Podcast #963" Micro vs Mini LED and Rob Jones CTO of Enclave Audio

Mini-LED gets cheaper: How tiny new lights could improve your next big LCD TV

The new TCL 6-Series is powered by smaller LEDs and starts at $650. Here's why that matters. Full article here...

What's the Difference between Micro and Mini LED?

MicroLED displays, like Sony's Crystal LED and Samsung's The Wall, use millions of LEDs, one for each pixel. Essentially, you're looking directly at the LEDs which are creating the picture. And while each individual MicroLED is tiny, the modular nature of MicroLED means it can get truly gigantic.

Mini-LEDs are found inside normal-size TVs -- TCL is currently selling versions from 55- to 75-inches -- but the LEDs themselves are much larger than MicroLEDs. Just like the standard LEDs found in current TVs, they're used to power the backlight of the television. A liquid crystal layer, the LCD itself, modulates that light to create the image. MicroLED isn't LCD at all, it's a whole new TV technology that also happens to use LEDs.

Direct Lit with Mini vs Full LED

Local dimming is a feature on LED TVs that dims the backlight behind parts of the screen that are displaying black. This makes blacks appear deeper and darker on those parts of the screen, which can be a big bonus for people who watch videos with darker scenes, like movies and TV shows. The more LEDs a TV has the finer the granularity of this process.

A typical Direct Lit LED Array has hundreds of LED Zones to light the 8.2 Million pixels. A huge improvement over a single light source for the entire TV. Let's look at the Vizo 75 inch P series Quantum X. A very good TV by RTNGS.com standard. It has 485 zones. That means each zone is covering 16.9K pixels. Even with this "limitation" RTNGS.com gives it an 8.4 for watching movies and HDR content.

Now take a look at a TV with 25,000 mini-LEDs arrayed across the back of the TV. That means each LED is responsible for 328 pixels! Much more control which translates to higher contrast Two such TVs are the TCL 8 and 6 Series. The 8 Series has just over 25,000 mini LEDs while the 6 Series has only a thousand. Still twice as good as a typical Direct Array LED TV.

Buying Advice

At this year's CES we saw OLED, Micro, and Mini LED TVS. All have their place. Micro LED may give OLED a run for the money because it has similar performance and will be easier and less costly to scale up to very large screen sizes. To date you can't buy a micro LED. When they show up they will be at a premium but should eventually come down to less than OLED. Especially at the larger screen sizes.

Mini LED is here! TCL has two models on the market and LG is not very far behind. With much improved performance over the current line of LED TVs this technology gets you very close to OLED performance for much less money. And like the micro LED, mini LED can scale to larger screen sizes. We recommend you take a look at the mini LEDs that are on the market or will be introduced in the next few months.

Interview with Rob Jones, CTO of Enclave Audio

Rob Jones is the CTO of Enclave Audio, makers of a wireless 5.1 home theater system that is easy to set up anywhere in your home without the need of speaker wire. The Enclave 5.1 CineHome II ($1,099.98) and CineHome PRO THX® Certified ($1,599.98) can be installed by simply placing the speakers, connecting your TV or STB to the Enclave Smart Center and powering up. We talk with Rob about these products and his love of audio. More information can be found at their website EnclaveAudio.com