micros lcd panel backlight price

Apple has sparked considerable discussions in the market after rumors surfaced that the company’s new 12.9-inch iPad Pro, to be released in 2021, may be equipped with Mini LED backlight technology. According to the newest investigations by the LEDinside research division of TrendForce, the manufacturing cost of Mini LED backlight displays is currently higher than that of traditional LCD and OLED displays. However, as manufacturers continue to make improvements in process technology and yield rate, the cost of Mini LED backlight displays is expected to undergo 15-20% YoY decreases and to potentially be lower than the cost of OLED displays by 2022, making Mini LED a cost-competitive option in the market. Not only will Apple integrate Mini LED backlight technology into its product lineups other than the iPad Pro, but other leading brands will also adopt Mini LED for their own products.

According to the Mini LED backlight cost analyses in TrendForce’s latest 2020 Mini LED Next-Generation Display Technology and Supply Chain Analysis report, since the 2021 version of 12.9-inch iPad Pro is expected to equip nearly 10,000 Mini LED chips as its backlight source, the cost of components such as LED chips, PCB backplanes, and driver ICs will take up a large portion of the device’s overall manufacturing cost. These component costs, combined with the necessary process technologies involved in manufacturing, such as testing, sorting, and SMT, are projected to drive up the cost of Mini LED backlight displays above US$100, with Mini LED backlight modules accounting for more than 60% of this cost.

Given the relatively high cost of Mini LED backlight, Apple’s continual deployment of Mini LED backlight technology can be explained from the perspectives of user applications and supply chains. In terms of the former, although most user applications are confined to video streaming, basic word processing, and business presentations, some specialized users, including gamers and graphic designers, require higher display performance beyond these basic applications. For instance, as newer video games require progressively higher hardware specifications, Mini LED backlight displays will allow these games to be displayed with more dynamic range, in turn delivering a better user experience. On the other hand, illustrators and other graphic artists place an extremely high demand on color accuracy. For these professionals, Mini LED backlight technology can provide improved color saturation and contrast ratios, a significant upgrade in terms of display performance if integrated into current tablets. Some Mini LED backlight displays are capable of up to a 100,000:1 contrast ratio and more than 90% DCI-P3 color gamut. These specifications mean Mini LED backlight displays are better able to satisfy the performance demands of professional users.

TrendForce believes that although OLED displays are also capable of fulfilling the aforementioned display requirements, they are limited by OLED materials’ reliability issues, meaning they have a lower lifespan compared to Mini LED backlight displays. With regards to the supply chain, Korean manufacturers Samsung and LGD currently dominate the supply of OLED panels; although China’s production capacity of OLED panels will surge after 2020, the country will need time to improve its panel yield rate and product quality. Given the open-ended and diverse nature of the LCD panel supply chain, Apple’s decision to adopt LCD panels and pair them with Mini LED backlight technology as its future developmental focus makes sense, since this move allows Apple to be free of the constraints of the Samsung-dominated OLED supply chain while paving the way for the development of Micro LED display technology. If Apple is able to make progress in cost reduction, technology superiority, and patent applications in its Mini LED backlight development, then it will help accelerate the industry’s R&D efforts in Micro LED technology.

Mini LED backlight solution seems to be a “must have” technology for all the panel exhibitors at this year’s Display Week. Despite that adopting Mini LED backlight to consumer electronic products is rather difficult due to high production cost; panel makers still proactively demonstrated related products. Therefore, Mini LED backlight might not be a flash in the pan.

LEDinside noticed that almost every display maker participated in Display Week disclosed the focus on automotive display incorporating LCD panel and Mini LED backlight. The solution is able to tackle the environment difficulties for automotive light source. As a result, even OLED-focused Korean companies are developing LCD panel with direct LED backlight as a solution for automotive display.

Besides, the competition of active matrix (AM) and passive matrix (PM) driver solution for Mini LED backlight is a highlight of the event. Panel producers who began Mini LED development earlier also used their proprietary glass backplane production for achieve AM driver solution, hoping to replace PCB backplane by glass backplane for reduce the number of LED driver IC used. Follow LEDinside to see the progress updates of Mini LED products from the exhibitors!

