The 12.9-inch iPad Pro 2021 and MacBook Pro 2021 were the first Apple products with a mini LED screen. With the impressive name ‘Liquid Retina XDR display’, the screen is making a name for itself, but what is so special about it?
Screen technologies come in all shapes and sizes, from traditional LCD screen to high-contrast OLED and everything in between. Apple has introduced advanced technology with the mini LED display, but what is it and how does it work?
What is mini LED
Apple’s Liquid Retina XDR display features a mini-LED screen, but what is it? In short, a mini LED screen is an LED display, but on a smaller scale.
The light source of traditional LED screens consists of LED lamps located behind the screen. These provide the screen with light so that the pixels can light up. In standard LED screens, the LEDs have a size of 1,000 microns, while mini LEDs are only 200 microns.
Local dimming
All these lights are on panels that are controlled by software and can be switched off. To enable contrast differences, certain panels are dimmed or even switched off, this is called ‘local dimming’.
Because the panels are larger on standard LCD/LED screens, a larger part of the screen will also be dimmed or switched off. Mini-LED consists of many smaller panels that can be dimmed individually. This provides more accurate contrast compared to normal LED screens, for example the Liquid display of the 11-inch iPad Pro.
For example, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro 2021 has more than 10,000 mini LEDS spread over 2596 dimming zones. Depending on what’s in the picture, the brightness in each zone can be precisely adjusted for a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1.
120Hz display with ProMotion
The Liquid Retina XDR screens also feature a 120Hz display with ProMotion. This technology ensures that the screen refresh rate is automatically adjusted up to 120 Hz depending on the optimal speed for the content. The big advantage is that scrolling is smoother and animations, games and videos are displayed much more smoothly.
Differences Mini-LED, OLED and micro-LED
New screen technologies have been discussed for some time now, including micro-LED. You must take into account that mini-LED is not the same as micro-LED. The mini version is an improvement on the current LED displays, micro-LED is another type of technology that is seen as the successor to OLED (more info).
Unlike OLED, the pixels of a mini-LED screen do not emit light themselves. As with a normal LED screen, the lighting takes place behind the pixels. Yet mini-LED has advantages, the LEDs are controlled via the LCD processor and can still contain individual colors and information from the image. Because the mini LEDs are smaller, several of them fit in the screen and can therefore produce more light.
Peak brightness of 1600 nits
The Liquid Retina XDR display has a full-screen brightness of 1000 nits. When viewing HDR content, a peak brightness of 1600 nits can even be achieved. Compared to a ‘traditional’ LCD display, this is an extreme improvement, which ‘only’ has a maximum brightness of 600 nits (11-inch iPad Pro) or 500 nits (13-inch MacBook Pro).
Quantum dot technology
The MacBook Pro with M4, M4 Pro and M4 Max chip have something extra. These have a mini-LED display with quantum dot technology. This technology uses nanocrystals, known as quantum dots, which are capable of emitting specific colors of light when illuminated. As a result, the screen has better color reproduction and brightness compared to the previous generation, making a wider color range possible.
mini LED or OLED?
Mini-LED will mainly be compared with OLED, because the end result is comparable. Yet the biggest difference is the control of light. With OLED, the pixels themselves emit light and no additional lighting is required. With mini-LED, the pixels do not emit light, but the backlight is significantly smaller and divided into zones. The contrast of OLED is often better because each pixel is controlled separately, with mini-LED this is per zone and therefore multiple pixels are illuminated.
Advantages of mini LED screen
- High contrast and brightness compared to LCD/LED
- Deeper blacks than LED displays
- More energy efficient than OLED
- Less vulnerable to burn-in than an OLED display
- Cheaper than OLED
There are no real disadvantages, at least if the manufacturer has arranged it properly. Mini-LED may be more energy efficient than OLED, but it requires more power than a regular LCD display. Apple has apparently resolved this, because the battery life of the iPad Pro with mini LED is the same as the previous generation with an LCD screen.
Apple products with Liquid Retina XDR display
- 2021 12.9-inch iPad Pro 5th generation
- 12.9 inch iPad Pro 6th generation from 2022
- All MacBook Pro models with M1 series from 2021
- All MacBook Pro models with M2 series from 2022
- All MacBook Pro models with M3 series from 2023
- All MacBook Pro models with M4 series from 2024
Since the iPad Pro with M4 chip, Apple has used OLED displays for the 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro.