A marketing image for Samsung’s M-series TVs. Credit: Samsung
What makes a display a Mini LED display?
It’s a question that sounds like it should have a simple answer. But it’s now at the center of a lawsuit between two of the biggest names in TVs, with TCL accusing its longtime competitor Samsung of falsely advertising budget LCD-LED TVs as Mini LED sets.
TCL may have a point. Samsung’s M-series TVs, which range from $300 for a 43-inch model to $2,300 for a 100-inch model, do raise some legitimate questions about what should qualify as Mini LED. More broadly, though, the dispute highlights a problem for shoppers: Without agreed-upon standards for what “Mini LED” actually means, manufacturers have plenty of room to define the technology for themselves.
TCL Accuses Samsung of Mini LED “Fraud”
In a lawsuit (PDF) filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California in late August, TCL accused Samsung of resorting to “fraud” to compete with TCL’s QM-series of Mini LED TVs. Samsung’s M70H, M80H, and M90H are “merely recycled… pre-existing, low-end, standard LED televisions, [which are Samsung’s entry-level] Crystal UHD line… re-labelled… as ‘Mini LED,’” TCL’s suit says.
“Samsung’s M Models contain none of the technological advancements associated with Mini LED technology, including [full array local dimming],” the complaint reads.
Samsung didn’t respond to questions about specific claims in TCL’s lawsuit. Instead, a spokesperson shared a statement noting that it intends to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.
The FALD Debate
TCL argues that M-series TVs don’t have backlights capable of true full array local dimming, or FALD, the most advanced type of backlighting technology available in LCD-LED displays.
A FALD backlight uses dozens to thousands of small LEDs, or Mini LEDs, grouped into different zones, each with individually controllable brightness levels. This helps boost contrast, which is critical for image quality and essential for delivering quality HDR on an LCD-LED display.
According to a specification line titled “Micro Dimming” on the M-series TVs’ product pages, the devices use “Supreme Mini LED Dimming.” The spec sheets (PDF) available for download from those pages include a tiny footnote that clarifies: “Supreme Mini LED Dimming is Software-based (not full-array hardware-based) technology.”
Samsung also uses the term “Supreme Mini LED Dimming” on product pages for its Neo QLED TVs, which TCL accepts as true Mini LED TVs. The Neo QLED spec sheets don’t include the footnote, though.
Software-based dimming without individually addressable LED zones differs from the FALD technology described above. With software-based dimming, a TV typically analyzes each frame of a video, breaking it into different zones and determining each zone’s ideal brightness level. Using that information, the display modifies the frame’s brightness to boost perceived contrast. Critically, though, the display’s brightness level remains uniform across the panel, unlike in a display using a FALD backlight.
In this shot from AP Tech’s video, you can see the differences between how the backlights of the M80H (left) and TCL (right) manage the image shown on the TV in front. Credit: AP Tech/YouTube
Software-based dimming was more common on TVs from the 2010s, such as TCL’s P6-series and LG’s UH8500-series. But even then, software-based dimming paled in comparison to FALD, as Reviewed noted in 2016.
Software-based dimming “will never be as effective as a well-designed, hardware-based local dimming solution, especially in scenes that are more susceptible to blooming artifacts,” Guillaume Chansin, associate director of displays and XR at Counterpoint Research, said.
“However, the software plays an important role to get the most out of the hardware, with some brands able to achieve comparable image quality with fewer LEDs or dimming zones,” he added.
Because displays that support software-based dimming work differently from those that use a backlight with individually addressable LED zones, they’re not what people typically think of when describing “FALD.”
Eric Virey, principal displays analyst at Yole Intelligence, considers FALD a hardware feature first and foremost. It requires a “2D array of LEDs uniformly distributed across the entire area of the display,” along with a good algorithm to help reduce blooming, he said, adding, “To me, a ‘software-based’ Mini LED dimming just doesn’t make any sense if you don’t have that full, 2D-array of LEDs or Mini LEDs in the backlight.”
An LED display with FALD should have better contrast than an equally specced display without it. But experts consulted for this article went further, suggesting that a display shouldn’t be considered Mini LED if it doesn’t support FALD.
“I think that is broadly agreed across the industry that FALD is a key and mandatory feature in Mini LED backlights,” Virey said via email.
Bob O’Brien, Counterpoint’s research director, also equates Mini LED with FALD.
“Mini LED was originally introduced as an improved FALD technology, with more dimming zones. So among those in the industry, it has always been assumed that a Mini LED TV has FALD capability,” he said.
Even Samsung’s own website describing Mini LED suggests that local dimming is essential. “Mini LED is an advanced backlighting display technology that uses tiny LEDs, smaller than standard ones, for more precise backlight control through local dimming zones,” it states — a definition that the M-series TVs’ software-based approach arguably does not satisfy.
Until the industry establishes agreed-upon standards for what qualifies as Mini LED, consumers will remain vulnerable to marketing claims that stretch the term well beyond its original technical meaning.
