The Future of TVs: Mini LED Technology and its Potential to Disrupt the Market

One of the biggest problems with traditional LCD TVs is the processing behind them, which can be a major bottleneck when it comes to implementing advanced features like local dimming zones. While this technology has been around for years, it's still not widely adopted by mainstream TV manufacturers. However, recent advancements in mini LED technology have brought us closer to a future where high-quality LCD TVs become more affordable and accessible to the masses.

Mini LED TVs use small LEDs to illuminate the screen, rather than traditional backlighting with local dimming zones. This means that each pixel on the screen can be lit independently, resulting in better contrast and color accuracy. But the real game-changer is the sheer number of mini LEDs used in these TVs. While good LCD TVs might have a few hundred LEDs, mini LED models can have anywhere from 1,000 to 30,000 LEDs or more. This means that there are many more local dimming zones available, which can lead to better screen uniformity and overall image quality.

However, the biggest unknown when it comes to mini LED technology is how well each TV's processing implements the use of all these local dimming zones. If the software algorithms aren't developed to make effective use of these extra zones, then the potential benefits of mini LED technology could be wasted. And, as with any new technology, there's a serious processing overhead for all these extra zones, which could be a problem particularly on cheaper TVs with less powerful processors.

But what about OLEDs? Well, they don't have dimming zones to be controlled or processed in the same way. Each pixel is mapped directly with the display information and then lit accordingly. This means that OLEDs can produce true blacks, high contrast ratios, and excellent color accuracy. And, as a result, OLED TVs are often considered the gold standard for TV quality.

So, what does this mean for consumers? In short, it means that we may see a future where high-quality LCD TVs become more affordable and competitive with OLEDs. TCL, a brand known for its value-oriented TVs, has already shown off its 8K mini LED TVs, which offer close to the same performance as OLED TVs but at a lower price point. Samsung's latest QLED Neo range also uses mini LED technology, and LG has introduced its new QNED or QNED range, which also features mini LED.

But there's another player in the mix: Micro LED technology. While it's still not widely available and will be very expensive for now, Micro LED is thought of as an evolution of OLED technology. Each pixel on a Micro LED screen produces its own light, resulting in perfect blacks, higher brightness, better HDR abilities than OLEDs, and no risk of burning. However, Micro LED TVs are still limited to Samsung's modular The Wall setup and billionaire buyers for now. It won't be until next year at the earliest that we'll see more affordable options become available.

So, what do you need to know about mini LED technology? First, it means better contrast and image quality than traditional LCD TVs. Second, it means more local dimming zones, which can lead to better screen uniformity. And third, it means that high-quality LCD TVs may become more competitive with OLEDs in terms of price and performance.

