CES is always a major event for TV tech, and last month’s event in Las Vegas didn’t disappoint. Even though Sony didn’t show off its next TVs, we were still overwhelmed with new models and innovative tech demos from Samsung, LG, Hisense and TCL.

These are all makers of the best TVs around, and all like to push the envelope with cutting-edge TV tech at CES. Some of this tech will appear in models available this year, while some will just be shown as proof of concept, hopefully to be used in future sets.

What we see at CES shapes not only the TVs that arrive in 2025, but those that will come in 2026 and beyond, as the companies battle to outdo each other and as high-end tech trickles down into more affordable models.

Below, here’s the tech I saw at CES 2025 that I think will have the biggest effect on the best OLED TVs and best mini-LED TVs in the future.

1. RGB Backlighting
This tech is probably the TV takeaway from CES 2025, and was shown off by Samsung, Hisense and TCL, all at slightly different stages. It’s a new way of doing LCD TVs and it works the same as current tech: a backlight of LEDs shines through a grid of color-filtering pixels. Except in current versions of the tech, the backlight is a single color of LED (usually blue), so the color-filtering layer has to do a lot of work. This saps energy from the light, limiting brightness.

In RGB backlights, each LED has red, green and blue elements, meaning it can shine in the right color for what’s on-screen before it goes through the color-filtering layer. This means the color filter can be much less aggressive—TCL even confirmed that it’s dropping quantum dots from its version of the tech—and the light can shine through more efficiently.

The result is even brighter TVs, or TVs at the same level of brightness that use less power. And at the same time, the color gamut is wider, meaning more vibrant and rich images in just about every way.

Samsung said its version of the tech (which it’s calling RGB Micro LED Backlight) shouldn’t really cost more than its mini-LED TV. Samsung’s version is likely to come in a 4K TV later this year, though the version Samsung showed us at CES was an 8K TV. TCL said its version of the tech will arrive in 2026, but there was a prototype at the show.

Hisense has the edge here—it unveiled a 116-inch TV that uses the tech, which it’s calling “TriChroma RGB Backlight.” We were very impressed by the Hisense 116UX upon seeing it in person.

2. Four-Stack OLED
There’s a new type of OLED panel in town, and it’s all fours. The latest OLED TV panel from LG Display, which makes OLED screens used by every TV manu­facturer that offers them, is a leap forward for the tech. It adds an extra layer of OLED pixels into the panel, on top of the three layers used in previous generations.

This adds a load of extra brightness and aids color reproduction, with the screen being up to 40% brighter than the previous highest-end OLED panel from LG—and that’s without the micro lens array (MLA) tech that has been used to boost the brightness of the screens previously.

This panel is used in the LG G5 and Panasonic Z95B, and appears to be the panel used in the 83-inch version of the Samsung S95F.

This four-layer panel will likely become the norm that future panels are built on, and hopefully it’ll be possible for it to trickle down to the mid-range panels—something that never happened with MLA.

3. Wireless Connection Boxes
LG has offered a TV with a wireless connection box for a couple of years now, but it’s been its highest-end OLED TV—inherently very niche. This year, LG has expanded it to its mini-LED QNED range as well.

Meanwhile, Samsung has introduced a wireless connections box for its highest-end 8K TV, and for The Frame Pro art TV, as well for its 8K Premiere projector. And Samsung’s box is much smaller than the big beast of LG’s unit, making it feel much more like tech a normal person might have in their home one day.

So suddenly, the wireless TV connection arms race is on. The idea of these boxes is that your TV can sit on the wall or on a stand with just a single power cable running to it, and the direction of that cable doesn’t have to be determined by the positioning of your consoles and set-up boxes. You’ll be able to hide all your gadgets away and have a clean TV area—total aesthetic and tech freedom.

Samsung has said that if the wireless boxes are well-received, it will roll them out to more TVs—it said this about its OLED Glare Free tech last year, and it proved to be true, with the tech being added to mini-LED TVs in 2025. So we’ll have to see if this year’s wireless boxes work well and if people are happy paying a premium for them—and, if so, we’ll see whether other TV companies follow suit, and whether LG starts offering it in more of its own OLED range.

4. On-Device AI That’s Actually Useful
TV companies have been talking about AI features for several years now, and it’s been largely meaningless—it basically meant that machine-learning-based image processing had been applied.

But now that people tend to mean generative AI when we talk about AI, that’s being added to TVs too—and in some actually smart ways. On its TVs last year, LG introduced the idea of a chatbot that you could speak to naturally, and the TV could find the setting to help you. So if you said to it, “The picture is too dark,” it would bring up the brightness options for you. That proved to be a bit of a false start, but this year it’s looking better. The updated version will be combined with AI-based voice recognition so that whenever you use the voice control of the TV, you get personalized responses, and even personalized picture settings.

