Buying tips: Is the mini LED important?
LED backlighting in television was a high-tech feature at one time, but even now mainstream sets use LED backlighting. What is less common is mini LED backlighting, where a group of small LEDs are used to illuminate the LCD panel of the TV.
As with quantum dots, different TV brands use different terms to refer to the presence of small LED backlights in their sets. Samsung, for example, calls its mini-LED models “Neo QLED,” while LG, Sony, TCL, and Hisense use the term mini-LED.
The main advantage that mini-LED offers over regular LED TVs is that the smaller lamp units used for backlighting allow for better control of local dimming. This is a process in which individual units are grouped into zones and dimmed according to the brightness level of the image on the screen. For example, the LED areas in the shaded parts of the image will be dimmed or turned off completely, while the bright shaded areas get a full blast of light.
With the higher density of LEDs scattered across the backlight, mini LED TVs can also provide higher overall brightness, with some combinations such as QN95B from Samsung Get twice or more measured light output than standard LED TVs. This Samsung model is the best of the company’s new QLED offering, but even smaller, more affordable LED TVs like this Hisense U8H The series can provide high brightness of approx.
What this extra light output matters is if you’re going to watch in a well-lit room — watching sports during the day, for example. But it can also help bring out the full level of highlight detail in HDR sources by reducing the need for color tone mapping, a process in which a TV scales a program’s brightness range to accommodate the maximum light output capability.
In short, mini-LED can make a difference when viewing in rooms with bright lighting conditions, and it also adds a welcome level of visual impact when watching movies and TV shows with HDR. It’s a feature you’ll pay extra for, but for some people it will be worth it.
Don’t miss the 65-inch LG C1!
This is a great Black Friday OLED TV deal, especially for gamers, but also for movie fans. You can now get 65-inch LG C1 OLED TV for just $1,197 (Opens in a new tab)(Opens in a new tab) at Amazon, and it’s the lowest it’s ever been priced.
Amazon listed its previous price as $2,499, which isn’t really true — that was the launch price. Most recently, it cost about $1,500, which is the lowest price even before, so we’re still getting about 20% less here than its previous best.
The LG C1 It is a model from 2021, and when we reviewed it, we gave it five stars and paid attention to its image quality and future-proof technologies. There is now a newer version ( LG C2) improves image quality even further…but does so for a higher price. At just $1,200, this brings the LG C1 back to excellent value.
Welcome to Black Friday, TV fans!
Big Deals Day is here! Thank you for joining our live coverage of the latest Black Friday TV deals.
We’ve been following deals every month, so we’ve been keeping track of great deals that are still going on, and new deals launched on Black Friday itself.
Our team of audio experts has been combing through sales, looking for discounts on TVs we rate most (or ones that are just a little too big and interesting. You have to tell you about it), and we bring it to you here today.
And don’t forget about streaming services, too! There are some great deals going on out there too, so we’ll explore those as well, and why we think they’re worth buying now.