Looking for a solid home cinema experience, but not keen on the idea of getting an OLED? Then you’ve likely been seeing a lot of sets with the phrase “Mini LED” in the title.
These are an increasingly common sight as numerous manufacturers are pushing sets with the hardware, claiming its improved light control, high max brightness levels and cheaper manufacturing costs make it a much better option than OLED.
And while we’re yet to find a top end set that can go toe-to-toe with a similarly priced OLED in the premium space, having tested more Mini LED TVs than we care to count, we can safely confirm there are plenty of fantastic mid-range options on the market.
The only downside is that there are big performance differences between Mini LED sets, to the point the best are truly amazing while the worst are outright terrible. Which is why its important you do your research before buying one.
To help we’ve penned this guide detailing the best Mini LED TVs we’ve reviewed and currently recommend. You can click here to read more about how we test TVs, or you can simply scroll down to find the best Mini LED for your needs.
The Quick List
Best Mini LED TV overall
The TCL 85C805K combines excellent gaming support and impressively immersive picture to take the Best Overall spot.
Best 8K Mini LED TV
Forget native 8K content: the QN900D uses exceptional upscaling to make everything you already watch look better than ever.
Load more
Best Mini LED TV for gaming
The QN95D has some frustrating picture quirks, but these mostly relate to movie performance. For gaming, it's a bright, punchy and feature-packed stunner.
Best value
Amazon’s first Mini LED TV continues its reputation for offering buyers fantastic value.
I'm What Hi-Fi?'s TV and AV Editor, and I've been testing TVs and home cinema products (as well as hi-fi kit and headphones) for approaching two decades. Mini LED is a relatively new technology, but it has in fact been around since about 2019 and properly started gaining traction in 2021 when Samsung launched its first 'Neo QLED' TVs. I and the rest of the review team have been there from the start and we've seen the category grow from niche and premium to mainstream and (in several cases) much more affordable. Experience tells me that you shouldn't be cowed by big figures for dimming zones or peak brightness – the specs rarely tell the full story and I've reviewed multiple Mini LED TVs that look awesome on paper but severely disappoint in testing.
Best Mini LED TV overall
Why you can trust What Hi-Fi? Our expert team reviews products in dedicated test rooms, to help you make the best choice for your budget. Find out more about how we test.
Full transparency here; we have only reviewed the 85-inch model which is not exactly mini. However, the TCL C805K impressed us so much that we gave it a What Hi-Fi? Award in 2024 and think it's worthy of the Best Overall title.
This TV has such an impressive brightness, providing levels of light both for peak HDR highlights and full-screen bright HDR images on a par with the best mid-range and even some premium smaller LCD TVs out there.
It also handles darkness well, with deep, rich black tones and only a minor hint of greyness to the very gloomiest scenes. We said during the testing process: "Thanks to the Mini LED lighting and, especially, local dimming system, there’s only a slight hint of general greyness hanging over dark scenes – nowhere near enough to ever become distracting. Nor is there much interference to dark scenes from such common LCD TV nemeses as backlight clouding or local dimming-created blooming around stand-out bright objects."
In terms of colour, its Quantum Dot colour system manages to keep strong saturations and vibrant colour expression even in the brightest parts of the brightest images, rather than such extreme areas starting to look washed out or thin. It's great for gaming as well, with high refresh rates providing fluid and immersive motion.
The 2.0-channel speaker system impressed, creating stunning height affects with Dolby Atmos. We said: "Vocal tracks tend to hold up clearly against even the noisiest background racket, too, and we didn’t feel particularly aware of the sort of dislocation – where voices seem to be coming from below the pictures – quite commonly experienced with especially large TVs." We did find, however, that while the midrange is pretty open and far-reaching, the set is not as fulsome with its bass as we’d like.
Read the full TCL 85C805K review
Best 8K Mini LED TV
You might wonder what the point of buying an 8K TV is if there’s nothing to watch on it, but there is sound logic behind our recommendation of Samsung’s QN900D: it’s an absolutely brilliant upscaler.
It doesn’t come cheap, but when you see what the QN900D can do with a 4K picture you’ll start making a mental list of what you can sell in order to afford one. The TV’s Neo Quantum 8K AI Gen 3 processor uses artificial intelligence to expertly upscale – i.e. fill in the missing pixels – making textured areas in particular look more detailed and three-dimensional without a hint of artificiality. It really is like witnessing a particularly impressive magic trick.
Of course, that performance is only possible thanks to its Mini LED panel, which uses Quantum Dots and nearly 2000 local dimming zones to produce outstanding colour volume and almost OLED-like blacks. It’s brilliantly bright, too. There can be some inconsistencies when it comes to backlight performance that can be rectified by fiddling with the dimming settings, but that has a knock-on effect in other areas, so it’s not quite a magic bullet.
From a sonic perspective the QN900D is less successful. Despite having 90W of power and eight reasonably sized speakers built into the frame the audio lacks impact and projection, with little in the way of bass. We do like Samsung’s Object Tracking Sound, which positions effects and voices effectively, but overall it’s not a performance that matches the picture.