Samsung, meanwhile, is putting an AI button on its remotes, to act as a kind of voice control button. One of the best features it showed off is the ability for the TV to live translate from a show’s native audio language into subtitles for another language. It supports Korean, English, Spanish, French and Italian so far, and appears to work really well—a great boost for accessibility, and again, something I expect to see lots of brands picking up.

5. Ultra-Precise Backlight Lenses
Last year, Sony showed off a new backlighting tech for its mini-LED TVs. It used really smart lens designs to provide strong brightness levels that don’t leak from bright areas into dark areas, and offered amazing nuance in the picture contrast. This year, we’re seeing a backlight from TCL that looks like an even better version of this—and this will be the future of the more midrange mini-LED TVs if RGB backlighting will be the new high-end tech.

TCL’s backlight is kind of incredible to see—the company had a demo where you could see just the backlights in motion, so you could compare the new 2025 backlight to the previous year’s backlight and a more basic one.

You can basically just watch TV on the new backlight; it has so many LEDs, and such strong control of contrast and tones, that it’s actually detailed. TCL showed this tech off the best, but it’s something other makers are absolutely working on too—expect to hear a focus on well this year’s mini-LED handle blooming and contrast.

This article initially appeared on TechRadar, sister website to TV Tech.

SUWANEE, Ga.—Hisense, the second largest maker of TV sets in the world announced today that it has joined the 8K Association (8KA), a cross-industry group promoting the growth of the 8K ecosystem. 

“Hisense’s membership in the 8K Association marks a significant step in our ongoing mission to  enhance the home entertainment experience,” said David Gold, President of Hisense Americas  and Hisense USA. “We are eager to contribute to the 8K ecosystem and collaborate with other  industry leaders to accelerate the integration of 8K technology into the home entertainment  experience.” 

Hisense says it has been investing in  R&D to improve the resolution and image quality of its televisions and that its membership in the 8K Association “will further strengthen Hisense’s position as a leader in the television industry and  will allow the company to have a more significant influence on the development and deployment  of 8K technology.”

Currently, the only 8K Hisense TV on the U.S. market is the U800GR Roku TV.  

“Hisense’s addition to the 8K Association expands our collective of industry leaders,” said Mike  Fidler, Executive Director of the 8KA. “Their dedication to innovation and excellence in  consumer electronics will be instrumental in our shared efforts to promote 8K technology and its  benefits.” 

LONDON—More than one million 8K TV units are expected to be sold globally in 2021, passing that benchmark for the first time according to estimates from Deloitte. Even with surges in 8K TV sales, Deloitte still estimates that they will make up less than 1% of the 200 million-plus sets sold annually.

Even though 8K TVs will make up a small percentage of the total number of new TV units sold, 8K TVs are projected to garner more than $3.3 billion in global revenue, per Deloitte. That is because currently the average selling price for an 8K TV is more than $3,000.

Like 4K and HD TVs before it, Deloitte predicts that as prices for 8K TVs come down, their sales will go up. In 2017, the average sale price for an 8K TV was about $8,000, which then dropped to about $5,500 in 2018. By the end of 2021, Deloitte estimates that 8K TV prices will drop to about $1,300, helping to spur sales.

This surge in 8K TV sets will occur even as less than 0.1% of video content created in 2021 will be in native 8K, Deloitte says. This fits a trend, as Deloitte cites that more than half of TV sets sold in 2021 are projected to be 4K TVs, though less than 5% of content on SVOD and less than 1% of broadcast program hours will be 4K.

PLUS: TVs Likely to Lead 8K Content Push

There are ways for viewers to watch 8K content on their 8K TVs, though. Deloitte points to 8K TV sets ability to upscale 4K content; remastered 70mm movies are equivalent to 8K; and some content has been shot in native 8K but was released 4K. The 2021 Olympics are also expected to capture some events in 8K.

Deloitte also highlights that 8K TVs can host applications beyond entertainment, including remote working capabilities, online exercise classes and digital wallpaper.

More information on Deloitte’s 2021 8K predictions are available on its website. 

Industry observers and executives alike remain stunned at how, in just five relatively short years, 4K UHD TVs transformed from a pricey curiosity to a race-to-the-bottom commodity. Based on this perhaps flawed phenomena, the industry is optimistic that 8K will follow the same super-speedy adoption path, sans 4K's rapid price erosions.