Taiwanese panel producers have been promoting Mini LED backlight technology. At AUO’s booth at Display Week, Mini LED backlight solution was adopted in products in all of the sized and series, including a 32-inch 4K display implementing 1152 zones Mini LED backlight with impressive display performance. Also, AUO introduced a VR glasses based on AM driver solution. Its 2305 zone Mini LED backlight intensify color contrast of the display to enhance user experiences.

Japan-based JDI also showcased a 3.5-inch Mini LED backlight panel display for VR glasses. The product used 3,840 LEDs in 960 zones, achieving an amazing contrast of 2,000,000:1.

Chinese panel maker CSOT went directly to curved AM Mini LED, demonstrating a 8-inch flexible display with Mini LED. In collaboration with TCL, CSOT also presented a 65-inch AM LED backlight display with 5,000 zone RGB LED backlight and AM driver solution. The display performance of the product was perfect; however, the price would also be unattainable given its specification. Hence, the product might only be produced and available in the market when technology solutions that can lower production cost are adopted.

TIANMA exhibited a 5.99-inch Mini LED backlight display with AM TFT driver solution and 4,600 lighting zone, reaching 96% of NTSC and a contract of 100,000:1. The demonstrated display was in the size of mobile phone, which would be difficult to compete with OLED due to high production cost. However, Dean Collins, Marketing Director of TIANMA in the North America District, noted that product adopting the technology will be adopted in automotive display first.

OLED display is still the core for BOE during the show. Nevertheless, the company presented backlight solutions for VR applications and notebook panel display. Its 15.6-inch notebook display used LED backlight 200 zones. LEDinside noticed that BOE is trying to balance the cost and performance in the Mini LED development.

BOE also showcased a 65-inch BD Cell (BOE Dual Cell) backlight solution which adopted two layers of glass backplane. The function of Front Panel is similar to LCD panel that controls liquid crystal deflection of each pixel so that light can penetrate color filter to display various colors. The Front Panel can achieve 4K resolution. Meanwhile, Back Panel monitors voltage to control backlight source to illuminate designated pixel. BOE use 2K resolution for backlight.

The technology still use conventional side LED backlight but the display performance was excellent. This might be another option instead of Mini LED backlight. However, challenge of this technology is also cost increase and the market reaction is still the key.

Since Mini LED can not only be applied in backlight but also for self-emit display, US-based startup Rohinni has gathered attention from the market with its expertise and progress in Micro/Mini LED mass transferring.

Instead of joining Display Week, Rohinni held its own demonstration to showcase its Mini LED products including Mini LED light bars and panels. Matthew Gerber, CEO of Rohinni, noted that the company has cooperated with different strategic partners to speed up Mini LED products commercialization. Rohinni has worked with equipment producer K&S to develop facility for mass transferring. It also plans to develop partnerships for other applications to realize volume-production as soon as possible. Rohinni might roll-out Mini LED backlit keyboard by the end of 2019.

With the continuous upgrading of MiniLED industry, the market trend has gradually become clear. With the steady development of backlight TV and laptop display applications, the continuous innovation of small-size VR display technology, and the growing demand for intelligent EV, MiniLED backlights have become more and more popular in the market. Jufeng, a leading semiconductor soldering and electronic packaging material solution provider since 2006, recently released its ultra-fine size solder paste solution JF-ML100, which can be widely used in differ...

According to TrendForce’s latest market research report the “TrendForce 2022 Mini LED New Backlight Display Trend Analysis”, the trend of Mini LED backlights led by leading players including Samsung and Apple in 2021 has encouraged other brands to introduce the up-to-date components into their new displays in 2022. For example, TV manufacturers such as Sony, Sharp, and Hisense have decided to use Mini LED backlights this year, while MSI, Lenovo, and GIGABYTE have applied the components to MNT and NB markets. As new comers have...

According to TrendForce’s latest report “Gold+ Member: Global LED Industry Data Base and LED Player Movement Quarterly Update”, economic activities have returned in all aspects as the COVID-19 pandemic began slowing down in 2021, boosting the global LED market scale to USD 17.65 billion (+15.4% YoY), a growth rate that beats expectations. Looking to the future, market value of Mini LED backlights and video walls will continue going up, along with increased automotive LED penetration, rising demand for high-end lighting, and expanded v...

