Every year, there’s seemingly a new development to drive TV purchases that little bit more.
For the past few years, it has been Mini-LED, a technology that delivered tiny white LEDs behind the colour pixels of a screen to control the lighting better, providing more balanced lighting and offering a potentially brighter technology versus that of OLED, which doesn’t always do well in bright rooms.
This year, it’s Micro-RGB, a variation on Mini-LED that comes with a few names, but offers a similar concept: tiny LEDs behind the pixels, but instead of simply being white, they’re a combination of red, green, and blue to provide coloured lighting to improve the balance and rendition of LED-backlit screens considerably.
If all of this just sounds like jargon, it’s because it is. The technology all does roughly the same thing, lighting up screens to provide better colour uniformity and balance.
New generations of the technology do offer improvements seemingly with every year, and while many of the brands we’ve heard from this year are focused on Micro-RGB at the top, particularly with regards to the most expensive TVs, not everyone is.
TCL is actually keeping its attention squarely on Mini-LED, using a new variation on the theme that uses quantum dots.
Yet another buzzword, quantum dots are an older technology that essentially use tiny crystals to hone the colour and improve it. For TCL, the latest approach is something it calls “Super Quantum Dot” (SQD), which appears to improve colour performance more by widening the colour gamut and optimising for blur light.
The technology also includes smaller particles to make the colours more accurate, a technology described as an “Ultra Colour Filter”, while the tiny white pixels of the Mini-LED handle brightness and balance across the screen.
Essentially, TCL’s approach this year appears to be an improvement on what it’s been working on for ages, as opposed to a new technology entirely. That said, it’s one that approaches a similar price point to the Micro RGB world Samsung and Hisense are talking about, offering its SQD Mini-LED tech for a minimum of $7999 for a 75 inch TV, and as much as $15K for the 98 inch, coming in TCL X11L.
The Super Quantum Dot technology will be found in other variations, essentially giving a choice between an entry-level option of the high-end, all the way up to the X11 flagship.
That includes TCL’s C7L TV priced from $1795 for a 55 inch to just under $8K for a 98 inch, as well as a slightly better C8L for a little more, priced from $2999 for a 65 inch and up to $10K for a 98 inch screen.
The range is set to arrive in stores shortly, found at retailers across the country.