Of course, there's a catch: the processing algorithms behind mini LED technology need to be well-developed in order for us to see the full benefits of these extra zones. If they're not implemented correctly, then we'll be paying for all those extra LEDs without getting the full benefit. But what about you? What TV are you using at the moment, and what new features would tempt you to upgrade? Let us know in the comments below. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button – we'll be bringing you all the latest OLED reviews and comparisons with mini LED TVs, so it's going to be a really interesting year in the world of TVs. Cheers for watching, and we'll catch you next time right here on The Tech Chat!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enokay hear me out because while i think oled tvs are fantastic and arguably the benchmark for watching movies and playing games with the big news from ces being lg's new oled evo panels which promised to boost brightness by a modest 20 and even then only for the flagship super expensive models with most just getting a new processor and not much else i'm kind of thinking that a lack of innovation over the last couple of years uh paired with limited brightness and still relatively high prices for oled tvs means new technologies like mini led could actually change the whole industry brighter much improved contrast that's closer than ever to oled no risk of burning and crucially they should be cheaper so with mini led coming in from below offering possibly a better value proposition to oled and also micro led coming in from above as the fancy new ultra high end tech that may soon trickle down to consumer tvs could oled become a bit redundant hey guys i'm summertech chap and first of all i want to apologize for all the upcoming acronyms or the led lcd q led q ned micro led mini there's so many by the end of it you'll hate me and also tvs generally but hopefully you will find this useful and also be as excited as i am for all the new technologies coming in the tv world and if you do want to see more from me don't forget to hit that subscribe button so this guy on the wall behind me is the lg g10 it's the 77-inch model which costs about five and a half thousand pounds and i absolutely love this thing the incredible contrast you get with oled means you get those inky blacks rich colors and we even get great gaming performance with this thanks to low response times 120 hertz g-sync hdmi 2.1 plus the whole thing is just ridiculously thin so it's pretty good as you would expect for five and a half grand and of course oled's biggest advantage comes from having each pixel being able to self-illuminate with no backlight unlike a traditional led lcd tv so if you're watching a movie and an area of the picture is meant to be black it will be as each pixel can be turned off individually so don't get me wrong oled tvs are great but there are a few issues firstly while they are a lot better than they were say five years ago especially when it comes to brightness which is the traditional weakness of oled they've only improved incrementally over the last couple of years i think it's either five or six years now in a row that i've been going to ces in vegas where they show off all the new tvs although of course this year with covert it was all online only but for the last couple of years or so the big upgrades particularly with say lg's tvs have just been new processors which promise slightly better image processing and a bit better ai upscaling which is very important when it comes to 4k in particular 8k but i don't think we've really seen anything that's made people want to rush out and upgrade their tv but aside from some modest ai image and processor upgrades at this year's cs lg and sony introduced slightly brighter oled models for 2021 which is exactly what oled needs right now but frustratingly they're limited to the higher end models like lg's new g1 and sony's master series a90j with more affordable oleds like the popular lgc and b series just basically getting a new chip inside so arguably there's a bit of a lack of innovation but as well as that oled tvs are still really really expensive lg's entry-level 2020 oled the 55-inch b10 is not on a reasonable 1100 pounds or 1200 but the pick of the range would be the lg c10 65-inch which launched at about 2600 pounds or so and even after seven months is still over two grand vizio's new range of oles is a little easier to swallow though it doesn't get quite as bright as the more expensive rival oleds but it's a step in the right direction at least then there's the small risk of burn-in although to be honest i don't think for most people it's ever going to be a problem unless you turned off all the safety features like the pixel refreshes and the standby time and then just left a static screen or had the same hud elements on for hours and hours and days at a time then yes maybe you do risk it but i think for most normal people you're never gonna really experience burning with a modern oled on the other hand mini led being an evolution of traditional led lcd tech doesn't suffer from any burning issues and it can also go a long way to solve one of the biggest problems with traditional lcd tech if the processing behind them is implemented correctly the fact is most people don't have an oled tv i think it makes up about three percent of the market share so the vast majority of people still have regular led lcd tvs which are lit by a backlight made up of a grid of leds the problem is small groups of leds are used to light dozens if not hundreds of pixels which are called local dimming zones but now we have mini led which well as it says on the 10 is just a smaller led so you can cram in thousands and thousands more so for example a good lcd tv will have a few hundred leds while mini led models can have anywhere from 1 000 up to 30 000 in the case of some top end models and having more leds means more local dimming zones and better screen uniformity overall as there are smaller gaps between each led the problem is the biggest unknown when it comes to mini led is just how well each tv's processing implements the use of all these local dimming zones just because the tv is mini led isn't a guarantee in itself that it'll be automatically better if the software algorithms aren't developed to make