- LG Display has shown off ‘OLED SE’ screens – cheaper but brighter for budget TVs
- 120Hz refresh rate and up to 1,000 nits of peak brightness
- Coming in 2026 from “major customers”
When it comes to the best TVs, you know the drill: OLEDs are revered for premium image quality, while mini-LEDs are brighter and cheaper. But LG Display may disrupt that with a new kind of OLED panel it calls ‘OLED SE’.
OLED SE is designed for entry-level TVs, and while its specifications aren’t even in the same zip code as the Primary Tandem OLEDs of the LG G5, it could be a game-changer for affordable OLEDs such as the LG B5.
Like the panel in the B5, OLED SE has a refresh rate of 120Hz. But it delivers a claimed 1,000 nits of brightness, which is significantly more than the 668 nits we measured on the B5.
However, I should mention here that LG Display claimed that the Primary RGB Tandem panel used in the LG G5 can hit 4,000 nits, but we measured the LG G5 at a maximum of 2,268 nits, so we’ll have to see if 1,000 nits is real-world or not.
Still, this could make OLED more competitive for budget-conscious TV buyers who might otherwise go for mini-LED due to its sheer bang-for-buck.
How does OLED SE cut the cost of an OLED TV?
As LG Display explained in a Q&A at CES 2026: “SE retains OLED’s pixel-level dimming and core advantages, including superior HDR picture quality, perfect black levels, and outstanding response times, enabling clearly superior image quality compared to LCD TVs in a similar price range.”
So why is it cheaper? According to our colleagues at What Hi-Fi?, one of the ways in which LG Display has managed to reduce the price of the OLED SE panels is by going without the polarizer.
Polarizers reduce reflection and glare, but also reduces the amount of light that a panel emits, so by binning it you get more brightness and less cost. The downside, of course, is that you also end up with a more reflective TV.
TV manufacturers could deal with that by adding their own anti-glare layer, and that could be in the form of their own polarizer, or a matte layer like the one used in the Samsung S95F (which we’ve been told can be inexpensive to apply). These may affe
LG Display doesn’t just supply LG: it makes panels for all kinds of manufacturers, including Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Hisense and Philips. It said it will be supplying OLED SE to “major customers” in 2026.
LG Display told FlatPanelsHD that it will be making the OLED SE panels in five sizes to begin with: 48 inches, 55 inches, 65 inches, 77 inches and 83 inches.
Those sizes just happen to correlate with the five sizes of the LG B5, and of course they’re generally the most popular sizes of mid-range or high-end TVs. So it feels like a safe bet that we’ll see OLED SE in the LG B6 – but LG has told us that we won’t really hear more about that TV until the spring.
The best TVs for all budgets
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