off a single 98-inch RGB MicroLED TV, but it said it’s hoping to make it in smaller sizes too, and is aiming for a 2025 launch date.
If released this year, it will take on the mantle of Samsung’s flagship 8K model for 2025, sitting above the Samsung QN990F that was launched on Tuesday alongside its latest OLED models.
Samsung said the decision to use a MicroLED backlight instead of a Mini-LED backlight means it can squeeze three-times as many LEDs onto the back plate, helping to improve the colours and brightness by quite a degree. Because it’s currently a prototype, and it aims to be Samsung’s 8K flagship, it will certainly be one of the company’s most premium, and therefore most expensive televisions.
That said, it may also provide the company with an opportunity to make its MicroLED technology more accessible to consumers.
Existing, full-fledged MicroLED TVs are incredibly expensive. For instance, Samsung’s 110-inch MicroLED TV from 2022 is still on sale at a price of $149,999 (£121,860), while LG Electronics 118-inch Magnit MicroLED TV costs even more at $237,000. Very few people are ever going to be able to afford to buy such a television, and until they can be made significantly cheaper, MicroLED will never become the future of TVs, as has been promised.
The 98-inch RGB MicroLED will still likely cost several thousand dollars, or even more likely, tens of thousands, but the price should be substantially less than any existing MicroLED TV on the market. While not exactly cheap, it will likely represent a far more realistic purchase for many thousands of consumers.
It won’t come with all of the benefits provided by native MicroLED TVs, such as Hisense’s enormous 136-inch model that was announced earlier this week, but the use of MicroLED backlights alone will still bring substantial benefits over Mini-LED in terms of superior brightness, better contrast and black levels and more accurate colours.
The fact Samsung “hopes” to launch the RGB MicroLED TV this year suggests it won’t go on sale until towards the end of 2025, so it will be a while before we can learn what price the company believes is realistic.
That said, it’s clearly a groundbreaking concept that could kick start a revolution in semi-MicroLED TVs that vastly improve on existing Mini-LED models and perhaps even OLED, at some very sensible prices.