effective use of those extra zones then the potential benefits to say contrast in particular could be wasted and not just that there's also a serious processing overhead for all these extra zones so this could potentially be an issue particularly on cheaper tvs with less powerful processors and so an advantage of oleds is that they don't have dimming zones to be controlled or processed in the same way instead each pixel is mapped with the display information directly and then is lit accordingly so these new mini led tvs could offer close to not quite the same but similar performance to oled while crucially being a lot cheaper for example tcl who are best known for their slightly more value-oriented tvs brought home just how good valley mini led tvs could be even 8k ones compared to oled and it's not just lesser known or budget brands that are jumping onto this mini led bandwagon samsung's newest qled neo range uses mini led and also lg introduced their new qned or qned range which is definitely not confusing at all which also uses mini led so i'm thinking if i can buy a mini led tv that offers similar contrast and a similar image quality to an oled tv while also being brighter for a lot less money that seems like a pretty good deal but that's only half the story because to confuse things even further we also have micro led tvs which are much further from being available and will be very expensive to start out with but think of micro led as an evolution of oled and so each pixel on a micro led produces its own light which means you get those perfect blacks but with higher brightness better hdr abilities than oled and also no risk of burning either i genuinely think micro led is the future but right now it's limited to samsung's crazy modular the wall setup and also billionaires on their fancy yachts can buy some massive very very expensive ones for you and me i don't think micro led tvs are going to be really an option until probably next year at the earliest and even then they will be very expensive but my point is with micro led trickling down from above and mini led offering better value from below it could push out oled in the middle unless we start to see some bigger innovations in the oled world and it's not just tvs either i think mini led based monitors and laptops are just as exciting although it looks like for now at least we'll be limited to high-end panels to start with although apple is expected to add mini led displays to their upcoming ipad and macbook pros which is pretty exciting so i really am genuinely excited to see what mini led can do because either we get new better value tvs that offer similar performance to this but for less money which is great or it gives brands a kick up the back side to innovate a bit more and actually make worthwhile upgrades year on year not just whack in a new processor and maybe add 20 brightness to the flagship models the caveat though and something to look out for in many led tv reviews is how well each model handles all those extra dimming zones if the processing is poor then you'll be paying for all those extra leds without getting the full benefit but what about you what tv are you using at the moment and what new features would tempt you to upgrade let me know in the comments below but make sure you have hit that subscribe button and stay tuned as i'll be bringing you all the latest oled reviews and also comparisons with mini leds so it's going to be a really interesting year in the world of tvs cheers for watching and i'll catch you next time right here on the tech chatokay hear me out because while i think oled tvs are fantastic and arguably the benchmark for watching movies and playing games with the big news from ces being lg's new oled evo panels which promised to boost brightness by a modest 20 and even then only for the flagship super expensive models with most just getting a new processor and not much else i'm kind of thinking that a lack of innovation over the last couple of years uh paired with limited brightness and still relatively high prices for oled tvs means new technologies like mini led could actually change the whole industry brighter much improved contrast that's closer than ever to oled no risk of burning and crucially they should be cheaper so with mini led coming in from below offering possibly a better value proposition to oled and also micro led coming in from above as the fancy new ultra high end tech that may soon trickle down to consumer tvs could oled become a bit redundant hey guys i'm summertech chap and first of all i want to apologize for all the upcoming acronyms or the led lcd q led q ned micro led mini there's so many by the end of it you'll hate me and also tvs generally but hopefully you will find this useful and also be as excited as i am for all the new technologies coming in the tv world and if you do want to see more from me don't forget to hit that subscribe button so this guy on the wall behind me is the lg g10 it's the 77-inch model which costs about five and a half thousand pounds and i absolutely love this thing the incredible contrast you get with oled means you get those inky blacks rich colors and we even get great gaming performance with this thanks to low response times 120 hertz g-sync hdmi 2.1 plus the whole thing is just ridiculously thin so it's pretty good as you would expect for five and a half grand and of course oled's biggest advantage comes from having each pixel being able to self-illuminate with no backlight unlike a traditional led lcd tv so if you're watching a movie and an area of the picture is meant to be black it will be as each pixel can be turned off individually so don't get me wrong oled tvs are great but there are a few issues firstly while they are a lot better than they were say five years ago especially when it comes to brightness which is the traditional weakness of oled they've only improved incrementally over the last couple of years i think it's either five or six years now in a row that i've been going to ces in vegas where they show off all the new tvs although of course this year with covert it was all online only but for the last couple of years or so the big upgrades particularly with say lg's tvs have just been new processors which promise slightly better image processing and a bit better ai upscaling which is very important when it comes to 