TV Panel Types  

What Is Mini LED?

What Is Mini LED?

Whereas traditional LED TVs typically use anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred LEDs in their backlight, most Mini LED TVs have many thousands of much smaller LEDs that make up their backlight. This difference in size allows the TV to adjust the light output of the backlight by breaking it down into many separate zones, a technique called local dimming. This improves dark scene performance by reducing or even cutting off the light output from darker areas of the scene. Conversely, if you have a very bright scene with a few dark areas, local dimming can leave most of the scene bright while dimming behind any dark areas.

From a purely technical standpoint, though, Mini LED doesn't actually mean anything. It's a marketing term that was first introduced by TCL in 2019, and while it's widely understood to imply smaller, more numerous LEDs in a TV's backlight, there are no real controls or a proper definition of what can or can't be called Mini LED. Some brands follow an unofficial standard of between 100 and 200 micrometers per LED, but it's not universal, and there are brands that don't follow this.

This lack of standardization has led to a bit of a wild-west situation, with some brands calling TVs "Mini LED" even when they use dated, simplistic backlight technology. A recent example of this is the Samsung The Frame Pro 2025 and the Samsung QN70F, both of which are marketed as Mini LED, but they both use a very basic, edge-lit local dimming feature that hasn't been popular on TVs for years. The LEDs might be physically smaller than standard LEDs, but what difference does it make if the TVs don't perform well?

Mini LED Performance

Now that we've shown you what Mini LED is (and what it isn't), let's take a look at how this actually impacts your viewing experience. Similar to the war over peak brightness, the rise of Mini LED has led to some impressive market competition, with brands pushing to fit the highest zone count possible in their TVs. Does zone count actually matter, though, and how does it impact picture quality?

Contrast

Let's start by taking a look at contrast. There's no doubt about it, Mini LED TVs deliver significantly better contrast than more traditional LED models. If we look at the maximum contrast measurements for all Mini LED TVs we've tested relative to the number of dimming zones, you can see a clear trend: more zones typically result in better contrast. This is a bit misleading, though, and we have to ask ourselves, why? Contrast is the ratio between white and black, but LEDs that are off are off; there's no light coming from them, so why would contrast be better on TVs that have more dimming zones? The truth is, this actually has more to do with the next section, local dimming precision.

Dimming Zone Precision

The dimming zone precision test tells us how effectively a TV can dim the LEDs around a bright part of the scene, and this is really what Mini LED is all about. This doesn't matter for simple situations like dimming the bars on letterboxed content, but if you have subtitles on the screen or oddly-shaped bright areas like the lights on the ceiling of the garage in our test scene, then more dimming zones allow the TV to dim more closely to the bright parts. This reduces the amount of unsightly glow you'll see around those bright areas. This glow is usually called haloing, but some people also know it as blooming, but that's not a technically accurate term.

Let's take a look at a few examples. If you look at the Hisense QD7QF on the left, you can see there's considerable haloing around the subtitles and through the center of the screen. It only has 160 dimming zones, so when there's a light area that's smaller than an individual LED zone, it has to keep that entire zone lit up, which raises the black levels in the areas that are supposed to be dark.

This also limits the TV's capabilities in more complex scenes, like a small, darker area surrounded by bright highlights. If a TV has a low zone count like this Hisense, then it can't effectively dim the darker spots of the scene within the bright areas, so the TV's native contrast becomes more important. You can see this in the contrast test photo. The man standing at the opening should be nearly black, but on the Hisense, he has a much more gray look, as the TV can't dim the backlight that tightly around him, so the zones are still on and the TV is forced to rely on its native contrast. The Sony BRAVIA 9, on the other hand, has 1,512 zones on the tested size. This gives it much finer control over those zones, and in turn, you see much less haloing around the bright parts of the scene.

