Amidst the hype over next‑gen RGB displays, it was three familiar names that were drawing the biggest crowds of all with their TVs. Samsung, LG and TCL came to town with their visions of picture quality, industrial design and practical everyday use — and shaped the direction that premium performance TVs are taking next.
Why Samsung, LG, and TCL Set the Tone for Premium TVs
Samsung and LG traditionally lead global TV revenue, with TCL gaining in unit share, analysts at Omdia and Display Supply Chain Consultants say. When these firms plant flags in different directions — OLED art displays, supercharged mini LED and micro‑sized RGB LEDs — that says it’s a year of genuinely meaningful choice rather than an either‑or single tech winner.
RGB is the buzz because it woos with OLED‑like blacks and mini‑LED‑type brightness by adding separate red, green and blue emitters. But CES was good for one thing: making it clear that OLED and mini LED still have room to sprint, with the sets most worth your attention not all following the same recipe.
LG W6 Wallpaper Redraws the Art TV Playbook
LG snatched the gallery‑wall discussion with the less‑than‑10 mm W6 Wallpaper, an OLED meant to rest nearly flush, looking as much like art on the wall as an organic LED picture box. That profile is nowhere near as shallow as Samsung’s Frame series gets, but, oh, the televisual lord, is it picture quality — proper OLED black levels via the same high‑brightness panel heritage as LG’s G‑series flagships.
Where other art TVs sacrifice, LG throws its new 165 Hz refresh on top and a blistering 0.1 ms pixel response, making it a gaming standout — numbers that make you forget to worry about the typical woes of wireless setups adding more latency to your inputs. The trade‑off is less size choice: it’s available in 77 and 83 inches, which is fine for a gallery wall but won’t fit every room or budget.
Context matters here. Interest in matte‑screen art sets has surged due to their friendliness with decor, but OLED’s pixel‑level contrast ensures that artwork and cinema look truer in dim (but not dark) to moderate light. And the UHD Alliance has for some time heavily emphasized accurate tone‑mapping and deep black levels — say, via Filmmaker Mode — making bright but shadow‑detail‑respecting OLED art TV a rarefied combination.
TCL X11L Places Its Bets on Super Quantum Dots
TCL veered away from RGB for its centerpiece set: the X11L, introduced with SQD‑mini LED — Super Quantum Dot tech that utilizes improved quantum dots and a single pure‑white light source.
On paper, it’s a mic‑drop claim: 20,000 local dimming zones, up to 10,000 nits of peak brightness and 100% coverage of the BT.2020 color gamut.
For the record, 10,000 nits nails the theoretical barrier defined by the SMPTE ST 2084 PQ curve — today’s dominant HDR standard. Doing that without letting halos run wild takes an awfully finely controlled backlight and a fast local dimming algorithm. The X11L’s boast hints as much at TCL’s backlighting engineering as its color conversion. That kind of headroom in bright rooms is a technical advantage, not just bragging rights.
The bigger story is strategy. TCL is betting refined mini LED plus quantum dots can produce HDR impact and near‑OLED blacks without the power and lifespan trade‑offs that concern some adopters. If early demos are any indication, SQD might hold its own while RGB picks up steam.
Samsung R95H Micro RGB TV and a Surprise Portable
Samsung had something else exciting in store for the tech extravaganza: its micro RGB TV — the R95H — with sub‑100 μm red, green and blue LEDs to deliver 100% BT.2020 coverage. The 130‑inch floor unit was pure theater, teasing out the handmade panel with an easel‑esque stand that touched implicitly on the brand’s design‑first heritage. Critically, Samsung says the line scales to 55, 65, 75, 85 and (wait for it) 100 inches, suggesting designs way beyond wall‑filling luxury.
Micro‑sized RGB is the long game: vivid color volume, deep blacks and strong brightness with no organic materials. According to DSCC’s tracking, the hurdles have been manufacturing complexity and cost. Should Samsung be able to drive yields and wedge down costs, this may develop into the north star for high‑end home theaters over the next cycles.
Next up was an unlikely crowd‑pleaser: Movingstyle M7, a 32‑inch portable 4K touchscreen‑equipped monitor with a handle, wheels and about three hours of battery life. It’s a down‑to‑earth take on the “TV anywhere” concept — take it from the living room to the kitchen for workouts or tutorials, maybe some gaming, no need to hang it from a wall and string cables.
What This Year’s Big TV Moves Mean for Shoppers
Pick by room and use case. For many bright spaces and for sports, TCL’s SQD‑mini LED brute force — enough zones, the highest of high peak luminance — ought to have it beat. For a living room where the TV needs to be disguised as art, LG’s W6 Wallpaper is the first OLED that successfully caters to the decor brief without sacrificing performance. If you are looking for the bleeding edge of color and a path to reference‑grade home cinema, Samsung’s R95H previews where the premium display space is heading.
One short calibration note: The vast majority of HDR content today is mastered for P3 color within a BT.2020 container, and very little over 4,000 nits. Sets that can reach extended color and higher brightness matter today, because improved tone‑mapping and headroom maintain detail in highlights and sustain luminance in bright rooms. Seek vaunted Filmmaker Mode and trusted processing — not a single spec.
Many brands brought big ideas, but LG’s ultra‑thin OLED artistry merged with TCL’s quantum‑dot brute force and Samsung’s micro RGB ambition to make this trio the story of the show. Different philosophies, same result: among the best‑looking TVs we’ve seen in years.
