Apples new MacBook Pros have started to hit mass production with some sources saying they are going to be making 600,000 and 800,000 units between August and November. This amount of MacBooks requires a large amount of Mini LED Screens.
The Mini LED screen has many features that make it the better alternative when it comes to the quality of the screen.
They promise to have deep blacks, a higher contrast ratio, brighter, clearer and more vibrant images, because with Mini LEDs the backlighting is more targeted and precise. The use of Mini LEDs also means the screens will be both thinner and lighter.
While traditional LED displays have several dozen to several hundred LEDs in the backlight, Mini LEDs boast over 1000 full array local dimming zones.
Apple is rumored to be using Mini-LED displays that use 10,000 LEDs. Each LED is no bigger than 200 microns wide making them a fifth of a normal LED.
They are more power efficient, less likely to burn into the screen and, because of their use of inorganic Gallium Nitride, Mini LEDs will not degrade over time like OLEDs do. One company even goes as far as to say Mini-LED’s are a cheaper version of OLED without the burn-in issues.
The basic truth is smaller LEDs allow for more LEDs. Having more LEDs gives more control of local dimming, allowing some areas to appear completely black.
The cost of a Mini LED screen is also 70% to 80% less than the cost of an OLED screen giving Apple another great reason to utilize it. The energy efficiency of Mini LEDs also allows for an improvement in battery life as well as giving the option for a thinner screen which makes more room for the battery in devices like the Apple iPad.
The last we heard about Mini LEDs was when Apple was talking about a supply issue due to the coronavirus pandemic. This issue has now been resolved. The Chinese manufacturer BOE is supplying the Mini LEDs for the new MacBook Air, while Taiwan Surface Mounting Technology (TSMT) are working on backlights for the MacBook Pro with the Luxshare Precision Industry also working on a small number of screens, so supply and demand issues concerning the Mini-LEDs have been met.
In 2019 Kuo said, “We can see Apple’s iPad Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro are expected to see the switch to Mini-LED as soon as Q4 2020.” This hasn’t happened yet, but we can see the switch finally starting to gain ground, especially with the coming release of the new Apple MacBook Pro. The fact that so many units are expected to be completed between August and November puts it on track for Apples favored Fall release dates.
Bloomburg’s Mark Gurman agrees with this thinking and tells us that Apple has all of their attention on the Fall and that the MacBook Pro is likely to be released in the Fall despite not being announced at this year’s WWDC held in early June.
The new MacBook Pro is also said to have other cool features like a 1080p Webcam, A MagSafe, and an M1 chip. The M1 chip is designed specifically for MacBook Pro.
It has 16 billion transistors and integrates the CPU, GPU, Neural engine and I/O onto 1 tiny chip. The M1 chip is small, yet it is outrageously fast and extremely powerful.
With energy efficiency that gives up to 20 hours of battery life, a MacBook with this chip will last you a long time.
As times move on Apple is looking at the new Micro-LED. Micro-LED is not a backlit solution, it is a true LED emitter like what you would find in a plasma.
Micro LEDs are even smaller than Mini LEDs but they work differently. Grouped together each one becomes a pixel without the requirement of a color filtering layer.
Apple received a patent for Micro LEDs on February 23rd, and they have reportedly got factories dedicated to researching and improving this product.
Despite all of this, the expense of this new technology ensures it is still a long way off from being released in an Apple product.
