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Tom’s Guide
Tom’s Guide
Technology
Nick Pino

I saw Samsung’s 2026 flagship OLED and Micro RGB TVs side by side — here's the one I like more

The S95H OLED and Samsung R85H Micro RGB TV.

Samsung isn’t going to make it easy to pick out a TV in 2026 — it’s got two flagship models sporting vastly different technology that, having seen them, are both spectacles in their own right.

The two Samsung flagship vying for a spot in your living room in 2026 are the new Samsung S95H OLED (the successor to last year’s award-winning S95F OLED) and the all-new R95H, Samsung’s first-ever Micro RGB TV.

I got the chance to see them side-by-side at Samsung’s First Look event held at CES 2026 — and even I’m having a hard time choosing between them.

Samsung S95H: the returning OLED champion

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

Even on the brightly lit show floor, I had no problem seeing every single detail in the demo content Samsung had playing on repeat.

The Samsung S95H is going to be a movie-lover’s dream. It sports those perfect black levels that you’ve come to expect from Samsung Display’s self-emissive QD-OLED panels and combines it with the brand’s Glare-Free technology. Even on the brightly lit show floor, I had no problem seeing every single detail in the demo content Samsung had playing on repeat.

Framing the S95H is a new metal bezel that serves as the TV’s wall-mount. A Samsung representative said that this will ship in every box and will be the preferred way to hang the screen instead of a standard VESA mount.

On the backside of the S95H are four full-spec HDMI 2.1 ports, but if you need more than that, Samsung says that the S95H will be Wireless One-Connect Box-ready. That would give you access to eight more HDMI ports and a cleaner look if you don’t want any wires hanging from your screen.

I’d rather have seen some real content on it instead of the pre-canned loop Samsung had playing, but I will say that I’m very impressed with what I saw — even when stacked against the cutting-edge R95H Micro RGB TV.

Samsung R95H Micro-RGB TV: Ultra-bright, ultra-colorful

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

Strap in, you’re going to be hearing a lot about Micro RGB TVs this week. Nearly every brand brought one to CES, and Samsung’s is the first I’ve laid eyes on.

It’s more or less exactly what I expected. Samsung's R95H is as bright as any Mini-LED TV I’ve seen, but it has a slightly larger color volume. Scenes from "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" I watched on my Samsung S95D OLED looked significantly brighter and richer on the R95H.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the overall design quite lives up to the picture quality — the 115-inch model directly across from the S95H OLED was around an inch thick. That new RGB backlight system is apparently pretty robust.

There was noticeably less blooming than I was expecting.

The good news is that there was noticeably less blooming than I was expecting. Because the RGB LEDs need to interact with one another to create non-primary colors, I was expecting to see some light spillage into the black areas of the picture. That simply wasn’t the case in-person.

And yet, there’s just something about the S95H’s image that seemed crisper and just as colorful — even if it was slightly dimmer overall.

Samsung S95H vs R95H Micro RGB outlook

I reserve the right to change this opinion after I get a closer look at both screens later this year, but as it stands right now, the S95H has a slight edge on the R95H.

Yes, the R95H Micro RGB is brighter. Yes, it’s technically more colorful. But in a room where I could see it side-by-side with the S95H, none of that mattered. The S95H simply looked better to my eyes.

Will I need to see the S95H OLED play real, live content before I can definitively hand it the crown? Absolutely. But I think Samsung’s 2026 flagship OLED might just have accidentally outshone the company’s latest and greatest display technology.

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