So more zones are better, right? Some TV brands have taken that to extremes and tried to brute-force their way to better dimming performance. It actually works, sometimes, and as you can see in the chart above, there's a very clear correlation between the number of zones and the level of precision. It's not perfect, though, and the truth is that without the right algorithms controlling those zones, local dimming is still going to look bad even if you throw 10,000 zones in. So, who has the best local dimming algorithms? If we look at the 2024-2025 TVs with the best zone precision, Sony comes out on top with the Sony BRAVIA 9, which scores a 9 on our test with 1,512 zones. TCL and Hisense come next with a three-way tie for second place, and all of those TVs have more zones than the Sony, so it's clear that Sony is able to deliver better zone performance with fewer dimming zones than the competitors.

In summary, more zones definitely help, and you should pay attention to them, but the algorithms are equally important, if not more so. When shopping, look at the zone counts, especially if you're hesitating between two models from the same brand and model year, but also look at the overall performance.

Black Levels

Our black level performance score combines the contrast, zone precision, and zone transitions scores to give you an idea of how a TV's black levels look overall. It's one of the most important metrics to consider if you care about dark room performance. As you can see, there's a clear trend, and more zones do seem to translate to better black levels, but it's far from perfect, and there are a lot of outliers. What does this tell us? We sound like a broken record here, but once again, we can conclude that while zone count is important, the algorithms that control those zones and the native panel itself still have a significant impact on dark room experience. So you shouldn't buy one TV over another simply because it has more zones.

So what if we eliminate as many of the dimming algorithms and panel types from the equation and look at only the impact of the dimming zones? To do so, we'll look at Mini LED performance from four of the top TV brands: Hisense, Samsung, Sony, and TCL, and limit the results to TVs with VA panels, so they all have roughly the same native contrast. Since they're all made from the same brand, they operate using similar algorithms as well. Note that we've excluded some other popular brands like LG and Panasonic, as we haven't tested enough Mini LED models.

As you can see in the above charts, when we remove the panel type and brand from the equation, there's a much stronger correlation between the black level score and the number of dimming zones. However, it's still not perfect. TCL and Hisense deliver more consistent results, but Sony and Samsung both have a few models that deviate significantly from the trend. This again shows that zone counts are important, but they don't paint the full picture.

Conclusion

Mini LED TVs definitely deliver on their promise, with deeper, more uniform blacks and better dark room performance than traditional LED models. The marketing around them can be extremely misleading, though, so it's more important than ever before to look at how a TV actually performs instead of getting caught up in the zone counts or vague marketing claims. They haven't caught up to OLEDs, either (for more about that, check out Mini LED vs. OLED), but they're getting better. The future holds lots of promise, as well, with the first RGB Mini LED TVs expected to hit the market in 2026.

A Brief History Of LCD TVs

If you're curious to understand how we got here, let's examine the history of LCD TVs and discuss what's coming in the next few years.

1982 - 2004: The first LCD TVs

Although CRTs made up the bulk of the TV industry until 2007, LCD displays have actually been around for a lot longer than most people think. The first LCDs were very small and mainly used in handheld and portable displays. The first commercially available LCD was actually a watch! A lot of these early LCDs didn't have any light source, as they used a reflective LCD panel instead. If you've ever tried to play a Nintendo Game Boy using street lights, you know exactly how limiting the technology was at the time.

By the early 1990s, display manufacturers figured out that this didn't really work all that well, and the first backlit TVs came out. The first generation of this used cold cathode fluorescent lamps to light up the screen. These TVs grew in popularity thanks to their larger sizes and high peak brightness, and by the early 2000s, they were starting to catch up to CRTs. They had a few significant downsides, though. They were fairly bulky, and the CCFL lamps had a limited lifespan. They also relied on mercury, which poses some health risks if the lights break.

2004 - 2016: The first LED TVs

By this point, LCD displays were getting bigger and brighter, and CCFLs were already showing their flaws. To improve on this, TV manufacturers turned to LEDs, and Sony was the first to market with the Qualia 005 TV in 2004. The Qualia 005 was an impressive TV for the time, and it was a significant step up over the competitors. It used a tricolor LED backlight, with separate red, green, and blue LEDs, and it delivered a far wider color gamut than anything else on the market. The advantages of LED were obvious, and the market was quick to react. Although it took until 2007 for CCFLs to outsell CRTs, LEDs replaced CCFLs by the early 2010s.

