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Buying tips: does mini-LED matter?
Al Griffin – Senior Editor, TV and Audio
An LED backlight in a TV was a high-tech feature at one time, but now even mainstream sets use LED backlights. What’s less common is mini-LED backlighting, where an array of tiny lamps are used to illuminate the TV’s LCD display panel.
As with quantum dots, different TV brands use different terms to indicate the presence of mini-LED backlighting in their sets – Samsung calls its mini-LED models “Neo QLED”, because the mini-LEDs are always combined with its QLED tech.
A key advantage mini-LED offers over regular LED TVs is that the smaller lamp modules used in the backlight allow for finer control over local dimming. That’s a process where the individual modules are grouped in zones and dimmed according to the brightness level of the onscreen image. For example, the LED zones in shadowy parts of the picture will be dimmed or shut off completely, while bright highlight areas get a full blast of light.
With a higher density of LED modules spread across the backlight, mini-LED TVs can also deliver higher overall brightness, with some sets like Samsung’s QN95B having twice as much or more measured light output as regular LED-lit TVs. That Samsung model is the company’s top-of-the-line 4K Neo QLED offering, but you get fantastic brightness from the Samsung QN85B too.
Where that extra light output will matter is if you’re going to be watching in a well-lit room – daytime sports viewing, for example. But it can also help bring out the full level of highlight detail in HDR sources by reducing the need for tone mapping, a process where the TV scales the brightness range of programs to accommodate its maximum light output capability.
To sum up, mini-LED can make a difference when viewing in rooms with bright lighting conditions, and it also adds a welcome level of visual punch when watching movies and TV shows with HDR. It’s a feature you’ll pay extra for, but for some folks it will be well worth it.
A great gaming TV deal
2022 was the year that more inexpensive TVs gained HDMI 2.1 features like 120Hz display and Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) along with Nvidia G-Sync and FreeSync Premium Pro support. Among them is Samsung’s Q80B series sets, which are the company’s top QLED models with a standard LED backlight.
In our Samsung Q80B review, we noted its full suite of gaming features, which includes the company’s new Game Hub, which serves as a portal to cloud gaming services from Xbox, Utomik, and Twitch. Just add a wireless controller and you’ll be ready to go! Beyond that, the Q80B offers good overall image quality for the price, which is now $200 off in this Best Buy Black Friday deal, bringing the price of a 65-inch model to $999.
A Samsung TV this feature-packed for under one grand is a deal you don’t spot everyday, so make a point of checking it out. You will get better brightness by stepping up to one of Samsung’s mini-LED backlit Neo QLED models, which sit at the top of our list of the best Samsung TVs, but you’ll also pay quite a bit more, even with current Black Friday deals.
Welcome to Black Friday, Samsung fans!
The big deals day is here! Thanks for joining our live coverage of all the latest Black Friday Samsung TV deals.
We’ve been following the deals all month, so we’ve been keeping track of great deals that are still live, and new deals that have launch for Black Friday itself.
Our team of AV experts has been doing the combing through the sales, looking for discounts on Samsungs TVs that get you the most bang for your buck, and we’re bringing them here to you today.
And we’ll explain some of the jargon to help you decide which features you really need, and which you can live without to save some money on your buy.