LG’s new ‘QNED’ TV will have about 30,000 small LEDs behind the screen

LG may be the company that is most synonymous with OLED TVs, but tonight it is announcing what to expect from its LCD based sets in 2021. Like other manufacturers, including TCL, this has happened before (and Samsung expects to join soon), according to LG. Coming next year is adopting mini LED technology for its premium LCD 8K and 4K TVs.

LG says the mini LEDs “allow LCD TVs to take a huge leap forward in picture quality”. Today the best LCD TVs are called “full-array local dimming”, where the LEDs – in some cases hundreds of them – serve as backlighting behind the screen. This can be controlled into zones, and each zone can be properly dimmed for dark scenes, helping to correct black layers and contrast.

Mini LEDs, for more contrast than TVs, make a slight change in strategy using several hundred LEDs (but way more of them), which can top out in a hundred dumming zones.

In the case of LG, the company says that its new backlight has “about 30,000 small LEDs that produce an incredible peak brightness and a contrast ratio of 100,000: 1 when combined with 500,000 dimming zones and advanced local dimming zones.” Is. ” The end result is better contrast, more dynamic HDR and an improvement in color accuracy than the company’s previous LCD sets. Like all of LG’s 2020 flagships, it supports refresh rates of up to 120 Hz.

LG has branded these upper-end LCD TVs as “QNED”, referring to Q quantum dot color, and N is probably for LG’s “Nanocell” branding. It’s a little annoying – especially since TV shoppers have to argue with their mix of OLED, QLED and QNED TVs at their local best bye.

The closest comparison for LG’s QNED TV would be the same as the TCL’s 8 Series, which has 25,000 LEDs in about 1000 control zones. (LG says QNED inches will come in sizes up to 86 inches, which I guess comes with the previous numbers.) TCL’s Series series also uses mini LEDs, although the total number is much lower than the expensive 8 Series.

Image: TCL

But as a leading OLED TV brand, LG has kept in mind that despite all these advances in the LED side, OLED is still where the perfect best picture can be. Vizio entered the OLED TV sector in 2020 and saw LG try to lower the price, but LG would not easily leave its position at the top. (Sony also makes high-end OLEDs; all three companies use panels from LG displays.)

Lastly, don’t make the mistake of mixing mini LEDs with microleads. Think of the mini LED as another development of LCD TVs, while the MicroLade is a more radical upgrade that removes the bare backlight from the equation (like the OLED) and connects millions of self-slippery LEDs that are lit only when needed. MicroLade TVs are still aggressively expensive, and while we may not know the prices for LG’s QNED TV for several months, it should be eye-popping.