Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

The most innovative TV tech of 2023

While 2023 was more evolution than revolution for TVs, a few standout innovations this year set the stage for big competition among TVs in 2024.

In 2022, Samsung Display’s QD-OLED display technology made headlines as the most innovative display technology since OLED was introduced to consumer TVs by LG some 10 years prior. In a remarkably timely effort to clap back at Samsung, LG Display unleashed the most meaningful update to its OLED display technology in 10 years, and this year, that tech earns our top award for the most innovative TV tech of 2023.

You might be surprised to learn, however, that the TV that uses that innovative TV tech didn’t earn our Most Innovative TV award for 2023. Instead, it was an entirely different kind of TV, also made by LG. Let’s dive in.

Want to see the rest? Check out our full list of the most innovative tech products of 2023!

Winner: LG MLA OLED panel technology

LG MLA OLED technology is the most innovative TV technology of 2023.
Digital Trends

When Samsung made waves with the QD-OLED technology in its S95B OLED TV, LG immediately shot back with MLA OLED technology, making it look like the tech had been set aside for just such an occasion. Whatever the true inside baseball story may be, we were delighted to see it unleashed this year.

Practically speaking, MLA — or, Micro Lens Array — technology makes LG’s OLED panels significantly brighter than they’ve been in the past. This is notable not only because one of the few complaints about OLED TVs and monitors was that they couldn’t get as bright as QLED TVs, but because Samsung Display’s QD-OLED technology was posting some unprecedented brightness numbers.

LG achieved this boost in brightness in a really interesting way. Rather than tweaking organic compounds, juicing up electricity, or adding clever new heat-dissipation technology, LG Display solved its brightness limitations by homing in on efficiency.

In effect, MLA is a thin sheet of material upon which millions of tiny convex lenses have been printed. Those lenses capture light that normally gets scattered inside an OLED panel, and focuses it at the desired destination: your eyeballs.

It may sound like a simple solution, but its implementation is a true feat of engineering. The result of MLA, paired with other brightness-boosting efforts made by LG, sees brightness increases of up to 70% over traditional W-RGB OLED TVs. In the end, LG’s Gallery Series G3 OLED wound up being the brightest OLED TV I’ve ever tested.

With OLED brightness now of significantly lower concern than before, LG has made it even harder for QLED TV makers to claim their TVs are superior. This, naturally, will incite the next salvo in the ongoing TV brightness war that’s been raging for several years already.

Runner up: LG M-Series

An LG M3 Wireless OLED box.
Zeke Jones / Digital Trends

While MLA OLED panel tech may be the most innovative TV tech of 2023, it was ironically outshined by an LG TV that didn’t include it. For our money, the LG M-Series wireless OLED TV struck us as the most innovative TV this year.

Since MLA technology is still being scaled up, it isn’t available in the 77-inch screen size that LG Electronics opted to use when fashioning an OLED TV with wireless signal delivery. While you still have to plug LG’s M3 OLED into the wall for power, that’s the only wire tethering it to anything at all.

With the LG M3 wireless OLED TV, all cable connections are made to a wireless transmitter box that LG wryly calls a “zero-connect” box (Samsung has long touted its “One-Connect” box with a single cable connection as a hallmark of its TV innovation). While the Zero-Connect box’s wireless transmission range is limited to about 30 feet and requires a clear line of sight for uninterrupted signal delivery, it’s still a huge leap toward a wireless TV future that eliminates the rat’s nest of cables commonly associated with home entertainment systems of the past.

Honorable mention: Samsung The Frame TV

Samsung's 65-inch Class 'The Frame' QLED 4K Smart TV displaying a famous oil painting.
Samsung

Samsung’s second-gen QD-OLED tech managed to find its way into two of the best TVs we tested this year: the Samsung S95C and the Sony A95K — the latter of which has been crowned as the best TV of the year by myself, and at several industry shootout events. However, it is one of Samsung’s lifestyle TVs that impressed me most in 2023.

Samsung’s The Frame TV is a QLED TV that’s packaged up in a way that it already looks more like framed art than a TV, but the 2023 version of The Frame has a new matte screen finish that, paired with level backlighting and color management, yields an image that is a dead ringer for a piece of art on canvas. The texture is so realistic, I just had to reach out and touch the screen the first time I saw it. The illusion is remarkably convincing and makes for a TV that can seamlessly blend in with just about any decor concept.

Editors' Recommendations

Caleb Denison
Digital Trends Editor at Large Caleb Denison is a sought-after writer, speaker, and television correspondent with unmatched…
The most innovative tech products of 2022
Most innovative products of 2022

We spend a lot of time here at Digital Trends fussing over the best tech products on the market, but just because something is the best doesn't necessarily mean it pushes the envelope or drives the world of technology forward in any way. So rather than recapping the best products of 2022, we wanted to take a moment to shine a spotlight on the ones that did something interesting, unusual, and potentially transformative in their respective category. With that in mind, here are our picks for the most innovative tech products of 2022.
Most innovative laptop: Asus ROG Flow Z13

The ROG Flow Z13 shouldn't be possible. By category, it's a 2-in-1 gaming laptop -- that is, a Surface Pro with some RGB lighting and a discrete GPU inside. It's the first of its kind, but as a concept, I wasn't sure I understood the premise. A gaming device this compact is going to be seriously held back by how small it is. But once I got the thing in my hands, I realized how genius the design really was.

Read more
The most innovative TV tech of 2022
QD-OLED panel technology

The world of TV technology has always been pretty cutthroat as the race for bigger, brighter, clearer, darker, and more powerful pushes ever forward to blow our minds with every pixel. The past decade alone has seen many innovations in televisions: 4K and 8K resolution, OLED, QLED, mini-LED, micro-LED, High Dynamic Range (HDR) video, and Dolby Atmos surround sound -- that’s a lot of progress since 2012.

And whether you've recently purchased a new TV or are just starting to Google around for the latest and greatest panels on the market, you may be aware of the two major frontrunners of television tech: OLED and QLED. While the former, championed by LG, is considered the leader in terms of black levels and contrast, the latter, led by Samsung, has been wearing the crown for unparalleled brightness. But 2022 may go down as the year that leveled the playing field or, rather, smashed it together, with the introduction of QD-OLED, a combination of the best of both worlds that has brought us some of the most stunning and beautiful televisions we've ever seen. But this year’s developments in TV tech also go beyond just the QLED/OLED battle and have felt the most exciting in years. Here’s what got TV nerds’ (ahem, enthusiasts’) juices flowing in 2022.

Read more
Why you should wait to buy a new 2020 TV
TCL’s 8K Vidrian mini-LED

With CES 2020 in the rearview mirror, we’re about to see 2019 TV prices drop. You might be tempted to snatch up a TV set for the Super Bowl or take advantage of what seems like an unbelievable deal online, but if you can hold off for a few more months, I suggest you do -- because the TVs I just saw at CES are going to be significantly better than what you can buy right now.

Simply put: New TVs due to arrive this spring have better tech inside, are better future-proofed, and will be more competitively priced.

Read more