Tiny LED would be the type of display panel I would choose for my laptop.
Even though OLED excels at producing deep blacks and high contrast, Mini LED is a strong alternative. On a small laptop screen, the possibility of blooming still exists, but it’s not a big deal. When I wish to take my laptop outside, there is no fear of burn-in, and I’d probably get a better full-screen brightness that way. Additionally, Mini LED screens have longer battery lives than OLED displays.
The greatest contrast ratio isn’t necessary for the tasks I perform most regularly on my laptop—working on Word documents and spreadsheets, reading, editing images, and streaming video. If it brought other benefits, I’d be content with second-best.
However, Mini LED is rarely found in laptops that are intended for general consumers. You must use more expensive, GPU-equipped computers designed for PC gaming or creative workers. The Dell XPS, Lenovo Yoga, and HP Spectre series, as well as other high-end laptops that rely on discrete graphics, all offer OLED in their most expensive WeUs, LCD-LED in their less expensive WeUs, and no Mini LED in between.
Why is it so difficult to buy a prosumer Mini LED laptop even while Mini LED desktop monitors are becoming more affordable? To learn more, we contacted laptop OEMs.
Scale economies
Naturally, the fact that Mini LED laptops wouldn’t be as profitable as OLED devices is the main reason why manufacturers won’t produce the laptops I’ve always wanted. OLED laptop panels are less expensive to source and come in a wider range than Mini LED screens, although OLED PC monitors and TVs are still more expensive than Mini LED equivalents due to economies of scale.
When I questioned Dell about the absence of Mini LED from its XPS lineup, a representative said that the business opted for OLED over Mini LED because it offers the «highest visual quality,» although the representative also mentioned cost:
OLED panels currently have more panel options due to the economy’s size, however the selection of Micro LED panels is currently somewhat limited. Although we are keeping an eye on technological developments, you will currently notice more OLED across our entire product line.
The Swift 3 from Acer costs $900 as of this writing, making it one of the most affordable OLED laptops on the market. Because «diversifying components helps streamline inventory allocation,» a vendor has relegated Mini LED to «high-end gaming» and uses OLED for «premium products designed for consumers and/or prosumers desiring a higher-end system.»
The largest barrier to the adoption of Mini LED laptops, according to Acer, is price. «Mini LED is more expensive because it lacks the economies of scale that OLED has due to it being a more developed technology,» an Acer representative stated.
Chicken or egg
However, prices for Mini LED laptop panels won’t decrease until there is sufficient demand to support an increase in supply, choice, and availability. In the meantime, OLED technology has proliferated throughout the electronics industry, appearing in consoles like the Nintendo Switch, smartphones, TVs, smartwatches, and even PC peripherals (Mini LEDs have found their ways into keyboards, too). In addition, OLED is a more well-known brand with broader appeal than Micro LED. All of these factors come together to create a classic chicken-or-the-egg scenario.
In spite of the fact that «both OLED and Mini LED offer high quality, TV-class images with superb color accuracy and contrast ratios,» an Acer representative claimed, the business has discovered that consumers seeking «high-end gaming» laptops are «less cost-sensitive and more spec-driven.»
Acer added that such people place a high value on brightness and cited Micro LED’s higher potential for brightness in comparison to OLED. The business informed me that small and medium-sized organizations, prosumers, and creators all had «similar» need for Mini LED laptops. Although other users can gain from Mini LED’s improved contrast and luminance, those among the tech-savvy demographics are most likely to be aware of these advantages.
The largest barrier to the adoption of Mini LED laptops, according to Lenovo, is «education.»
A representative for Asus, which manufactures Mini LED gaming laptops, concurred that for the technology to become more widely used in laptops, «consumers and media» need to experience it and endorse it. According to a Lenovo spokeswoman, «Customers often learn about panels via the TV industry, and Mini LED isn’t very common in home theater right now.»
In May, Lenovo will debut its first Mini LED computers. With laptop GPUs from the RTX 40 series, Intel H-series CPUs, and a starting price of $1,700, it promotes the Slim Pro 9i series as highly capable creator machines.