The future's bright for OLED TVs - but mini-LED still leads the pack

CES 2023 is when manufacturers reveal their best TVs for the coming year, and LG is no exception. Its beautiful new 2023 LG OLED TVs promise a real breakthrough: they're up to 70% brighter than before. 

That's a really big deal, because one of the few downsides of OLED TV technology is that the panels are usually a lot darker than LED and mini-LED ones. The current G2 has about 1,100 nits of peak brightness; a 70% improvement would take that nearer to 1,900 nits. That's bright.

This is a big leap forward for OLED TV, and because LG makes panels for other firms it should make its way into all kinds of OLEDs in the near future. But for now, if you want brightness then mini-LED may be a better bet.

Ow, my eyes! Why mini-LED still beats the pack when it comes to brightness

I've got a Samsung mini-LED TV, and it's so bright it's become a running joke in my flat: it's sometimes uncomfortable to watch when movies move from gloomy interior shots to searing sunlight. And that brightness isn't unusual in mini-LED TVs; while around 2,000 nits of peak brightness is fairly typical, some of the best 8K TVs with mini-LED can go even brighter, peaking at around 4,000 nits. I'd suggest wearing sunscreen if you're going to be watching one of those for any amount of time.

As much as I like new technology, I'd like to see what – if any – effect the increased brightness has on LG's OLED panels' lifespan, and I suspect it'll be a while before these bright OLEDs become available in my price bracket. But there's no doubt that if you're in the market for an OLED TV, LG appears to have significantly narrowed the brightness gap between OLED and mini-LED. Who knows what we'll see at CES 2024?