Wednesday, June 20th 2018
AUO Reportedly Shipping Mini-LED Panels for Gaming Monitors in 4Q18
According to a report by DigiTimes, panel-maker AU Optronics is looking to ship gaming panels with built-in mini-LED technology going into the 4Q 2018. This isn't a new display tech, and shouldn't be confused with Micro LED tech, which is hailed as the great coming of an OLED killer. Despite that, mini-LED remains a very interesting, likely crucial piece of technology in enabling much increased color accuracy and contrast ratios of current panel technology - thus also bettering HDR implementations.
Usually, a given monitor or TV features Edge-lit LED technology to achieve the backlighting necessary for image display (or in the case of OLED, there's no need for any of that, since it's a self-emissive technology). In recent times, contrast ratios have been increased by the introduction of local dimming (essentially, there are multiple LED lighting units across the entirety of the monitor or TV, which can be singularly controlled to achieve desired lighting ratios). Mini-LED technology brings this a leap further, allowing for an enormous increase in lighting zones - up to the tens of thousands, compared, for example, to the 384 local dimming units present on the recently released 4K, 144 Hz G-Sync monitors - of which AUO did sample specification-like panels but with this added mini-LED tech. Of course, these "tens of thousands" still pale in comparison to an OLED panel's pixel-count-like dimmable LEDs. As a bonus, panel thickness can also be reduced with mini-LED tech.
Sources:
LED Inside: On Mini-LED Tech, LED Inside, DigiTimes, via Reddit
Usually, a given monitor or TV features Edge-lit LED technology to achieve the backlighting necessary for image display (or in the case of OLED, there's no need for any of that, since it's a self-emissive technology). In recent times, contrast ratios have been increased by the introduction of local dimming (essentially, there are multiple LED lighting units across the entirety of the monitor or TV, which can be singularly controlled to achieve desired lighting ratios). Mini-LED technology brings this a leap further, allowing for an enormous increase in lighting zones - up to the tens of thousands, compared, for example, to the 384 local dimming units present on the recently released 4K, 144 Hz G-Sync monitors - of which AUO did sample specification-like panels but with this added mini-LED tech. Of course, these "tens of thousands" still pale in comparison to an OLED panel's pixel-count-like dimmable LEDs. As a bonus, panel thickness can also be reduced with mini-LED tech.
17 Comments on AUO Reportedly Shipping Mini-LED Panels for Gaming Monitors in 4Q18
HDR is just bonus
Or maybe these can give us VA contrast for IPS panels? Cause that would be sweet, too.
give me a better panel and HDR600 !
32"
3840 x 2160
AHVA
144Hz
?ms
January 2019 (panel production date, products in Q2 2019)
HDR1000
1000+FALD
Flat
Mini-LED
So Mini-LED will allow FALD increase from 384 to 1000+
Tho curiously next month AUO will start producing a 200Hz VA panel with 35" 3440x1440 resolution and 512 FALD. Tho likely this will not be Mini-LED.
Source: www.tftcentral.co.uk/news_archive/39.htm#panels_auo
Panels that will go into production in the near future:
This ties into ergonomics (and health) and the ability of our eyes to discern detail. When it comes to gaming / moving images, a vastly more important metric is motion resolution - things like refresh rate + the FPS you can get stable, no ghosting, motion blur reduction tech etc. When it comes to static images, there is a point where the increased pixel density only serves to create somewhat smoother edges on text because 1:1 pixel mapping for it will make it too small. That is also diminishing returns. The image quality payoff for the increased performance requirement is very bad @ 4K.
HDR600/32"/4K/120hz/Mini-LEDorMicro-LED is going to be my sweet spot I think. time will tell.
Its not rocket science...Not sure where you're going with 'Why FALD actually sucks', care to elaborate?
BTW you won't hear me saying HDR isn't a very nice thing to have... its just a shame the sticker gets stuck on panels that can't properly use it and there is the eternal early adopters problem of hardware without content for it.