These first TVs used an array of LEDs directly behind the screen to illuminate the image, but they couldn't dim individual zones. Edge-lit LEDs came along in 2008, and these models offered an incredibly thin design but still no local dimming. Consumers would have to wait until 2011 for the first widely available commercial TVs with local dimming.

2011 - 2019: FALD

BrightSide Technologies had demonstrated the first dynamic backlight feature way back in 2003, but it wasn't ready for prime time, yet. Sony changed that with the launch of the 105 zone direct-lit Sony XBR-HX929 in 2011. Even though this was a significant step up in contrast for LCD panels, consumers already complained of the distracting halo effect around bright areas of the screen, as even 105 zones weren't enough to precisely dim the backlight around oddly shaped objects on the screen. Processing was also very limited back then, and TVs simply couldn't keep up very well with fast-changing scenes, leading to distracting flickering and mismatched zones.

Despite its flaws, local dimming was here to stay, and over the next eight years, other manufacturers joined in. Each year would see smaller and smaller LEDs and an increase in dimming zones. Processors improved, although that was offset a bit by the rise of 4k and HDR televisions, and with each successive generation LEDs were getting better and better, with less and less haloing and distracting zone changes.

2019 - 2025: Mini LED

TCL was the first manufacturer to advertise a TV as a "Mini LED", way back in 2019, with the release of the TCL 8 Series 2019/Q825. TCL's advertising for the TV claims that it uses over 25,000 Mini LEDs spread across approximately 1,000 individual zones. This first foray into Mini LED technology worked pretty well, and the Q825 had the highest contrast of any LED TV we tested in 2019, but the local dimming itself was far from perfect. Zone transitions on this TV were very distracting, as they created a checkerboard or golf ball effect as each zone would turn on and off with moving content. The processing couldn't keep up, either, leading to issues with trailing halos behind moving content, or dark edges as content would move between zones faster than the zones could turn on. Halo control wasn't perfect, either, as each zone controlled a large number of individual LEDs.

Over the next six years, the battle for the best local dimming heated up. Many brands tried to brute force as many LEDs and as many zones as possible into their TVs. LED controllers and electronics got a lot better, reducing the number of LEDs in each zone, in turn reducing the amount of haloing and improving the processing time. The waters also got murkier, with some brands starting to advertise everything as Mini LED, even on models that had only a small number of dimming zones. Now more than ever, it's important to look at the actual performance, not just the number of dimming zones or the marketing claims.

2026 And Beyond: RGB Mini LED & Micro LED

So what does the future hold for Mini LED? Is it just a stopgap solution, or is it here to stay? Many brands have already announced and even shown off the next evolutions of Mini LED. The first is the RGB Mini LED, which is being worked on by multiple brands, but Sony was the first to show it off in August 2025. This technology builds on their existing Mini LED tech by integrating separate red, green, and blue LEDs directly in the backlight. This eliminates the need for inefficient color filters or even quantum dot color emitters, as the LEDs produce each primary color directly. Although nothing has been confirmed yet, it's likely that Sony will be releasing at least one new flagship LED TV in 2026 that uses this new panel technology.

The other big new tech you may have heard of is Micro LED. This isn't quite the next evolution of Mini LED; it's something completely different. Instead of using LEDs as a backlight, Micro LED displays use a separate LED for each individual subpixel, combining the near-perfect contrast of OLED with the brightness capacity of LED. If you've ever seen giant electronic billboards in a major city, then you've already seen something similar, but Micro LED TVs aim to shrink that tech down to something that'll fit into your living room. Samsung has been one of the biggest advocates for this tech for a few years now, and it's already available on the market, if you can afford it. The tech isn't quite ready for prime time, yet, but it's getting much closer, and it's quite likely that you'll be able to walk into an electronics store and buy one off the shelf within the next five to ten years.