Mini LED at OLED prices is a red flag, What Hi-Fi? says
What Hi-Fi? has rebuilt its Mini LED buying guide, and a warning comes with it. At the top of the market, a Mini LED that costs as much as an OLED should be treated as a red flag.
Why OLED still leads at the top
The case rests on how each panel makes its picture. OLED controls light at the pixel level, and used well it delivers perfect blacks. No backlit TV the team has tested, Mini LED included, has beaten that strength.
Mini LED has its own perks. Modern sets can go brighter than OLEDs. They are also cheaper to make, a saving that can reach the buyer, which is why sets with the technology can be found for under £500 or $500.
The Bravia 9 II caveat
Sony's Bravia 9 II is the best premium option in the new guide, and its author says it has a lot going for it. The caution concerns what else that money could buy. The Bravia 9 II is the best Mini LED at that price, the author writes, yet it is not the best TV for the money.
A rebuilt guide and one Mini LED among the award winners
The guide now carries an entirely new set of picks, from cutting-edge True RGB options to mid-range sets with the most performance per pound.
Only one Mini LED appears among this year's What Hi-Fi? TV Award winners: the affordable TCL P8L. The site says Mini LED has improved a lot in cheaper and mid-priced TVs, and next-generation RGB Mini LED panels arrived this year. Its latest Awards group test still made clear that at the top end, OLED remains the best option.
What the Bravia 9 II review had already said
The site has made the point before. Its review compared the Bravia 9 II with Sony's Bravia 8 II and found that "even this exceptional implementation of RGB Mini LED still can't quite match the fundamental strengths of OLED".
The review calls the set's local dimming extraordinarily accomplished, yet the picture looks a touch flatter than the Bravia 8 II's. Objects separate from their backgrounds with less solidity, and scenes lose a little of the three-dimensional depth OLED delivers.
What Hi-Fi? says its tests show that, outside very specific circumstances, shoppers in the top tier will almost certainly do better with one of the OLEDs it recommends.
Source: What Hi-Fi?