According to the latest news reports, the redesigned 27-inch iMac will be equipped with a conventional LCD panel instead of a Mini LED monitor, which is different from what the previous rumors suggested. However, display analyst Ross Young has reasserted that the new iMac will stick to the original plan of using Mini LEDs.

As suggested by the recent reports, despite not using Mini LEDs, Apple will install 30%-40% more chips in the LCD for its iMac model with higher brightness. Like the 24-inch model, various colors will be available for the 27-inch one.

High contrast and brightness Mini LED products have been developing aggressively, according to TrendForce’s investigations. Therefore, several LCD monitor brands have launched high-end LCD monitor products with Mini LED backlighting (Mini LED wafer size is defined as between 75~500µm). In 2021, the price of Mini LED-backlit LCD monitors fell between US$2,300 and US$5,000. For example, a 31.5-inch Mini LED backlit model is priced approximately 4 to 8 times that of model of the same size featuring a traditional LED backl...

Between 2020 and 2021, Mini LED backlight products have sprung up in consumer markets. Who has released Mini LED backlight products? What are their specifications? How much do they cost? In the tables below, LEDinside has collected and summarized information on Mini LED products that are currently available. *The information in the above tables is incomplete; please refer to the actual sales prices. According to TrendForce’s research, as Apple has launched new MacBook Pro products for the high-end markets, the shipment of notebooks with Mini L...

The Red Dot Award winner adopts Mini LED backlighting incorporated with a fast IPS panel. The monitor features a resolution of 2560×1440, 170Hz refresh rate, 576 local dimming zones, HDR 1000 certification and peak brightness of 1,000 nits. Regarding c...

Oct. 27, 2021 ---- Apple recently unveiled its newest lineup of 14.2-inch and 16.2-inch MacBook Pros, which represent the company’s latest effort to extend its application of display backlights with Mini LED technology from the 12.9-inch iPad Pro to the MacBook Pro range. TrendForce’s latest investigations indicate that, in light of Apple’s foray into the high-end notebook computer market with the latest generation of MacBook Pro, annual shipment of notebook computers equipped with Mini LED backlight for 2022 will likely reach five million units, a 2...

Apple is planning to introduce a new 27-inch iMac in early 2022, according to Display Supply Chain Consultants CEO Ross Young. This information comes from both Young"s tweets and additional details that he shared with MacRumors. Young told MacRumors that the 27-inch display for the iMac will feature mini-LED backlighting, which likely means that it will have XDR branding. Young tweeted that Apple is currently planning to release the new iMac in the first quarter of 2022. Young added that the 27-inch iMac display will feature ProMotion, allowing for...

There"s an unsung hero in your living room, a piece of technology that has been steadily advancing for years, providing better and better picture quality and more immersive entertainment, and it"s one you may not even know exists. I"m talking, of course, about the backlight in your TV.

What"s a backlight? Well, it"s the light source that is situated directly behind the LCD panel of the majority of TVs. It"s what makes the screen glow, what gives bright colors their vibrancy, and increasingly, what gives dark shadows their depth.

TV backlights have undergone a surprising amount of change in the last few years, and knowing how this feature works, and what your options are will go a long way in helping you get a better than average TV for a lower than average price.

There"s a little more to the glowing panel of an LCD TV than you might expect. The LCD panel offers the shape and color components of an image, but it doesn"t actually produce any light of its own. And without light to produce the colors we see and project the image outward to the viewer, an LCD TV wouldn"t be worth much. Enter the humble backlight.

Behind the LCD panel is a backlight, and between the backlight and the LCD panel are usually a few layers of polarized filters, backlight diffusers, and other optical layers designed to turn this collection of tech components into a sharper viewable image.

You"ll have an LCD panel to provide much of the image content, and a backlight behind it to provide the light that makes that LCD panel visible and the colors vivid. But that backlight has undergone a lot of changes over time — several just within recent years. And a lot of the improvements we"ve seen in modern TVs can be traced to the humble backlight.

For the first several decades of consumer TVs, there was no need for a backlight. Cathode ray tube (CRT) technology doesn"t need one, because it is a light source unto itself. Plasma screen TVs used the same sort of phosphorescence that CRTs used, meaning that they were also capable of emitting their own light.