4k in particular 8k but i don't think we've really seen anything that's made people want to rush out and upgrade their tv but aside from some modest ai image and processor upgrades at this year's cs lg and sony introduced slightly brighter oled models for 2021 which is exactly what oled needs right now but frustratingly they're limited to the higher end models like lg's new g1 and sony's master series a90j with more affordable oleds like the popular lgc and b series just basically getting a new chip inside so arguably there's a bit of a lack of innovation but as well as that oled tvs are still really really expensive lg's entry-level 2020 oled the 55-inch b10 is not on a reasonable 1100 pounds or 1200 but the pick of the range would be the lg c10 65-inch which launched at about 2600 pounds or so and even after seven months is still over two grand vizio's new range of oles is a little easier to swallow though it doesn't get quite as bright as the more expensive rival oleds but it's a step in the right direction at least then there's the small risk of burn-in although to be honest i don't think for most people it's ever going to be a problem unless you turned off all the safety features like the pixel refreshes and the standby time and then just left a static screen or had the same hud elements on for hours and hours and days at a time then yes maybe you do risk it but i think for most normal people you're never gonna really experience burning with a modern oled on the other hand mini led being an evolution of traditional led lcd tech doesn't suffer from any burning issues and it can also go a long way to solve one of the biggest problems with traditional lcd tech if the processing behind them is implemented correctly the fact is most people don't have an oled tv i think it makes up about three percent of the market share so the vast majority of people still have regular led lcd tvs which are lit by a backlight made up of a grid of leds the problem is small groups of leds are used to light dozens if not hundreds of pixels which are called local dimming zones but now we have mini led which well as it says on the 10 is just a smaller led so you can cram in thousands and thousands more so for example a good lcd tv will have a few hundred leds while mini led models can have anywhere from 1 000 up to 30 000 in the case of some top end models and having more leds means more local dimming zones and better screen uniformity overall as there are smaller gaps between each led the problem is the biggest unknown when it comes to mini led is just how well each tv's processing implements the use of all these local dimming zones just because the tv is mini led isn't a guarantee in itself that it'll be automatically better if the software algorithms aren't developed to make effective use of those extra zones then the potential benefits to say contrast in particular could be wasted and not just that there's also a serious processing overhead for all these extra zones so this could potentially be an issue particularly on cheaper tvs with less powerful processors and so an advantage of oleds is that they don't have dimming zones to be controlled or processed in the same way instead each pixel is mapped with the display information directly and then is lit accordingly so these new mini led tvs could offer close to not quite the same but similar performance to oled while crucially being a lot cheaper for example tcl who are best known for their slightly more value-oriented tvs brought home just how good valley mini led tvs could be even 8k ones compared to oled and it's not just lesser known or budget brands that are jumping onto this mini led bandwagon samsung's newest qled neo range uses mini led and also lg introduced their new qned or qned range which is definitely not confusing at all which also uses mini led so i'm thinking if i can buy a mini led tv that offers similar contrast and a similar image quality to an oled tv while also being brighter for a lot less money that seems like a pretty good deal but that's only half the story because to confuse things even further we also have micro led tvs which are much further from being available and will be very expensive to start out with but think of micro led as an evolution of oled and so each pixel on a micro led produces its own light which means you get those perfect blacks but with higher brightness better hdr abilities than oled and also no risk of burning either i genuinely think micro led is the future but right now it's limited to samsung's crazy modular the wall setup and also billionaires on their fancy yachts can buy some massive very very expensive ones for you and me i don't think micro led tvs are going to be really an option until probably next year at the earliest and even then they will be very expensive but my point is with micro led trickling down from above and mini led offering better value from below it could push out oled in the middle unless we start to see some bigger innovations in the oled world and it's not just tvs either i think mini led based monitors and laptops are just as exciting although it looks like for now at least we'll be limited to high-end panels to start with although apple is expected to add mini led displays to their upcoming ipad and macbook pros which is pretty exciting so i really am genuinely excited to see what mini led can do because either we get new better value tvs that offer similar performance to this but for less money which is great or it gives brands a kick up the back side to innovate a bit more and actually make worthwhile upgrades year on year not just whack in a new processor and maybe add 20 brightness to the flagship models the caveat though and something to look out for in many led tv reviews is how well each model handles all those extra dimming zones if the processing is poor then you'll be paying for all those extra leds without getting the full benefit but what about you what tv are you using at the moment and what new features would tempt you to upgrade let me know in the comments below but make sure you have hit that subscribe button and stay tuned as i'll be bringing you all the latest oled reviews and also comparisons with mini leds so it's going to be a really interesting year in the world of tvs cheers for watching and i'll catch you next time right here on the tech chat\n"