One of the biggest advances in TV design that came at the forefront CES 2021 is a mini-LED, the extra tiny LEDs used in the taillights of some of the latest and greatest smart TVs. 2021 is becoming the year of the mini-LED TV, as Samsung and LG, along with TCL, use mini-LED backlight technology to make TVs better than ever before.
Here’s our quick overview of which TVs will feature mini-LED in 2021, why mini-LED is such an improvement over traditional LCD sets, and why this everyday audio technology is one of the most exciting developments for TV buyers in years .
Basics of Mini-LED
Mini-LEDs may seem like a relatively small change, but the technology offers real improvements to LCD TVs. Lightening and brightness are an important factor in making a great TV picture. Coupled with color and contrast, brightness makes a big difference in how well a TV can display an image. You can find a more detailed explanation of mini-LED technology in our guide Micro-LED versus Mini-LED: What’s the difference?, but these are the broad outlines.
As TVs have evolved over the decades, the technology used to place moving pictures in our homes has changed dramatically. Although older cathode ray tube and plasma technologies and current OLED TVs are not self-avoiding (producing their own light), most TVs on the market have needed a separate rear light as part of the TV screen since the move to LCD panels. It once meant fluorescent lighting, but modern TVs use smaller, more efficient LED taillights.
Behind the LCD panel is one of the various options to illuminate the background, which makes the TV screen glow. On basic TVs, this backlight can take the form of edge lighting, which makes the screen ring with LEDs, or a full disc backlighting, which uses a matrix of LED lights to provide consistent backlight across the screen, and more premium TVs contains a complete range with local eclipse, which divides that lighting matrix into separate addressable zones. These zones can be independently illuminated or dimmed, and the brightness is mapped to match the bright or shadowy sections of the screen for a more dynamic picture.
This local eclipse is one of the drivers for the introduction of HDR formats, with LED brightness that can reach higher levels than earlier fluorescent panels, with more controlled backlight. The result is a combination of lighting technology and media layout that creates deeper shadows, brighter highlights and brighter color.
Mini LEDs promise significant improvement over this development, enabling a much larger number of discrete dimming zones. Mini-LEDs are about one-fifth the size of a standard LED light and are very small. LEDs in the mini range are only 200 microns. The smaller LEDs illuminate a smaller part of the screen and can be grouped closer together, so that the areas can be limited to just a handful of pixels instead of portions of the screen that can measure square centimeters.
But this is not the only thing that mini-LED offers. With the smaller physical dimensions of these individual LEDs, LCD TVs can be thinner than they have ever been before.
So with mini-LED promising thinner TVs that look better and brighter than ever before, you would expect a big price increase, and to see this new technology only in the most expensive models, right? Well, this is where mini-LED offers the best feature – affordability.
You will pay a little more for mini-LED equipment in the coming months, but probably not much. TCL’s impressive 6-series Roku TVs offer a mini-LED backlight for an extremely reasonable price – under $ 1,000 for all but the largest 75-inch model – and the improvement in picture quality is clear. We can only hope that the same price-conscious philosophy is applied to Samsung and LG’s latest models, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Manufacturers bet big on mini-LED TVs
TCL launched its first mini-LED TV in 2019, but in 2020 TCL 6 Series Roku TV (R635) refined the technology and brought it to an affordable TV. The result was one of the best TV values we’ve ever seen, and Samsung and LG clearly paid attention, as both have new mini-LED TVs on the way this year.
Now that major manufacturers have turned their attention to mini-LEDs, there are already new innovations built on top of these small diodes.
Samsung plans to bring the new technology with Samsung’s premium 4K and 8K TVs this year Neo QLED line. Samsung’s mini-LED technology incorporates small diffusers built into each mini-LED, eliminating the need for a separate diffuser panel between the taillight and the LCD.
Samsung connects these mini-LEDs with its QLED quantum-enhanced LCD panels and calls the new models Neo QLED, and it takes center stage on all of Samsung’s premium 4K and 8K TVs. We have been very fond of Samsung QLED TVs, and we are excited to see how the new models are enhanced with the new technology.
LG is also jumping on the mini-LED bandwagon, adding the small taillights to several mid-range LCD TVs they name. LG QNED.
LG is taking another attack, adding mini-LED taillights to its mid-range Nanocell TVs, and upgrading the panels with a hybrid technology that combines Nanocell filtering and quantum color enhancement. The trio of improvements may make LG’s new QNED TV series the best LCD-based TV on the market, but to be sure, we need to win it.
Ultimately, TCL is the only company offering mini-LED TVs that already have mini-LED sets on the market. After TCL introduced mini-LED to its 8-series TVs in 2019 and the award-winning 6-series Roku TV in 2020, TCL launches TCL OD-Zero, a new implementation of mini-LED that eliminates the gaps between the mini-LED taillight and the LCD panel. The result should not only be slimmer TV designs, but also a better implementation of mini-LED.
TCL’s existing mini-LED designs will sell through the course of the new year, and the 2020 6-Series 4K Series will continue to be the best 4K offering in the new year. The TCL 6 Series model range will be expanded with new 8K models in 2021, but mini-LED will still be one of the defining features of the value-focused smart TVs.
Do you have to put up with a mini-LED TV?
With new mini-LED TVs on the horizon, but at least a few months away, the reasonable question that TV buyers should ask is whether mini-LEDs are worth the wait. Do you have to put up with a mini-LED TV?
The answer is yes, but you do not have to. We TCL 6 Series Roku TV (R635) Review The affordable smart TV was in part called an editorial choice because the mini-LED background provided better dimming and brightness control, and it is still at the top of our best TV list as the best TV value on the market.
If you want to wait for a similar mini-LED set from Samsung or LG, you have to wait until the TVs start this spring. We expect to get more details on models and prices in February, and we estimate that the new TVs will be launched in March or April.
Between the best budgets, we will henceforth recommend that buyers opt for mini-LED if it is available. The improvement in picture quality is significant, and the rise in the price of a TV is negligible, making it a must for TV buyers in the coming years.