Are Mini LED TVs Good For Gaming?

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Whether you're a console or PC gamer, your skill with a controller will only get you so far if you're working with a lackluster screen. Fortunately, there are plenty of great-looking smart TVs on the market, and one type of premium picture tech that's getting a lot of attention is Mini LED. These TVs use an LCD panel and a backlight system made up of much smaller LEDs than you'd find on a traditional LED LCD set. The result is far brighter, higher-contrast picture quality, which is why Mini LEDs are actually some of the best TVs you can buy for gaming — especially if you play a lot of HDR titles.

It's not uncommon for a Mini LED to push past 1,000 nits (a measurement of pixel brightness), which is a huge pro for displaying specular highlights and vibrant colors in games like "Astro Bot" and "Spider-Man 2." And because of Mini LED's boosted illumination, they typically perform well in brightly lit rooms. Mini LED TVs such as the Hisense UR9 and Sony Bravia 9 also incorporate features like local dimming — which breaks the LEDs up into small, gridded sections — for even more brightness and contrast control.

This also helps to reduce bloom, which is one of the few picture maladies you'll need to contend with just about any LED-backlit screen. This happens when lighting from one area of a screen bleeds into another, and it can be especially noticeable when watching TV in a darker room. Subtitles and closed captions often fall victim to this faint aura of light, and unfortunately, that's just the nature of the beast when it comes to LED LCD technology.

There are two main panel types used for LED LCD TVs: In-Plane Switching (IPS) and Vertical Alignment (VA). While neither is a bad choice for a gaming TV, there are pros and cons of each display class worth discussing. If you plan on indulging in a good deal of couch co-op, IPS panels tend to deliver wider viewing angles, so picture details won't fade as much when you're sitting off-center. On the flip side, VA screens usually do a better job at displaying inky blacks and overall contrast.

VA panels can be prone to something called smearing. Because VA screens are slow to transition from brighter to darker colors, this sometimes results in a smear that follows behind fast-moving objects. TV manufacturers often implement picture processing that can reduce smearing, but it's still something you might notice on Mini LEDs with a VA display. What's even more important than the LCD panel used, though, is what types of gaming optimizations a Mini LED TV supports. 

Be on the lookout for native 120Hz refresh rates or higher, as well as features like HDMI 2.1 connectivity, Variable Refresh Rate (VRR), and Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM). These are the types of enhancements that can make all the difference between gameplay that looks bright and colorful, and gameplay that's bright, colorful, and responsive. Lag kills, friends, and you don't want to be the poor soul being sniped from a mile away because your TV can't keep up with the action.