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If I could have any type of display panel in my laptop, it would be Mini LED.
Sure, OLED is best at producing deep blacks and high contrast, but Mini LED is a powerful substitute. The potential for blooming still exists, but it’s not a huge deal on a small laptop screen. Meanwhile, there’s no burn-in risk, and I’d likely get better full-screen brightness when I want to take my laptop outside. Plus, the battery life of Mini LED screens is superior to that of OLED panels.
For the things I do most frequently on my laptop—working on Word documents and spreadsheets, reading, editing photos, and streaming video—the highest contrast ratio isn’t imperative. I’d settle for second-best if it meant other gains.
But among consumer-grade laptops, Mini LED is mostly nowhere to be found. You have to turn to pricier, GPU-equipped machines targeting creative workers or PC gamers. Premium laptops relying on discrete graphics, like the Dell XPS, Lenovo Yoga, and HP Spectre series, all offer OLED in top-tier SKUs, LCD-LED in lower-priced SKUs, and no Mini LED in between.
Why is it virtually impossible to find a prosumer Mini LED laptop, even as Mini LED desktop monitors get cheaper? We reached out to laptop OEMs to find out.
Economies of scale
Unsurprisingly, the main reason companies won’t make the Mini LED laptops of my dreams is that they wouldn’t be as profitable as OLED machines are. OLED PC monitors and TVs remain pricier than Mini LED alternatives, but economies of scale mean OLED laptop panels are cheaper to source and come in a better variety than Mini LED screens.
When I asked Dell about the lack of Mini LED in its XPS lineup, a representative told me the company chose OLED over Mini LED because it has the “best image quality,” but the rep also pointed to economics:
Right now, the scale of economy allows for more panel choices with OLED, whereas at the moment, the amount of Mini LED panels choices available is relatively small. We are monitoring the technology trends, but for now, you’ll see more OLED across our overall portfolio.
Acer has some of the lowest-priced OLED laptops available; the Swift 3 costs $900 as of this writing. The vendor has relegated Mini LED to “high-end gaming” and uses OLED for “premium products designed for consumers and/or prosumers desiring a higher-end system” because “diversifying components helps streamline inventory allocation,” a spokesperson said.
“Mini LED is more expensive because it lacks the economies of scale that OLED has due to it being a more mature technology,” Acer’s rep said, noting that the biggest obstacle the company sees in Mini LED laptop adoption is price.
Chicken or egg
But Mini LED laptop panel prices won’t go down until demand grows enough to justify an increase in production, availability, and selection. Meanwhile, OLED has become widespread across electronics, with the tech showing up in smartphones, TVs, smartwatches, consoles like the Nintendo Switch, and even PC peripherals (Mini LEDs have found their ways into keyboards, too). OLED is also a household name with more mainstream demand than Mini LED. All that combines to make for a classic chicken-or-the-egg situation.
Acer’s rep said that “both OLED and Mini LED produce high quality, TV-class images with excellent color accuracy and contrast ratios,” but the company has found that people looking for “high-end gaming” laptops are “less cost-sensitive and more spec-driven.” Acer also said that brightness is a key factor for such users, noting Mini LED’s superior brightness potential compared to OLED. The company told me it sees “similar” Mini LED laptop demand among creators, prosumers, and small and medium-sized businesses. Creators and gamers aren’t the only users who can benefit from Mini LED’s boosted contrast and luminance, but those tech-savvy demographics are the ones most likely aware of Mini LED’s benefits.
Lenovo has found the biggest obstacle in Mini LED laptop adoption to be “education.” A spokesperson for Asus, which makes Mini LED gaming laptops, agreed that “consumers and media” need to experience and support the technology to increase its adoption in laptops. “Customers typically get their panel education from the TV market, and Mini LED isn’t that prevalent in home theater today,” a Lenovo spokesperson said.
Lenovo is releasing its first Mini LED laptops in May. It’s pushing the Slim Pro 9i series as powerful creator machines, with RTX 40-series laptop GPUs, Intel H-series CPUs, and a $1,700 starting price.
