This backlight technology can help boost brightness and contrast in LCD/LED TVs from Hisense, LG, Samsung, Sony, TCL, and other brands
Samsung TVs with Mini LEDs are called Neo QLED sets.
By James K. Willcox
Keeping up with new TV tech isn’t easy. Every few years, shoppers see new marketing jargon for features that companies promise will provide impressive improvements but often don’t live up to the hype.
But we’re actually excited about Mini LEDs in TV backlights. They really make a difference in some higher-end LCD/LED TVs.
Televisions with Mini LED backlights can deliver improved brightness, contrast, and black levels. The technology started appearing several years ago in TCL sets, but you can now find it in TVs from most other brands, including Amazon, Hisense, LG, Roku, Samsung, Sharp, and Sony.
In 2026, we’re also seeing sets with an even newer technology: RGB Mini LED, which uses colored LEDs in backlights to offer an even wider range of colors and improved brightness.
Here’s a bit of background. Most TVs use LCD/LED technology, where the light comes from the back or sides of the screen. The lights are always on, and pixels twist open and close to let through the right amount of light. But in very dark scenes, some light always manages to leak through. This can make black tones look gray, and it can create halos around bright objects set against a dark background.
We saw a big improvement with the advent of full-array LED backlights, which place the LEDs across the entire back of the panel rather than just along the edges. TV makers can combine that with a feature called local dimming, which divides the LEDs into zones that can be illuminated or darkened separately. The result is that dark areas look darker, and you’re less likely to see halos.
But even the best LCD TVs with local dimming can’t quite match the performance of OLED sets. In these TVs, there’s no backlight; each pixel can be turned on and off individually, so if part of a picture is supposed to be completely black, it can be. Great contrast and black levels have helped OLEDs top CR television ratings in recent years.
And here’s where Mini LEDs come in. They’re helping LCD televisions narrow the gap with OLEDs.
Mini LEDs Improve Local Dimming
Mini LEDs in the backlight take local dimming to a whole new level. By shrinking the size of the LEDs, companies can pack more of them together—many thousands in each TV. Because the LEDs are so small, there can be a lot of dimming zones—say, a thousand—instead of the dozens typically found in even the best LCD sets without Mini LEDs. These zones can be controlled precisely to help improve contrast and black levels and reduce halos.
By increasing the dynamic range of the TV—the difference between the brightest whites and deepest blacks—Mini LEDs can also help boost a TV’s HDR (high dynamic range) performance. That means you’ll be able to see all the details in a darkly shadowed scene.
Combine these factors, and Mini LED sets can perform more like OLEDs while retaining some traditional LCD benefits, such as better brightness and a wider range of brands and screen sizes. One big trend last year was that companies focused on improving Mini LED performance by exerting more precise light control and increasing LED efficiency. This can produce even brighter images and further reduce halos around brighter objects on dark backgrounds.
The technology has been gaining momentum. Mini LED backlights are now used by many brands and are no longer relegated to the most expensive LCD sets.
RGB Mini LEDs Are a Colorful Addition
One of the biggest stories of 2026 is the arrival of RGB Mini LED TVs from companies including Hisense, LG, Samsung, and TCL. These LCD sets use thousands of tiny red, green, and blue LEDs in the backlight to create color directly rather than relying on a white or blue backlight with color filters. (RGB TVs do use the filters, which allow only the intended colors to pass through, producing more accurate hues.) Like other Mini LED TVs, they use local dimming, which allows each zone to be adjusted for both brightness and color. Samsung calls its versions Micro RGB, LG uses the term Micro RGB evo, and Hisense brands them as RGB MiniLED TVs.
RGB Mini LED TVs can offer extremely high brightness—up to 10,000 nits in some cases—and a wider color range than other sets. By comparison, most 4K content is mastered at 1,000 nits, with some Dolby Vision titles hitting 4,000 nits, levels very few TVs can reach today. Once limited to massive, very expensive displays, RGB TVs are now coming in more practical sizes, starting at 55 inches. But they’re still positioned as step-up or flagship models in every TV company’s lineup.
Overall, Consumer Reports’ testers have been impressed with the Mini LED models that have passed through our labs. “We’ve seen that Mini LEDs can make an improvement in the local dimming feature, with better control of black levels and dark scenes, and significantly reduced haloing effects,” says Matt Ferretti, who heads TV testing at CR. These sets have done well in our ratings and delivered top-notch HDR performance.
Here are a few models we’ve tested with Mini LED backlights that have performed well. The Samsung MRN75R85H and Hisense 75UR9SG are RGB Mini LED TVs.
Samsung QN65QN90F
Sony K-65XR90
LG 65QNED90TUA
Samsung MRN75R85H
TCL 65QM8K
Hisense 75UR9SG
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