What is Mini LED? Next-gen screen for TVs and ‘future Apple products’ revealed

KEEP hearing about Mini LED but have no idea what it means?

We’ve put together a simple guide on what Mini LED screens are, and why they’re so ruddy good.

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What is Mini LED?

When it comes to screens, there are lots of types.

You’ve probably heard of an LCD and a plasma, but there are other premium displays available too: like OLED and Mini LED.

Your typical TV or mid-range smartphone will use an LCD screen, which stands for liquid-crystal display.

But these crystals don’t light up on their own – for that, you’d want an OLED.

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Instead an LCD screen uses lots of LEDs to “backlight” it, allowing you to see a picture.

Part of the problem with this method is that it doesn’t give the TV very much control over some of the finer aspects of video – like the highs and lows of brightness and contrast.

One way to solve this is to make the LEDs smaller, so you can fit more in.

A bit like cramming more pixels into a TV lets you offer more detail, the same is true of LEDs.

So a Mini LED TV is one where the LEDs are much smaller, with many more of them making up the screen.

That way, the TV can provide more detailed lighting in very specific areas of the screen.

The end result is that you get a more accurate representation of the original video.

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Mini LED vs Micro LED

There’s also another type of technology called Micro LED, which is slightly different.

Unlike an LED-backlit LCD TV, an OLED TV has diodes that produce their own light – rather than requiring a backlight.

This means every diode can be individually controlled.

With Micro LED, it’s the same concept – but with smaller (and therefore even more) diodes.

This will ultimately be better than Mini LED, but it’s not widely available yet.

What gadgets use Mini LED?

Mini LED is hard to find, because it’s still a very new technology.

Apple has long been rumoured to be working on the tech.

It’s expected that future iPad and MacBook models will eventually feature Mini LED displays.

This year, tech giants LG, Samsung and TCL are all unveiling Mini LED TVs.

But expect to pay a high price for this next-gen tech.

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