We’ve heard more and more about new LCD screen technologies and how Apple plans to use them in its devices this year. Follow a breakdown of what mini-LED screen technology is, why Apple is going there soon with iPad and MacBook Pro, and what to expect from Apple’s 2021 plans.
Background
LED-backlit LCD monitors have replaced CCFL (fluorescent cold cathode) over the past decade as it offers a number of benefits in many aspects including reliability, longevity, larger color gamut, smaller physical size, power efficiency, dimming capability, and more.
While OLED screens (organic light emitting diode) have become the current choice for many flagship smartphones and smartwatches such as the iPhone 11 Pro and 12 Series and Apple Watch, mini-LED and micro-LED are ready to offer further improvements to the screens .
What is mini-LED screen technology?
Traditional LED taillight screens have several dozen to several hundred LEDs. As the name suggests, mini-LED screens use miniature lighting and can have more than a thousand complete eclipse zones (FALD).
Advantages of mini-LED:
- Higher contrast ratio
- Higher brightness
- Deeper blacks
- Power saving
- Less likely to burn in than OLED
- Use inorganic Gallium Nitride (GaN) and will not degrade like OLED over time
So, what are micro-LEDs? It is an order of magnitude smaller than the mini variant and is as small as 1/100 of the size of a traditional LED background in an LCD screen. It goes further with the advantages that mini-LED has than standard LED-powered LCD screens and can offer more than 30 times greater brightness compared to OLED.
The tricky part of producing high quality micro LED screens is that you dedicate one LED to each pixel of a screen. Semiconductor Engineering explain:
With MicroLED you can reduce it to the scale of ten microns. You place one in each pixel. It’s so much smaller and harder to do. It’s harder to physically place them where you want them. It is also more difficult to make the LEDs yourself so that they perform well.
Apple’s plans for iPad and MacBooks
It then makes sense that the two most important aspects for these new display technologies be costly and manufactured on a large scale, and that Apple first wants to do mini-LED with its larger portable devices and implement micro-LED with Apple Watch to get started.
Already in 2019, Kuo predicted that Apple’s iPad Pro and the 16-inch MacBook Pro are expected to see the switch to mini-LED is expected to be expected in Q4 2020. That did not happen, but reports pile up that the time is soon. More recent reports from TrendForce and Digitimes predict the next 12.9-inch iPad Pro to get mini-LED in Q1 2021.
And just yesterday, Macotakara published a report that the new large iPad Pro with mini-LED will be launched in March this year with a slightly thicker bowl to accommodate the new display technology.
Meanwhile, the new 14- and 16-inch M1 MacBook Pro models we expect also have the switch to mini-LED. It should be released somewhere this year.
As for micro-LED, we have not heard much about the shift yet. Apple Watch 6 / SE did not adopt the technology last year (after a report that it would happen), but it may be that Apple Watch Series 7 will be the first to make a micro-LED debut in the fall.
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