Nearly all TV makers have either announced, exhibited or started to sell one or more 8K models. This week alone first-to-sell-8K Samsung announced a 55-inch QLED version, TCL introduced its "designed to be the smartest TV on the market" 8K QLED X Series, and OLED grand poobah LG debuted its Signature 88-inch OLED priced in the posh $30,000 neighborhood. Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Hisense, Konka, Grundig, Skyworth, Metz and Grundig all exhibited 8K sets in the last week, most 88 inches, some as large as 120 inches.

Industry analysts aren’t sanguine about 8K's prospects, however. Last December, Strategy Analytics projected that 8K-ready devices would account for just 3% of the TV market by 2023, with global unit sales reaching only 11 million units. This past April, IHS somewhat infamously forecast only 6 million 8K sets would be sold in 2023.

“I think that severely underestimates the market size,” insisted Alfred Chan, VP of marketing at V-Silicon, insisted during a panel discussion with 8K ecosystem executives organized by the 8K Association, inaugurated at the most recent CES. “In 2023, 50% of TVs could be 8K given the rise in sales of larger screens. I think the market is big for 8K.”

“I think the transition will be slower,” countered Pete Sellar, senior director of corporate standards for Xperi. "But in six to seven years, TV makers might not see any point in carrying 4K sets anymore."

8K PAIN POINTS

Everyone agrees on the one major hole in the 4K-8K adoption analogy: content. Netflix and Amazon both launched 4K streaming early during the initial UHD hardware rollout, and UHD Blu-ray players and a smattering of Hollywood titles appeared almost simultaneously with new 4K TVs. However, there is only a smattering of 8K content now leaking into the ecosystem, largely NHK gearing up its 8K engine for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and three European OTT providers—CHILI, The Explorers and MEGOGO—announced 8K content availability in the last week.

Without even the promise of widely available 8K content, it's no surprise that consumers ask: "Why do I need 8K?"

To move the 8K needle and prove IHS wrong, on the business side 8K stake holders "have to encourage native 8K production," notes Dan Schinasi, Samsung America's director of product planning. "It helps that the 8K Association is developing industry standards. Our mission is to encourage native 8K production." One help is the increasing development and availability of professional 8K production equipment.

One argument the 8K community can use to convince producers to capture content in native 8K is oversampling. "Capturing content in 8K to deliver in 4K or 2K makes a better presentation," explains Chan. "Capturing in higher resolution for legacy value makes a lot of sense, even if the deliverable is 4K or 2K."

Paralleling 8K professional gear availability is the development of more efficient codecs such as HEVC, AV1, VVC (Versatile Video Coding) and EVC—Essential Video Coding, aka MPEG-5, although many of these are still years away. But with Wi-Fi 6 and even 5G, wireless pipes are getting roomy enough to handle the thicker 8K data stream.

Simultaneously on the consumer front, TV makers advise retailers to de-emphasize resolution as 8K's prima facie case to buy. "There's a lot more to pursue than just resolution," Schinasi points out. "It's a matter of packaging the message."

Instead of simply resolution, 8K's three primary selling points to package are HDR, color gamut and, especially, upscaling.

"Algorithms for upscaling have improved dramatically in the last couple of years," notes Chris Chinnock, 8K Association executive director. "New scaling technologies that use machine learning to analyze millions of images have created databases so you can have intelligent upscaling that resides in the cloud, which means 4K and increasingly 2K content will look very good on an 8K TV."

One hurdle 8K makers know they need to overcome is resistance on the sales floor, which means getting retailers on board. "We're just now starting to reach out to retailers—our first task is to engage with them," Chinnock admits. "We have to conduct market research with retailers to discover pain points, then develop programs to address those pain points."

The major roadblock at retail, beyond consumers not recognizing a need for 8K, is price, especially the value ratio. It's helpful that new large screen 65- and 75-inch 10.5 generation panel capacity will be coming online in the next few years, which will allow prices on 8K sets to drop—hopefully not through the floor as they have for 4K, or at least not as quickly.

"A third of the current 4K market is 55-inches and above," observes Marek Maciejewski, TCL's European product development director. "8K 65-inch sets and above will also start to sell when prices become affordable and there's content."

Finally, 8K Association minimum specifications and certifications on the verge of finalization, along with test specifications and tools that hopefully lead to self-certification, will result in 8K certified sets appearing in 2020 that could help salve consumer worries about what they may be buying.

"All the pieces of the 8K ecosystem are moving in the right direction," Chinnock notes optimistically.

This story originally appeared on TVT's sister publication, TWICE.