LG has been a pioneer in advanced electronics since 1958, and today their 2021 line-up of TVs boasts some of the most innovative and cutting-edge displays in the industry. LG’s self-lit OLED TVs have certainly set the benchmark for the best in picture and colour quality, but this doesn’t mean that their NanoCell and QNED MiniLEDs should be overlooked. NanoCell TVs have brought LCD displays to life with purer colours in 4K and 8K. And the latest QNED MiniLED TVs are another exciting addition to LG's range, combining Quantum Dot NanoCell technology and mini-LED backlighting to create better contrast, more vibrant colours, and excellent HDR quality.

With all these state-of-the-art displays constantly improving and newer technology being released, the modern home cinema experience has the potential to be far more immersive than ever before. But it can also be difficult for consumers to keep up with the pace of innovation. With LG’s brand-new QNED MiniLED TVs already starting to roll out worldwide (set to be available in South Africa from October now is the ideal time to explain some of the key differences between NanoCell and QNED technology.

Nano-engineered technology

LG’s NanoCell technology was developed to bring the picture quality of today’s LED closer to the level of OLED. NanoCell TVs come standard in 4K and 8K resolution, which offers four to 16 times more pixels than a standard full HD television. A 4K TV has around 8 million pixels, while an 8K boasts a massive 33 million. Compared to a full HD TV with about two million pixels, the 4K and 8K experiences are incomparable.

With NanoCell technology, every pixel is also one nanometre (that’s 0.000001 millimetres) apart from each other. This precise placement of each pixel makes the image a lot sharper – even when viewed from wider angles.

But the defining feature that separates NanoCell TVs from ordinary LED TVs is the nanoparticles that filter and refine colour impurities, resulting in purer, more vibrant, and ultra-realistic picture quality. As you can imagine, this takes the 4K and 8K viewing experience to the next level, as duller tones no longer filter through to muddy overall brightness and colour accuracy. 

NanoCell TVs also feature Full-Array Local Dimming, which offers more precise control over a display’s dimming zones. Unlike conventional LCDs that are direct or edge-lit, full-array TVs can dim specific areas of the screen to make them darker without affecting the adjacent areas that need to remain bright. 

A new era for LCD

LG’s QNED MiniLED TVs have taken LCD TVs further than ever before by combining the brand's innovative NanoCell filtering technology with Quantum Dot colour enhancement and mini-LED backlighting. While it's based on the same technology as NanoCell, as both use nanoparticles to filter out colour impurities, QNED offers other significant improvements. 

LCD TVs all rely on backlighting to create the picture, and in turn, image and colour quality also depends on the quality of the backlighting. Where NanoCell and other LCDs use hundreds of LEDs, QNED uses up to 30,000 mini LEDs in its backlight. And because these mini LEDs are much smaller than conventional LEDs, they produce brighter images with a much greater level of detail.

With conventional LCD technology, backlight often bleeds into dark pixels, which means that blacks are never completely black. QNED is a breakthrough that provides a solution to this common issue by using smaller and more densely distributed LEDs in the backlight as well as Full-Array Local Dimming with an astounding 2500 dimming zones. With mini LEDs and more dimming zones, QNED delivers much more precise backlighting with less bleeding, resulting in a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio – far beyond that of ordinary LCD displays.

The ultimate home cinema experience

LG’s QNED MiniLED TVs are nothing short of an evolutionary leap forward in the world of displays, with the brand continuing to deliver more ground-breaking technologies that bring people closer to the ultimate home cinema experience. TVs are getting bigger, smarter, and more advanced than ever before, so if you’re in the market for upgrading yours in 2021, you have a lot to get excited about.