Mini LED still isn’t winning the war against OLED

OPINION: Over the past few years, TV manufacturers who aren’t in the OLED camp have extolled the virtues of Mini LED, and why wouldn’t they? There needs to be a point of differentiation between this TV and another, so if you’re not interested in joining them, you may as well try and beat them in a different way.

Except when you’re not really winning the ‘rivalry’.

Late in 2023, I wrote about how Mini LED was OLED’s new nemesis. There was a growing tide pushing Mini LED, with Panasonic launching its first set, Hisense and TCL placing a big emphasis on it for upcoming models, and Sony’s new Mini LED TVs were previewed behind closed curtains.

As Steve May wrote about when he saw those Sony Mini LED TVs up close at a preview event, brands see more innovation with Mini LED than with OLED. They’re probably eyeing up healthier profit margins too.

Now I can’t say that I’ve tested all the Mini LED or OLED TVs that have come out this year. I’ve tested 8K Mini LEDs, I’ve reviewed 4K Mini LEDs and vice versa with 4K and 8K OLEDs.

They all have the things that they can do well, but after several months of examining various tellies, are OLED and Mini LED in direct competition with each other? No, not really.

Take Hisense for example. It has dabbled with OLED TVs in the past, the A9H (picture below) is one I feel was both underappreciated and underrated, but the Chinese brand realised it wasn’t going to unseat LG from the driving seat. So it jumped into the Mini LED market instead.

This makes sense as Mini LED is less expensive to produce than OLED and it doesn’t suffer from burn-in (which is rare anyway) and can hit a higher level of brightness compared to a similarly priced OLED TV.

That brightness not only helps when dealing with ambient light in a room but drives the reproduction of colours for a picture full of varied tones. If you want to see a spectacular HDR picture, a high brightness panel is key.

But brightness is only one part of the equation with contrast the driving force in the TV world. If you have perfect blacks like an OLED TV does, then increasing the brightness output is the focus. While Mini LED is capable of high brightness, in the case of that technology it’s been about reducing blooming and boosting black levels. Basically the opposite of OLED.

However, Mini LED is still affected by problems that have been around for years, which became very noticeable with the Hisense U7N and E7N Pro, all of which have to do with the panel.

There was backlight bleeding, discolouration towards the sides of the screen, blooming at wider angles, plus black levels that seemed a little grey (and green) in appearance. Depending on the OLED, you may not get the same level of brightness as a Mini LED, but you also don’t get these issues.

The quality of the screen matters – and this seems to affect Mini LED more than it does OLED glass.

The brands with the best screens offer a more consistent performance. If you were to ask my opinion on which affordable Mini LED you should go for, I’d say the Panasonic MX950 is still an excellent option over the recent Hisense TVs. We’re still to test Samsung’s less expensive 4K Neo QLED Mini LEDs but with recent history in mind, let us presume they’d also be a strong proposition.

It’s the issue of blooming that’s stopping Mini LED from competing with OLED consistently. As soon as that brightness is upped, there has to be better control over it and the TV’s black levels.

Samsung’s QN800D 8K Mini LED is a TV I have tested, and it offers an excellent picture performance. Though advanced as it is, it still suffers from some slight blooming and with scenes that have lots of bright objects against dark backgrounds, it can struggle to make sense of it. However, if you want to see Mini LED at its best, I’d say Samsung’s 8K TVs are showing how high it can reach.

We’ve not yet reached the point where blooming has been eradicated from LCD TVs, so while Mini LEDs are a very good option for viewing in a bright room with ambient light; their issues become much more obvious in a dark room. OLED is not perfect in its own right, but the upside is stronger than the downside with those perfect blacks and infinity contrast.

So while Mini LED is in the up, there’s still a way to go – the issues I’ve mentioned in this piece were present five years ago. For the majority of buyers, they may not even notice these issues but from what I’ve seen so far, if you’re looking for the best picture performance, OLED is still top of the list.