Mini LED: What it Means for Apple and MacBooks and iPads

 Apple plans to launch mini-LED displays, extending the technology to Mac notebooks and iPads across most of its product lineup. As illustrated in our guide below, mini-LED displays will add some useful technological enhancements to Apple's products.




What is Mini-LED?

For backlighting purposes, LCD panels used by Apple use LEDs or light-emitting diodes inside to light up the display. Mini-LEDs are smaller diodes that are less than 0.2 mm, as the name indicates.

An LCD panel with LEDs for backlighting features a system like a TV, with the panel used to monitor where light is reflected on the screen. The LEDs are lit up entirely or dimmed down for dark scenes, depending on what's on the show. Currently, Apple's MacBook models use a strip of LEDs at the rim, while the latest Pro Display XDR uses many LEDs, 576 to be precise. A mini-LED display, but with more LEDs, will be somewhat similar to the Pro Display XDR.

A panel light with mini-LEDs uses far more LEDs compared to a typical LCD that uses multiple LEDs, meaning there are more total dimming zones to deal with. Hundreds of LEDs might be used for a traditional display, but a mini-LED display could have more than a thousand. In reality, Apple is said to be exploring mini-LED displays that use 10,000 LEDs, each of which is under 200 microns.

Mini-LED Improvements

Mini-LED displays will provide deeper, darker blacks, brighter brightness, richer colours, and better contrast because there is more control of what is reflected with so many LEDs on the screen because there are more LEDs and more dimming zones.

Ming-Chi Kuo, an Apple analyst, has also said that the transition from Apple to mini-LED would allow thinner and lighter product designs that offer many of the same benefits as OLED. Mini-LEDs, but without the burn-in or degradation problems, are similar to the deep blacks and better HDR offered by OLED.

LED-backlit LCDs are much more power-efficient than the previous cold cathode fluorescent lighting used for LCD panels, and there would be additional power efficiency improvements for mini-LED LCDs.

Mini-LED Improvements

There are notable variations between micro-LED and mini-LED displays, although the names are identical. Mini-LED is the same as LED backlighting that is used today, except with more dimming areas with several more LEDs, whereas micro-LED is similar to OLED with self-emissive pixels that can be illuminated individually.

Apple is also working on micro-LED technology, but because micro-LED technology is too costly right now, mini-LED would come first on iPads and Macs.

OLED stands for organic light-emitting diode, and when power is applied or switched off, each pixel or subpixel lights up individually in a particular colour or switches in an OLED display, allowing for the darkest blacks and the best contrast. It is similar to micro-LED, but it is made of an inorganic material that does not degrade as rapidly as OLED.

OLED is superior to mini-LED technology and with no pixel groups involved, it provides more even lighting, but micro-LED is thought to be superior to OLED because it can provide higher brightness levels and there are no complications that can lead to screen burn-in or brightness decreases over time.

In its iPhones, Apple uses OLED displays, but OLED is also a technology that has so far proved to be too costly to use with the larger Mac and iPad displays. Apple can intend to skip OLED on its Macs and iPads all together, eventually switching from mini-LED technology to micro-LED.

Micro-LEDs are the potential technologies to look forward to, but the technology that Apple is ready to launch in the near future is mini-LEDs.


Products to get Mini-LED displays expected

According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple is working on several iPads and MacBooks that use mini-LED technology. Here's where we can expect in the next year or two to see mini-LED technology deployed:

  • 16-inch MacBook Pro
  • 14.1-inch MacBook Pro
  • 12.9-inch iPad Pro
  • 27-inch iMac Pro
  • Low-cost iPad
  • iPad mini
It sounds like Apple 's ultimate strategy, based on reports, is to move most of its iPad and Mac lineup to mini-LED display technology. Any of the first devices to get mini-LED displays could be the MacBook Pro range, the iPad Pro, and the iMac Pro.

When to Expect Mini-LED Technology

The first mini-LED goods were scheduled for the end of 2020, but Apple 's plans are up in the air with the global health crisis. Kuo recently said that until 2021, we will not see any mini-LED devices, with mass production scheduled to start in the third quarter of 2020 and final assembly scheduled for the first quarter of 2021.

There have been other DigiTimes reports that still indicate a 2020 release for some mini-LED goods, but in the coming months we will just have to wait and see if the rumours turn out. Right now, for the first mini-LED units, we are looking at either late 2020 or early 2021.

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