But with the advent of LCD-based flat screen TVs, the need arose for illumination, and originally that meant cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL), a technology that"s similar to fluorescent and neon lighting. But because these lamps generate heat that can damage a display and aren"t terrible energy-efficient, they"ve pretty much disappeared from today"s TVs.

Instead, they were replaced by one of the biggest innovations in modern TV technology: LED backlighting. With this change, TV manufacturers started calling LCD TVs with LED backlight "LED TVs" to differentiate them from the older CCFL-lit models. But with the last CCFL TVs going off the market a decade ago, it"s just as likely that TV makers have kept the LED nomenclature around to blur the distinction between LCD TVs and OLED panels, which use a very different (and largely superior) display technology.

Today"s TVs use a number of backlighting methods, which we"ll discuss below, but the biggest change has been the introduction of discrete backlighting zones. Instead of illuminating the entire screen, the LED backlights of a TV can be addressed individually, meaning that they can be turned on or off, dimmed or brightened as needed to provide brighter or darker portions of the TV picture.

With local dimming zones allowing variable brightness to different sections of the display, new media includes additional metadata, beyond simple video and sound. This data describes the brightness and backlighting scheme for a given scene or frame of content. While that metadata may fall under different format names, like HDR10 or Dolby Vision, the essentials are the same — describing how those dimmable backlights should behave to produce a richer image.

But there"s a catch. Not every form of backlight offers the same level of control. As a result, not every TV has the same level of capability, even if it supports the same HDR formats.

Edge-lit displays illuminate the LCD panel by setting a row of LEDs along the top and bottom edges of a screen, or ringing the perimeter of the TV frame with LED lights. This light is then distributed across the back of the LCD panel with a special diffuser light guide, a semi-transparent sheet of plastic that allows the light from the LED in the TV bezel to illuminate a larger portion of the display.

It"s a very cost effective way to light a TV, since it uses the least amount of LEDs. It also offers some level of dynamic backlight control for HDR support. On sets that are equipped to do so, portions of the edge lighting strips can be darkened or dimmed to provide deeper blacks, or brightened to accentuate brighter portions of the screen. However, since they don"t directly light the LCD panel from behind, the effect is considerably muted when compared to other backlight technologies.

A variation on edge lighting developed by Samsung and used in some Samsung QLED TVs is called dual LED. Instead of using a single color backlight for the TV, Samsung uses a combination of cool blue and warm yellow LED lights, and alternates between them based on the content of the scene to offer a modest improvement in picture quality.

Samsung Q70T QLED TV (2020 model)Samsung uses dual LED backlight as a half-step between edge lighting and direct-lit LED backlight in it"s better affordable QLED sets, and it shows. The alternating color temperatures do offer some improvement over basic edge lighting, but the result is still a less impressive picture, even with Samsung"s impressive QLED display. Check out our full Samsung Q70T QLED TV (2020 model) review for more.

Direct lit LED backlighting uses LED lighting across the back of the TV, directly behind the LCD panel, providing a fairly uniform amount of light across the screen. It also allows for a brighter picture, since it uses more LEDs, and is able to utilize more of the light coming from those LEDs.

However, an all-white back light alone has its limitations. Because the entire LCD panel is lit uniformly, there"s little to no dynamic range offered by the display.

One common problem caused by this uniform backlight approach is that darker portions of the display are still illuminated, resulting in black portions of the screen appearing grey, a phenomenon called "elevated black levels." It"s especially noticeable on letterboxed movies, which will have a distinct unwanted glow in the black bars above and below the picture.

Toshiba C350 Fire TV (2021 model)The Toshiba C350 is one of the better Amazon Fire smart TVs we"ve reviewed, but the direct LED backlight is something of a double-edged sword. It"s better and brighter than a basic edge-lit LED backlight, and picture is better as a result, but the lack of local dimming means that – despite the TV"s support for Dolby Vision and HDR10 formats – HDR content just doesn"t look very good.

This dynamic backlighting allows a TV to deliver deeper shadows, brighter highlights, and more vivid color. If you"ll forgive the pun, this is where HDR content really shines.

Local dimming zones have become fairly common on TVs across the price spectrum, and more premium TVs have differentiated themselves by offering a greater number of backlighting zones with smaller, more tightly controlled light, which can minimize light blooms and haloing to provide better HDR performance and contrast.

