How Mini-LEDs Are Shaping the Future of Home Entertainment

They're cheaper to manufacture and provide a nice alternative to more expensive options

Samsung

Mini-LEDs have many benefits, including making pictures brighter, more contrasty, and almost as good as OLED, all without jacking up the price of our favorite gadgets. But there are also some disadvantages, like limited viewing angles and color shifts.

So, is mini-LED the right choice for your home entertainment needs? Let's find out.

Today’s laptops and tablets typically use LCD screens, which comprise a backlight layer and a layer of colored LCD pixels on top. The backlight shines through the pixels, adding color and becoming opaque to block the backlight. The problem is that the backlight can still bleed through the pixel layer, causing a halo effect. To counter this, the screen can switch off parts of the backlight, but the backlight sections are relatively large, so they still spill over.

By contrast, OLED screens have pixels that each have their own light. This lets you vary color and intensity per pixel, leading to amazing color and contrast. If a pixel on the screen is supposed to be black, it stays black, which is one reason that you see true black when viewing OLED screens (and it's great for contrast).

To compare, mini-LEDs work like regular LCD screens but with much smaller backlights made from tiny LEDs. This lets you dim smaller regions of the screen, getting closer to the quality of an OLED display, without the expense of building an OLED display.

However, since it is still an LCD screen, you won't get the true black that you find on OLED screens. The trade-off, however, is that you can expect a brighter display than is achievable with OLED technology.

There are other disadvantages too, such as a limited viewing angle on mini-LED displays, which can be problematic if the display you're using is in a large room where not all viewing angles will be straight on.

If OLED is so good, why not just use it for everything? Because it’s expensive to make, especially at large sizes. OLED is perfect for camera viewfinders or for phones and smaller devices because the price/size ratio is acceptable. But making them at larger sizes is still expensive, even though the price has dropped over the last few years.

On the other hand, mini-LEDs are less expensive to make, and they look better than LCD screens, but they're also still more expensive than traditional LEDs. These factors, combined with the decreasing prices of OLED screens, have led to a lower-than-expected adoption rate.

One thing mini-LED has going for it is lower power consumption, which might be helpful as more devices gain AI capabilities. AI is noticeably power-hungry, so manufacturers may turn to mini-LED screens in TVs, infotainment systems, and even small electronics to help balance the power needs of these devices.

The main use for mini-LEDs is in TVs, which really benefit from the extra contrast and the lack of halos. Imagine that you’re watching a sci-fi movie with bright spaceships and stars on a deep black background. With mini-LEDs, these ships and stars will be more halo-free.

You may have seen some Samsung TVs advertised as Neo QLED. This is Samsung's line of mini-LED TVs. Sony also has miniLED TVs in its BRAVIA lineup and several other manufacturers like LG, TCL, and Hisense.

An additional feature of these TVs is that they have virtually non-existent bezels. The frame around the screen is so thin that it’s almost nonexistent. This means you get the largest possible display area in a (sometimes) smaller frame.

Sony

Even Apple may be leaning into mini-LEDs for some displays. One rumor is that Apple plans to put mini-LED into its New Apple Studio Display, which could be upgraded in 2025. However, the company has pulled back from some plans to include the technology in other displays.

All this comes together to indicate that mini-LED TVs are likely here to stay, and mini-LEDs are being more widely adopted into other devices. So, if you're considering a mini-LED TV for your home entertainment system, this technology should be around for a long while.

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