There's been a lot of hype about the new chips in the MacBook Pro but I'm more interested in the new displays.
Don't let the name confuse you, these miniLED displays are LCDs, not OLEDS.
Here's how they are different:
Early LCDs used light sources on the edge of the panel as a backlight.
This was better for heat and affordability but they tend to light the panel unevenly
As LED tech improved light sources moved directly behind the panel.
This provided more even lighting and allowed the manufacturers to dim parts of the backlight when they weren't needed - reducing bleeding and blooming.
miniLED is the next step in that progression with tens of thousands of tiny LED backlights arranged into dimming zones.
These zones can be individually controlled to produce areas of deep black, something LCDs have always struggled with.
"Why are you rattling on about backlights Dan?"
Well we are sort of in a technology war between self-emissive displays(OLED) and backlit displays(LCD) and it's not clear which tech is winning.
miniLED backlights solve two problems for LCD displays.
a) They can be thinner.
b) They can be darker.
Thinner:
The smaller LEDs can be packed tighter which allows the panel to be closer to the backlight without bright spots.
Although because of the backlight you can't punch holes in them like OLEDs (hello notch)
Darker:
The tiny local dimming zones allow the display to reach a black level below 0.05 nits - impossible with conventional backlights.
(OLEDs are much darker ~ 0.0005)
With brightness over 1000nits, this high contrast means they are HDR compatible.
It's not perfect as there is always going to be a little light bleeding in the diffuse layers.
Because liquid crystals aren't perfectly light blocking some of that light sneaks through the display.
But OLEDs have some weaknesses that make them a bad choice for a laptop.
They can burn in over time and have relatively short lifespans that are directly related to brightness.
On a phone you can make these tradeoffs but on a workstation its a bit harder.
Anyway, rant over.
If you want to learn more about how LCDs work, I wrote a different tweet thread about that:
twitter.com/DanHollick/status/1423001710373474313?s=20
Dan Hollick
@DanHollick
design engineer @tailwindcss. writing a book about software at makingsoftware.com prev: @raycastapp