More than tablets, will MiniLED be the future of screens?

2021-09-07

MiniLED-this originally unfamiliar technical term finally gained some popularity in 2021: In the first half of this year, Apple released the iPad Pro with Mini LED screen to obtain a better display effect than traditional LCD screens.

What is Mini LED?

To put it simply, the pixels of the LCD screen do not emit light, so we need to have a lamp bead behind to illuminate the pixels before we can see the display content. The OLED is different. The pixels of the OLED screen emit light by themselves and can illuminate themselves. The lamp beads under the traditional LCD screen are very large and have few partitions. Therefore, many times you will see the LCD screen has light leakage, impure black, uneven brightness and other problems. Mini LED can solve these problems to a certain extent. The backlight LED lamp beads are smaller, which can achieve a dynamic backlight effect that is finer and closer to pixelation than before, which can effectively improve the brightness and contrast of the screen, while also controlling the display of dark areas and the so-called light leakage phenomenon.

For example, on the 12.9-inch version of the iPad Pro released this year, the number of LED beads on the screen has reached more than 10,000, and there are a total of 2596 full-array local dimming zones, which means that the iPad Pro will be superior in display effects such as screen brightness and contrast. Compared with previous generations, it is more suitable for playing HDR video sources.

In fact, the use of Mini LED is far more than tablet PCs. It can also shine on TVs, monitors and laptop computers. For example, TCL has even invested heavily in this layout, taking Mini LED display technology as the future of large-screen TVs.

A few days ago, TCL released its high-end TV X12 8K Mini LED led smart screen. It is equipped with 96,000 Mini LED chips, 1920 physical partitions and 24 neural network chips in a 9.9mm ultra-thin body. Up to 3000nits brightness and 10 million:1 contrast ratio, equipped with 7.5L cavity capacity of 8-channel 25-unit Onkyo audio, can reach 150W super power, support Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. From a data perspective, this TV is a well-deserved high-end product, of course, the price is also very high-end: 9,999 yuan.


Whether it's the iPad Pro 12.9, the X12 8K Mini LED led smart screen, or the Dell UP3221Q 4K monitor priced at 60,000 yuan, there is no doubt that the current Mini LED products are high-end.

So what will the future look like?

In an interview after the press conference, Zhang Shaoyong, Vice President of TCL Industry & CEO of TCL Electronics, said:

It is reliably predicted that the global shipment scale of Mini LED backlight TVs will reach 4 million units in 2021. Specifically, it may reach about 250,000 units in the Chinese market, and it will continue to grow next year.

Taking into account that the global TV shipments in the first half of this year were 98.45 million units, the annual shipments are expected to be over 200 million. The proportion of 4 million Mini LED TVs is about 2%, but for the high-end product category that is just starting out, this is already pretty good.

For TCL, Mini LED is indeed an area for them to invest early and take up positions early.

Zhang Shaoyong said that since 2016, TCL has invested more than 2 billion in Mini LED and built 10 complete machine production lines. The target production capacity in 2024 is 10 million units per year. This will mean that Mini LED will be in the overall market by then. To have a role to play.

The reason why they have invested heavily here is that they believe that Mini LED has some advantages over OLED in the field of large TV screens, such as mature industry chain, high yield, high brightness, and long life; easy to make ultra-high resolution and ultra-large. size. Of course, OLED also has the advantages of thinness, high contrast, large viewing angle and flexibility, which makes OLED more advantageous in the field of small screens.

The most important advantage may be the price. Zhang Shaoyong predicts that as TCL relies on LCD's own production line resources and continues to invest in new LCD panel factories, production capacity increases and costs continue to decrease, and the price difference between Mini LED and OLED is about 50%.

At the same time, the market penetration rates of Mini LED smart screens from 2021 to 2025 will reach: 2%, 3.5%, 5%, 10%, and 15%, making them the fastest growing category of high-end TVs. This rapid growth process is also a stage where Mini LED achieves cost-scaling effects and a more affordable price.

As of the end of 2020, TCL has won 90% of the global Mini LED smart screen products. To some extent, this is already a question of technical route selection, and there is no turning back.
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