If you're looking for sizzle at CES 2026, you can never go wrong with the televisions. The annual consumer electronics expo always includes massive walls full of TVs with cutting-edge features such as transparent screens or ultra-high brightness.

In previous years at CES, we've seen everything from battery-powered TVs that stick to a wall to OLEDs that roll up like a treasure map. I'm not a TV designer, so I could never anticipate the bizarre things companies are cooking up right now. While these cutting-edge devices may grab headlines, our focus will remain on the products that actually matter to you.

We know that people don't buy TVs for gimmicks. Picture quality is the most important aspect of any TV, and I expect we'll see advancements in that area, especially at the affordable end of the market. 

Like computers and phones, TVs have a 12-month shelf life and are updated annually, usually with picture and feature improvements. Here's what this year's CES promises.

The mini-LED trickle-down

Two televisions from 2025 point the way forward -- the Hisense QD7 and the TCL QM9. Both models have mini-LED technology, but they're at either extreme of the market -- the Hisense is a budget TV, and the TCL is a flagship. Both were significant for their improvements to picture quality, especially the QD7. The Hisense's mini-LED backlight was a cut above the budget TV competition this year, and I hope it's the start of a new trend. Local dimming has a positive effect on LCD picture quality, and the ability to do it at an affordable price is better for everyone. 

Mini-LED is an evolution of traditional LCD TV backlight tech, using thousands of tiny light-emitting diodes to improve picture quality. One of the first mini-LED TVs to become available was the 2019 TCL 8-Series, and it's a technology which has become more widely available with each passing year.

Improvements in display technology can sometimes seem incremental, almost glacial, but this year, mini-LED backlights helped make LCD TVs eye-weepingly bright. This is a good thing. For instance, in 2025, TCL changed its technology to "Halo control," which was designed to reduce LCD bloom, and it worked! 

The brightest TV I reviewed last year was the QM9K, and it took full advantage of this upgrade: It was bright and capable of great contrast. You can expect to see this technology rolled out to more TVs in the company's range. Competitors like Samsung and Hisense will no doubt be taking notes as well.  

The Micro RGB backlight evolution

The brightest TVs I saw in 2025 were the most impractical to test in a lab environment. That's mostly because they were huge -- over 100 inches diagonal -- and they included the Hisense 116UX TV and the Samsung Micro RGB TV.

The key to their success was a micro-RGB backlight, which is distinct from the micro-LED display type. These backlights are made of red, green and blue micro-LEDs, and they have two main benefits: They don't need a color filter, whether quantum dot or otherwise, and they can create brighter screens. At CES, we'll see a whole bunch of TVs based on this -- led by both Samsung the LG. What we'll see is TVs of all sizes -- from 55 inches and up -- and at prices that are considerably less than a car.

OLED's bright future

While OLED has always had an advantage over LED in terms of contrast, that gap has decreased. Though OLED can't improve on its already great black levels, the one way the technology has shown advancement is with brightness, and I expect this trend to continue in 2026. The LG G5 was the brightest OLED TV I tested this year, for instance, and it was brighter than the LCD TVs of only a few cycles ago. It effectively did this by layering two OLED panels on top of each other in what the company called "four stack."

I'd love to see improvements on the "more affordable" end of OLED, which hasn't seen any true upgrades in a long time. The $1,400 LG C5, for example, is not particularly different from the LG C4, and the LG C4 was based on the LG C3, and so on. 

If OLED is to compete with the new mini-LED threat, manufacturers need to make it more attractive to a wider range of buyers. By this, I mean OLED TVs need brighter panels across the board, starting with the entry-level models. While doubling the number of panels is obviously costly, there are other tweaks that OLED manufacturers can make, including voltage tweaks and improved filters.

Other things to consider

Thanks to advancements like Dolby Vision 2 and Samsung HDR10 Plus Advanced, the TVs announced at CES will be brighter than ever, and this brightness will actually be useful for compatible HDR movies and gaming.

While TV companies almost never talk about budget models at CES, the cutting-edge technology we've seen this year -- and in 2026 -- will undoubtedly trickle down to the budget end. What does this mean? Better picture quality for less money. 

Tariffs on imported products and the resulting inflation have been a wild card for tech products in 2025, and it remains unknown what effect this will have on next year's prices. Most TVs shown at CES are unlikely to come with a price tag, though. Some background discussions about pricing might happen during the show, given the convention's international nature, but the actual prices won't be revealed until months later.

The bottom line

We don't have long to wait for the latest in televisual goodies. CES 2026 starts on Jan. 6, so stay tuned to find out what's new. I am visiting CES in Las Vegas for the first time in a while, and I'll be more interested in the real benefits to you, the reader, rather than the attention-grabbing gadgets. I'm hopeful about seeing better, brighter and more affordable TVs than ever before.