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iPad Pro With Mini-LED Display Reportedly in Trial Production, Late 2020 Launch Possible But 2021 More Likely

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Apple's rumored 12.9-inch iPad Pro with a Mini-LED display has entered trial production, according to Korean website The Elec.

ipad pro 2020 display
The report claims that LG will supply the Mini-LED panels for the device, while Foxconn will be tasked with final assembly. Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has previously said that Mini-LED technology will allow for thinner and lighter product designs, while offering many of the same benefits of OLED displays, including high contrast and dynamic range.

The new iPad Pro will launch in the fourth quarter of 2020 at the earliest, the report adds, but a release next year appears more likely at this point. Earlier this month, it was rumored that new iPad Pro models with a Mini-LED display, A14X chip, and 5G connectivity will launch in the first half of 2021, a timeframe that several other sources have echoed.

Apple last refreshed the iPad Pro in March, but it was a relatively minor update, with new features including an A12Z Bionic chip that is essentially an A12X chip with an extra GPU core enabled, an Ultra Wide camera that enables 0.5x zoom, a LiDAR Scanner for enhanced augmented reality, and better sounding microphones. It was the first update to the iPad Pro since the device received a major redesign in October 2018.

Apple is also expected to release its first Macs with Mini-LED displays by the end of 2021.

Related Roundup: iPad Pro
Tags: Mini-LED Guide, The Elec
Buyer's Guide: iPad Pro (Neutral)

Top Rated Comments

C
costica1234
75 months ago
Good luck beta testers!
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
iReality85 Avatar
iReality85
75 months ago

Really looking forward to mini LED across the product lines, best of both LCD and OLED!
Mini-LED is just LCD with LED full-array local dimming (commonly referred to as "FALD") as the light source. Usually, this falls in the range of 500-2000 LEDs. It's really not anything to write home about. It's better than LCD with edge-lit LED, but nowhere near on par with OLED or (eventually) Micro-LED.

I'm really curious to see how much blooming will result from FALD.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
A
alphaswift
75 months ago
Can we all agree that we've reached peak thinness? If they can save space, can you make the battery bigger please.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
cmaier Avatar
cmaier
75 months ago

Please please no new iPad Pro this year. I bought the 2020 iPP and I really really don’t wanna feel in few months that it is two years old (compared to an A14X and miniled). Thanks
MiniLED rumors have been consistent for a year. The only question was whether it would be this last update or at the end of the year/early next. So it’s on you :-)
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
cmaier Avatar
cmaier
75 months ago

Do you own the keyboard? Would you mind commenting on the battery life of the iPad after using it? I have read that it is a massive battery drain.
I own one. No noticeable battery drain. Apparently there was a bad batch.


What specific use cases would having miniled be great?
Watching movies? Better dynamic range and black levels than LED. Also longer battery life, probably.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Falhófnir Avatar
Falhófnir
75 months ago

MicroLED is the "end game", but they aren't using OLED because when they switch to MiniLED, it's a step backwards in some areas or they calculated they wouldn't make more money switching to OLED.
μLED isn't really worth talking about at the moment, it's meant to still be years away even on Apple watch scale, much less for large iPad/ MacBook displays. The high contrast is the main benefit of OLED over LCD, so if this closes the gap significantly to me that gives you the best of both technologies, as you're spared burn in & PWM dimming problems and PenTile sub pixel layouts which are massive rankles in current OLED panels IMO.


Maybe Apple has improved upon the tech. As far as mini-LED goes, FALD is a fairly off-the-shelf technology that's been used for awhile now but to mixed results, mostly in TVs and monitors. I believe even Apple's XDR Display shows visible blooming. It really comes down to how manufacturers implement it.

I will say though, that if people want Apple to expand their 120Hz Pro Motion tech to other products, OLED is definitely the way to go since it has an extremely fast pixel response time, so no motion blur.
I guess we'll see how Apple's done with it in the next 12 months, this seems a happy medium tech to me, you escape a lot of the downsides of OLED tech, while getting at least closer to the high contrast it offers.

In theory OLED is meant to offer the best response times, though there's commercially available 300Hz LCD panels with supposedly near 1ms response times while we're just now seeing 120Hz OLED panels in phones, and laptops are still at 60Hz as far as I can see... though that might be because OLED laptops tend to use 4K panels which really stress the GPU at high refresh rates.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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