Kuo: iPad Air to Adopt OLED in 2022, Mini-LED to Remain Exclusive to iPad Pro Models

[Metrosey]

Something is definitely off about this. As others have noted, mini LED in its current form is almost a scam lol. I was watching a review of the new mini LED qleds from Samsung vs the LG OLEDs, and there's essentially no difference from previous FALD LCDs. The OLED killed it in the comparison of course.

Unless Kuo has confused mini LED with micro LED, I can't imagine the scenario where an iPad Air has OLED and the Pros don't.

The Apple Watch display is fantastic... I can't imagine Apple taking a step backwards on that either.

Kuo wouldn’t have confused Mini for Micro considering Micro is no where near production time for iPads.

 

[JPack]

OLED has come a long way people, just remember that, its nothing like it was a couple of years ago

and they're still doing R&D for it, and constantly improving with big breakthroughs, it will be the display tech for a decade at least

and then eventually we'll see MicroLED in the Apple Watch and 2 years after that in the iPhone and then 5 years in the iPad and MacBook

After more 30 years of development, OLED still faces the trade off between lifetime and luminance, even if we ignore image retention issues.

For Apple Glasses, OLED is a no-go for this decade. You need the luminance of mini LED in order to overlay images onto real world objects, even in bright daylight.

 

[ofarlig]

For all practical purposes, once you have over 1,000 dimming zones on an iPad-sized device, there will be diminishing returns. For movies, you rarely have a natural scene that calls for pixel level control of darkness. In the end, mini LED is a better technology overall especially for the type of mobile devices that Apple sells.

You can still have problems even with 1000 dimming zones on challenging scenes like pitch black space with stars on and such. You will not get the same contrast on the 1000 dimming zone mini-LED as the OLED in those scenes.

For mobile devices the higher brightness does provide a real benefit though. Although personally I think OLED is bright enough for tablets and phones.

 

[x-evil-x]

makes sense. Pro devices get mini-LED that has no burn in, but still has most of the advantages of OLED

You know all iPhones have oled right? Oleds are fine for tablets and computers. This isnt plasma days.
also, oled is still superior to micro led. Every single pixel is it’s in light source. Mini led can’t match that. Only thing that will be better is micro led.

 

[x-evil-x]

They say follow the science, so I'll point out something scientific. OLED is organic and has a predetermined life cycle. That means the chemicals decay and die out eventually. I'll bet mini-LED and LCDs outlast OLED in any form.

Do you keep your tv’s longer than 15-20 years? My plasma from 2011 is still going strong. My typical tv upgrade cycle is 10years. You don’t have to worry about life cycle of tv’s unless you keep things 20+ years Which nobody does anymore.

 

[mkoesel]

I'm so glad Kuo finally clarified this. Does this mean Mini-LED is coming to the 11" iPad Pro too!? All of the rumors have been about the 12.9" but now it's exclusive to the "Pro Line"... hopefully that's the entire Pro line

None of this makes any sense unless the 11" Pro gets OLED. The reason is, as I said in my prior post, the most reasonable explanation is manufacturing favors OLED panels for smaller sizes, mini-LED panels for larger sizes.

Assuming the 11" iPad Pro isn't being phased out for some reason (and I don't think that has been predicted), I would expect it to get an OLED display.

 

[The Game 161]

guessing 11 inch will get mini led at some point from the sounds id kuo ia correct.

 

[Carac]

Well...that's disappointing. This would make more sense if the iPad Pro was MICRO-LED since it is the ACTUAL successor to OLED. Mini-LED is the half-step display makers have taken to get closer to OLED but it's still nowhere near in contrast performance. This is like a car company offering their best car with an engine that isn't as good as an engine in their cheapest car...it just doesn't make sense...except that it will allow for better margins on the higher end iPad.

 

[cardfan]

All I’ll say is oled is outstanding on wife’s 15” laptop. Not so much on 55” lg tv bought in 2017. It’s ready to be tossed out the screen is so bad now.

For an iPad I don’t keep that long and there’s ease of swapping with AppleCare. Bring on oled. For a giant tv I’ll stick with led. Don’t think I’m interested in anymore 12” iPads though.

 

[Lemon Olive]

Not making a lot of sense here.

We've heard rumors from every corner of the industry of mini-LED coming to iPad Pro and MacBookPro for a long, long time now. No serious rumors of OLED in any iPad/Mac product line until very recently, and all of them very long term future rumors.

Even if Apple's mini-LED achievement is impressive, it will no doubt be inferior to an OLED display in its place.

So why would the highest end products (iPad Pro and MacBook Pro) get mini-LED displays this year, and the mid-low-tier products (iPad Air and MacBook Air) get OLED next year?

Apple doesn't do stop-gap measures, at least not ones that are this short term. They wouldn't update iPad Air and MacBook Air to OLED while the top end products lag behind. It always, always, always goes in the other direction.

Kuo is wrong about something. Period.

 

[SactoGuy18]

I think it really depends on how cheaply Apple can get their mini LED panels. If they can source them at a reasonable price, I wouldn't be surprised the entire iPad line goes mini LED by 2022 and skips out on OLED altogether.

 

[VARTV]

I just can't go OLED. Had a burn-in issue with my Xs Max plus the way we use our iPad we really like the screen to be always on...

 

[Freida]

I bet you, that if you colour measure the TV some of the channels will be almost done. Your plasma from 2011 will have completely different colours than when you bought it new and now I think you might not even be able to calibrate it to the same standard.

