Video: See How Teeny Even MiniLEDs Are For TVs And Pro Displays In This Teardown Video

March 20, 2025 by Dave Haynes

There are likely many, many people who pay attention to evolving technology on the display side of digital signage who don’t fully have their heads around just how teeny LED light emitters are these days – and this is well before microLEDs get out of R&D and are mainstreamed.

So this teardown video of a big 85-inch LCD with miniLED-driven, locally-dimmed backlighting is interesting – because it shows the already crazy-small size of miniLEDs, and how they are used in an array at the rear of flat panels to illuminate the LCD. The local dimming thing means individual zones of lights go off and an dynamically, with zones switching off when that part of a scene is dark or black. More black leads to better contrast, which usually means better visuals.

This teardown was done by Peter Palomaki, the owner and chief scientist at Palomaki Consulting, well known in display nerd circles for his display teardown videos and expertise in quantum dots and materials chemistry. The post that includes the video is on the paywalled Display Daily site, which is focused largely on the science side of the display business.

MiniLED has often been called microLED by direct view LED manufacturers trying to separate what they have from the pack – even making up their own definitions of what is microLED. As you can see from the grain of rice image up top, miniLED is already super-teeny and true microLED is the sort of thing that tends to require a microscope or photographer’s loupe lens to even see the individual LED light emitters.