TCL 5-Series Roku TV (S535)When it comes to value in TVs, the TCL name should be one of the first things you look for. The TCL 5-Series Roku TV (S535) is a great example of this, offering a QLED screen with full-array local dimming backlight that matches some of the best mid-range TVs, but at a lower price. The result is great picture quality and solid HDR performance.

Local dimming has been further refined with the introduction of mini-LEDs. By shrinking the LED size down to about one-fifth the size – mini-LEDs measure 0.008-inch (200 microns) across – more LEDs can be packed into the backlight panel, and much smaller dimming zones to be used.

Models from Samsung, TCL, and LG all utilize mini LED backlighting for its superior performance, and the combination of mini-LED and QLED color enhancement offers some of the best TV picture quality that"s ever been available.

Samsung QN90A Neo QLED TVWhen it comes to the several TVs on the market that have mini-LED backlight, the Samsung Neo QLED takes the top spot, holding the top position among the best TVs we"ve reviewed. It"s a great TV for many reasons, but the impeccable backlight and HDR performance of the Samsung QN90A Neo QLED TV makes it one of the best LCD TVs we"ve ever seen.

Ultimately, the best backlight is no backlight at all. This can be achieved in one of two ways: With current OLED displays or micro-LED technology, the latter of which isn"t yet available to regular consumers.

OLED displays have individual pixels that light up without the need for a separate illumination source, creating a self-emissive display panel that doesn"t need any sort of backlight.

And there"s a direct relationship between backlight quality and TV price, so what is the best option when you don"t want to pay an extra $1,000 for the category-leading quality of OLED – even the affordable Vizio OLED TV is $1,199(opens in new tab) – or shell out tens of thousands for a giant micro-LED TV?

For most people, we recommend looking for a TV with mini-LED, like the Editor"s Choice Samsung Neo QLED QN90A, or the more affordable TCL 6-Series Roku TV (R635). Mini LED backlighting hits the sweet spot for affordability and improved backlight performance. If you want better than average backlight control without spending the extra money for an old TV, a mini LED TV is the way to go.Our favorite TVs

Typical LCDs are edge-lit by a strip of white LEDs. The 2D backlighting system in Pro Display XDR is unlike any other. It uses a superbright array of 576 blue LEDs that allows for unmatched light control compared with white LEDs. Twelve controllers rapidly modulate each LED so that areas of the screen can be incredibly bright while other areas are incredibly dark. All of this produces an extraordinary contrast that’s the foundation for XDR.

With a massive amount of processing power, the timing controller (TCON) chip utilizes an algorithm specifically created to analyze and reproduce images. It controls LEDs at over 10 times the refresh rate of the LCD itself, reducing latency and blooming. It’s capable of multiple refresh rates for amazingly smooth playback. Managing both the LED array and LCD pixels, the TCON precisely directs light and color to bring your work to life with stunning accuracy.

Treating a mini-LED display as if it were a better-LED display is the best way to remember what it is. An LED backlight provides the brightness of an LED display. To see the visuals on the screen, the mini-LED, like LED, requires a backlight.

People often confuse the two terms. The main difference is that the former does not have a backlight to illuminate the display. When you consider it, a micro-LED is much closer to an OLEDTV than a mini-LED. This is because the OLED does not have a backlight. Instead, it can control the contrast of its pixels.

Upstream wafer factories like Epistar, HC SemiTek, etc., companies such as Everlight, Advanced Optoelectronic Technology, Harvatek, and others have invested in Mini LED technology, as have IC designers such as Macroblock, Raydium, and Jasper Display, panel producers such as AU Optronics and Innolux, and digital display makers such as Leyard.

On the one hand, it has been widely reported that Apple is working on its own micro-LED display research, while on the other hand, it has been extensively reported that Samsung is working on its own micro-LED display research. Micro LEDs, according to Apple, have the potential to make future iPhones even slimmer and brighter than the latest-generation organic LED (OLED) displays that have recently supplanted LCD panels.