Mini LED is much better than OLED overall. Sure, OLED has advantages but it also have disadvantages that outweight it so I'll take Mini LED anyday over OLED.

Soon you will all find out why Mini LED was the better choice.

And please others - stop comparing it to TVs. Its totally different implementation.

Do you keep your tv’s longer than 15-20 years? My plasma from 2011 is still going strong. My typical tv upgrade cycle is 10years. You don’t have to worry about life cycle of tv’s unless you keep things 20+ years Which nobody does anymore.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

The Apple Watch display is fantastic... I can't imagine Apple taking a step backwards on that either.

My wife and I both have an Apple Watch 4. They both have dramatic off-axis blue shift. If there was any one thing giving me pause to buying an OLED screen, it would be these watch displays.

In the same vein, I’m not looking forward to replacing my iPhone 11 in the future, as it was the last “flagship” model with an LCD screen.

 

[one more]

So does this all mean that iPad Pro 11” will be getting a mini-LED screen too?

 

[agsystems]

OLED is vastly superior to mini LED.

I doubt Apple is looking at that way - for them it would be who cares about which one its superior quality....

OLED = Same cost of LCD - put it on the 'lower model'
Mini LED = cost more than OLED put it on the higher model

 

[one more]

Assuming the 11" iPad Pro isn't being phased out for some reason (and I don't think that has been predicted), I would expect it to get an OLED display.

This would be good - mini-LED screens for iPad Pro and MacBooks and OLED screens for iPad Pro 11” and Air 4. The question is then when?

 

[macsareveryinteresting]

They probably aren’t going to upgrade the iPad Air until 2023 spring event. Because if the new iPad Air came out in mid 2020, it always waits two years.

 

[GuruZac]

So regardless of the screen type, am I right in thinking that rumours of the last week or so seem to suggest we shouldn't expect a massive change in terms of design from the 2021 iPad Pros? For a short time there I thought we were maybe going to see significant changes to the form factor and features to differentiate it from the Air, but maybe the screen tech is going to be the main thing.

This is the only thing giving me pause about upgrading my 2018 12.9 iPad Pro. The A12X is still not troubled by anything, the RAM management of iPadOS seems to do a better job with 4GB of RAM than iOS does with my iPhone 11 Pro, and the design is still first class. I would like to have 6GB or more of RAM for even better future proofing. It all depends on what changes on the 2021 iPad Pro. If the display tech is noticeably better, has 8GB of RAM, is compatible with the Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil 2, I’ll likely upgrade.

 

[rhyzome]

I’d rather have OLED than mini-LED though. You get true infinite contrast, and burn in has never been a thing with Apple’s OLED.

Mini-LED is just a glorified LCD panel with slightly better contrast. It still doesn’t compare to OLED pure blacks. It makes no sense that mini-LED would be the premium product while OLED is the mid- to low-tier product.

I’m with you here. The rumor makes no sense. Probably wrong, like most of the rumors on here lol

 

[McG2k1]

IF that was the case Samsung would use it in their TVs, but they don't because for larger panels its not as good.

Are you on crack? two things.... we’re talking about smaller panels here so I don’t know why you’d bring up your opinion it was better for larger panels... and OLED is universally considered the best for large panels. Samsung has limited manufacturing availability and they stuck with LED because of its lowest common denominator status for most viewers’ living rooms, not because OLED has inferior picture quality.

 

[dgdosen]

This is interesting in that while nobody knows for sure what mini-LED is going to look like, the current thinking is that OLED looks better...
I wonder if mini-LED will be 'positioned' as a better and truly amazing, or if it really will be. We'll find out in April?

 

[Freida]

That is the unfortunate thinking though. OLED is not better than Mini LED and I'm sure Apple will prove it.
Anyway, pointless to keep going around in circles. Some people will defend OLED and some don't.

I wanna stay away from OLED as much as I can.

This is interesting in that while nobody knows for sure what mini-LED is going to look like, the current thinking is that OLED looks better...
I wonder if mini-LED will be 'positioned' as a better and truly amazing, or if it really will be. We'll find out in April?

 

[techconc]

I realize this is just a rumor, but I like the way they are positioning mini-LED as better than OLED... because it is. I wish they would put mini-LED in my phone as well. I'm just not that impressed with OLED overall.

However, that begs the question... why even both with OLED in the lower end models? Unless it's cheaper to produce than regular LCD, this doesn't make sense to me. There is nothing wrong with the current iPad Air screen right now.

 

[techconc]

LOL. Mini-LED is just marketing for FALD with more zones, but it is still an LCD display. I would generally take an OLED over any LCD technology, but now I wonder. Will the iPad Air use LG's RGB OLED technology, which is essentially red, blue and green filters (like in an LCD) back-lit by red, blue and green OLEDs (which, combined, produce white backlighting), or is it going to be using Samsung's Super-AMOLED tech, which we have in iPhones and which relies on a less sharp pentile arrangement? I can see how mini-LED could be marginally better on a larger (and lower PPI, vs iPhone) screen than pentile.

MicroLED (not miniLED) is the ultimate in image quality that has the best of both worlds without any of the negatives. Manufacturing technology isn't sufficient yet to make the a reality. However, that's still an LCD screen. So, why would you take an OLED screen over any LCD technology? OLED has several key disadvantages such as screen burn-in, "blue shift" over time, eye strain from flicker (pulse width modulation), etc. that you don't get with LCD based screens.