Mini LED vs. Traditional LCD: Key Differences Explained

Mini LED, also known as submillimeter light-emitting diodes, refers to LED chips with a size on the order of 100 microns. It is an LED technology with a new backlight design.

Definition and Characteristics

According to the “General Technical Specification for Mini-LED Displays”, Mini LED is defined as an LED device with a chip long-side size between 100 and 300 μm. It is composed of a Mini LED pixel array and a driving circuit, with a pixel center pitch of 0.3-1.5 mm. Its key characteristics include:

Small size: The size of a single LED chip is about 100-300 microns, which is smaller than that of traditional LED backlight beads (usually greater than 300 microns).
High density: Tens of thousands of Mini LED beads can be densely arranged on a backlight board.
Zoned dimming: Through the driving chip, the dense Mini LEDs are divided into hundreds or even thousands of independent backlight zones. Each zone can be controlled to turn on, off, and adjust brightness individually, achieving a super-high contrast ratio far beyond that of traditional backlit LCD screens and a purer black performance.

Working Principle

Mini LED is mainly used as a backlight source for high-end liquid crystal displays (LCDs). It emits light by passing an electric current through the LED chip, and the light passes through the liquid crystal layer and other components to form an image. The zoned dimming function of Mini LED can adjust the brightness of different backlight zones according to the content of the picture, so as to improve the contrast and image quality.

Advantages

Compared with traditional LCD, Mini LED has more excellent performance in light distribution uniformity, contrast, and HDR, and the panel is thinner and lighter. At the same time, it has the advantages of longer life, lower power consumption, and no burn-in problem. Compared with OLED, Mini LED has comparable display effects and thinness, and does not have the problem of easy aging of OLED screens. More importantly, it has a significant cost advantage.

Application Scenarios

Mini LED technology is mature and feasible for mass production, and has been widely used in mid-to-high-end liquid crystal display backlights and LED displays, especially in the fields of televisions, laptops, and monitors. It is also used in commercial fields such as ultra-large-screen high-definition displays, including monitoring and command, high-definition broadcasting, high-end cinemas, medical diagnosis, advertising displays, conferences and exhibitions, office displays, and virtual reality.

Development Status

TCL is one of the first companies to start Mini LED research and development. In 2019, TCL launched the world’s first Mini LED TV X10 series. In 2020, its global market share exceeded 90%. Later, many manufacturers such as Huawei, Xiaomi, and Philips also launched Mini LED products. In 2022, the “General Technical Specification for Mini-LED Displays” was officially released, which promoted the standardized development of the Mini LED industry.