Mini LED and Micro LED are two names that, in theory, signify two different things. Micro LED is a new generation of display technology that uses a matrix of small LEDs to create a display. Each pixel is independently addressed and directed to emit light, similar to OLED (self-emitting). The LED backlight is smaller, thinner, and more evenly distributed, with the LED unit measuring less than 100 micrometers in diameter. Mini LED is a better form of traditional LED backlight and is a transitional technology between traditional LED and Micro LED.

Micro LEDs have a simpler structure and better performance, but mass transmission is the main concern. Miniaturizing LEDs, which demand wafer-level technology, is the issue.4K Micro LED panels, for example, require more than 24.88 million LED chips.

Mini LED has a greater yield rate than Micro LED in the production process. When paired with flexible substrates, mini LED is also suitable for notch design and very curved backlight. Another feature that helps Mini LED devices have better color reproduction is local dimming. Mini LED technology allows LCD panels to support more HDR categories, and Mini LED products can be as compact as OLED gadgets, saving power.

CB5000 LED Circle Backlight For use on: 50X Track Stand LED Microscope, Ergonomic Track Stand Microscope, and HDMI Track Stand Microscope. The Circle Backlight pops into the bottom of the TS-NL track stand. The LED circle backlight gives you more light and outlines your parts better for you to see.

The Hisense U8H matches the excellent brightness and color performance of much pricier LCD TVs, and its Google TV smart platform is a welcome addition. But it’s available in only three screen sizes.

The Hisense U8H is the best LCD/LED TV for most people because it delivers the performance of a much pricier TV yet starts at under $1,000, for the smallest (55-inch) screen size. This TV utilizes quantum dots, a full-array backlight with mini-LEDs, and a 120 Hz refresh rate to deliver a great-looking 4K HDR image. It’s compatible with every major HDR format. And it’s equipped with two full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 inputs to support 4K 120 Hz gaming from the newest Xbox and PlayStation consoles. Add in the intuitive, fully featured Google TV smart-TV platform, and the U8H’s price-to-performance ratio is of inarguable value.

Key to this functionality is the U8H’s employment of mini-LED backlighting with local dimming, which allows this TV to produce very bright light while still maintaining satisfyingly deep black levels that are typically free of blooming (or light bleed that’s visible around bright objects against a dark backdrop). This not only ensures impressive image contrast, it also makes the U8H a viable choice for most rooms, whether they’re brighter than average or dimmed down like a movie theater.

That’s not to say the U8H has pixel-precise light control—it’s not an OLED TV, after all—but it does a terrific job most of the time. In fact, in our tests, the U8H bested last year’s upgrade pick, the Samsung QN90A, in certain scenarios: The intro to Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities on Netflix features the filmmaker against a pitch-black backdrop. Though last year’s QN90A failed to maintain perfect control over dimming elements during this scene (the black backdrop brightened distractingly once a sufficient amount of brighter content appeared on screen), the U8H did not. (For the record, the newer QN90B also passed this test.) The U8H’s mini-LEDs also help the screen look uniformly bright: Although the U8H is still not as good as an OLED TV in this respect, it shows very little indication of being a backlight-driven display, even during tricky scenes with large swaths of dim lighting.

The U8H’s brightness, black-level integrity, and local-dimming abilities make this an excellent TV for watching HDR content. The U8H is capable of playing HDR content in all of the major formats (HDR10, HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and HLG), but when it comes to impressive HDR, what’s under the hood is much more important than format compatibility. The most crucial thing for good HDR is high brightness and deep color saturation, and the U8H’s quantum dots achieve the latter. It’s not as simple as just having quantum dots, however: While many TVs (even the budget options) have quantum dots nowadays, what is often not taken into account is that brightness directly affects color saturation. For example, both the 2022 TCL 6-Series and the Hisense U8H are equipped with quantum dots, mini-LED backlights, and local dimming. But because the U8H is notably brighter than the 6-Series, it also achieves a higher total color volume. During our color-volume testing, the U8H exhibited color ranges at more than 100% of the DCI-P3 color space (the range of color needed to properly display HDR content), and it is capable of roughly 10% more total color volume compared with the 6-Series.

