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We hear more and more about new LCD display technologies and how Apple plans to adopt them in its devices this year. Follow along for an explanation on what mini-LED display technology is, why Apple is moving to it soon with iPad and MacBook Pro, and what to expect from Apple’s 2021 plans.
Context
LED-backlit LCD displays have replaced CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent) displays over the past decade as they offer a number of advantages in many aspects including reliability, lifespan, color gamut larger, smaller physical size, power efficiency, dimming capabilities, etc.
While OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) displays have become the current choice for many flagship smartphones and smartwatches like the iPhone 11 Pro and 12 line and Apple Watch, mini-LEDs and micro-LEDs are expected to bring further improvements to displays.
What is mini LED display technology?
Traditional LED backlit displays will have from tens to hundreds of LEDs. As the name suggests, mini-LED displays use miniaturized backlighting and can feature over a thousand full-array local dimming zones (FALDs).
Advantages of the mini-LED:
- Higher contrast ratio
- Higher brightness
- Deeper blacks
- Energy efficient
- Less prone to burn out than OLED
- Uses inorganic gallium nitride (GaN), does not degrade over time like OLED
So what are micro LEDs? They are an order of magnitude smaller than the mini variant and are as small as 1 / 100th the size of a traditional LED backlight in an LCD display. They take the advantages of mini-LED a step further over standard LED LCDs and can provide 30 times the brightness of OLED.
The tricky part of making high quality micro LED displays is that you dedicate one LED for every pixel on a display. Semiconductor engineering Explain:
MicroLED is where you scale them down to tens of microns. You place one in each pixel. It’s so much smaller and harder to do. It’s harder to physically place them where you want them to be. It is also more difficult to make the LEDs themselves to work well.
Apple’s plans for iPad and MacBook
So it makes sense that the two main hurdles to these new display technologies are cost and large-scale manufacturing, and that Apple first looks to make mini-LEDs with its larger portable devices and put implement the micro-LED with Apple Watch to start.
In 2019, Kuo predicted that Apple’s iPad Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro are expected to switch to the mini-LED as early as Q4 2020. That hasn’t happened, but reports are mounting. that the time is soon. More recent reports from TrendForce and Digitimes predict that the upcoming 12.9-inch iPad Pro will receive a mini-LED in the first quarter of 2021.
And just yesterday, Macotakara released a report that the new large iPad Pro with mini LED will launch in March this year with a slightly thicker body to accommodate the new display technology.
Meanwhile, the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro M1 models we’d expect should include the switch to mini-LEDs as well. These should be published this year.
When it comes to micro-LEDs, we don’t hear as much about this change. Apple Watch 6 / SE didn’t embrace the technology last year (after a report it did), but it could be that the Apple Watch Series 7 is the first to launch the micro-LED in the autumn.
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