In terms of design, the Hisense U8H is not as svelte as our upgrade pick, but it’s plenty sturdy and doesn’t look or feel cheap. Two narrow, metal feet jut out from beneath the panel and steadily hold the TV. They can be attached in two separate spots, either closer in toward the middle of the panel or out toward the edges, to account for different-size TV stands. The feet are also equipped with cable organization clasps—a nice touch for keeping your TV stand free of cable clutter. Though the TV is primarily plastic, its bezels are lined with metal strips, providing a bit more durability in the long run. I moved it around my home, and it was no worse for wear, but we’ll know more after doing some long-term testing.

The Hisense U8H has some difficulties with banding, or areas of uneven gradation, where transitions that should appear smooth instead look like “bands” of color (sometimes also called posterization). Like many current 4K HDR TVs, the U8H uses an 8-bit panel rather than a 10-bit panel, which affects the color decoding and color presentation process. This is usually relevant only with HDR video and games. When playing games on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, I saw a few instances where the content wasn’t rendered correctly and displayed ugly splotches of color on the screen. However, this almost always occurred during static screens (such as a pause menu or loading screen); I rarely spotted it during actual gameplay. Hisense has stated that it would address the problem in a future firmware update, but at the time of writing it was still present. This is a flaw that may give dedicated gamers pause, but we don’t consider it to be a dealbreaker for most people.

Finally, like most TVs that use vertical alignment (VA) LCD panels, the U8H has a limited horizontal viewing angle, which may be a bit annoying if you’re hoping to entertain a large crowd. Our upgrade pick uses a special wide-angle technology to address this.

If you’re watching in a darker room and want the most accurate picture you can get—preserving the director’s intent—select the U8H’s Filmmaker Mode as your picture mode. In a brighter room, we recommend the Theater Day picture mode. In either case, you should go into the backlight settings, disable the automatic light sensor, and set the backlight to your personal preference. This is true whether you’re watching SDR or HDR content.

The Frame now offers the most realistic art viewing experience outside of a museum thanks to the anti-glare, low-reflection panel technology featuring an embossed, Matte Display. It also avoids fingerprints and smudges, allowing users to enjoy their favorite artwork in perfect condition. The Frame comes in sizes ranging from 32” to 85”.

Let"s start with what makes mini-LED special. By using more, smaller LEDs to illuminate the screen, a TV can have finer control over its highlights and shadows, for potentially better contrast and image quality especially with OLED, the best TV tech on the market, is that it can be more affordable, particularly in larger screen sizes. Mini-LED is an evolutionary technology, not a revolutionary one, and draws on existing LCD TV technology. In the mini-LED TVs we"ve tested so far, including the TCL 6-Series and Samsung QN90A, the picture quality improvements are the real deal, although not quite good enough to beat OLED.

Mini-LEDs are found inside normal-size TVs 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.

To understand mini-LED, you need to understand standard LED, at least as far as your TV is concerned. Inside all modern LCD TVs (i.e. every TV that"s not an OLED), there"s anywhere between a few, to a few hundred light emitting diodes. These tiny devices emit light when you give them electricity and are being used everywhere in the modern world, from the flashlight on your phone to the taillights on your car. They range in size -- commonly they"re around 1 millimeter, but can be smaller than 0.2 millimeter. In your TV these LEDs are collectively referred to as the "backlight."

Ideally, you"d be able to dim each pixel enough to create a visually impressive contrast ratio. This is, for example, how OLED and MicroLED work. With LCD, though, it"s much harder to do. The liquid crystal panel that creates the image only blocks the light created by the backlight. Not all the light can be blocked, so the image is grayer and has less "punch" than with OLED.

Having more zones is a big factor here, as it means improving two other aspects of the image. The most obvious is reducing the "blooming" typical of many local-dimming LCDs. Blooming is created because the local-dimming backlight is too coarse, creating light behind a part of the image that should be dark.

Imagine a streetlight on an otherwise dark road. A local-dimming TV doesn"t have the resolution in its backlight to only light up the pixels creating the street light, so it has to light up some of the surrounding night as well. Many LCDs TVs have gotten pretty good at this, but not as good as something that can dim each pixel like OLED. With mini-LED, you might not be able to light up individual stars in a night scene, but the moon probably won"t have a halo.

Meanwhile TCL introduced its third-gen mini-LED televisions this year as well, called OD Zero. TCL says OD Zero TVs will be much thinner, just 10mm in the first example, thanks to a reduction in the distance between the backlight layer and the LCD display layer. That TV also happens to be an