To say the Samsung QN900D isn’t for everyone is putting it mildly, but if you can afford it, and you’re not bothered that what you’ll be watching won’t be native 8K (at least for the foreseeable future) it’s still a hugely impressive TV on multiple levels.
Read the full Samsung QN900D review
Best huge Mini LED TV
Sony went all-in on Mini LED with its 2024 TV line-up and, at its best, the Bravia 9 is sensational. The problem is that it’s not at its best all of the time.
Sony is targeting movie lovers with the Bravia 9, leaning heavily on its experience in the editing booths of Hollywood, and the influence is clear when you watch a movie such as Top Gun: Maverick or Oppenheimer. Colours are well balanced, blacks are very good by backlit TV standards, and there’s not a hint of judder. When this TV is behaving it’s a stunner, but a distracting bug that affects the local dimming and some small compromises with every picture mode mean that the performance is just a little too inconsistent to be considered great. Fortunately, these are issues that should be solvable through software updates and we understand that Sony is working on these.
Things are much better when it comes to audio. Unlike Sony’s recent OLEDs, which vibrate the entire screen to generate sound, the Bravia 9’s display is surrounded by speakers, with 70W of power to push them. The result is a TV that sounds noticeably better than most, with height speakers that improve the sense of space and give the sound a solid sense of direction. The bass still lacks a little weight, though, so while it’s a cut above the norm, it would still benefit from the addition of one of the best soundbars.
From a connectivity perspective you’re only served with two HDMI 2.1 sockets that support 4K/120Hz gaming and VRR, with one doubling as the eARC for your aforementioned soundbar, so keen gamers may want to look elsewhere. The other two HDMIs max out at 4K/60Hz, but all of them support ALLM. When it comes to wireless connections, you get wi-fi, which includes Apple AirPlay, Apple HomeKit and Google Chromecast, plus Bluetooth 5.3 and LE.
It all adds up to make the Bravia 9 a somewhat frustrating TV. At its full potential, though, it’s brilliant, so if Sony can fix those issues it’ll be one of the best around.
Read the full Sony Bravia 9 review
Best Mini LED TV for gaming
If you have multiple current-gen consoles you want to connect to your Mini LED TV you should pay particular attention to its HDMI ports. It’s not just about how many the TV has, but what spec they are – and Samsung’s QN95D has all your gaming needs covered.
In order to get the best out of your PS5, Xbox Series X or gaming PC, you need HDMI 2.1 sockets that support 4K/120Hz, VRR and ALLM. Most TVs have two at best, but all four of the QN95D’s HDMIs can handle the necessary bandwidth, so you don’t have to worry about running out if you have an eARC soundbar to connect as well.
Even if you don’t have any consoles to plug in, the QN95D’s Game Hub, plus the ability to connect Bluetooth controllers, means it works as a standalone games console in its own right thanks to the selection of gaming-focused streaming services, including Xbox, Amazon Luna, GeForce Now and more.
Of course, none of that means anything if the performance isn’t up to much, but there’s a lot to like about the QN95D’s picture. It’s crisp, bright, and fairly well-balanced, with naturally vivid colours, well-judged skin tones, and excellent shadow detail.
That’s the good stuff, now for the not so good. In certain scenes, a blue halo effect is visible around particularly bright objects, while there are also some issues with blooming that at their worst can really spoil a sequence.
Sound is also middling at best, with underwhelming bass, poor projection and a lack of dynamism. Dialogue is clear and higher frequencies sound fine, but the absence of low-end nuance means the finer aspects of an actor’s delivery do suffer.
If you’re a hardcore gamer who’s intent on owning a Mini LED TV it’s hard to pick holes in the Samsung’s feature set, but there are elements of its performance that show plenty of room for improvement.
Read the full Samsung QN95D review
Best value Mini LED TV
Amazon Fire TVs have a strong reputation for offering fantastic value for money. That’s why its 50-inch Omni QLED has been the top option in our best cheap TV buying guide for quite some time.
And while it’s undeniably more expensive than its QLED and LED siblings Amazon’s first Mini LED continues this tradition.
The 65-inch model we reviewed is a fantastic performer at its price point that offers a wealth of perks.
These include a Mini LED backlight with some solid specifications including being split into 768 dimming zones, and a 1400 nits peak brightness.
But there are also a wealth of quality of live upgrades including an upgrade to offer two full fat HDMI 2.1 inputs, one of which doubles as the TV’s eARC for Dolby Atmos signal.
Would we have liked four? Yes. But the inclusion of any is welcome, especially as the set can run games at 4K/144Hz, and supports all the common HDR standards and stellar apps support make it a great option at a hardware level.
But, most importantly, the picture is excellent in most ways. Though we found the Filmmaker mode is a little too subdued, once we tempered its settings the TV offered a solid, controlled performance that offered oodles of detail and balanced colours, hence our reviewers conclusion:
“The Amazon Fire TV Omni Mini LED is a solid set for buyers ready to take their first jump from a basic LED into the mid-range TV market. Offering clear improvements on the base Omni QLED, it gets a lot right thanks to its focus on never pushing itself too hard.”
The only things stopping it pipping a perfect five-star rating are that at times it plays it slightly too safe. Colours, including the yellow rain coat worn by the boy in the opening scene of It, didn’t pop the way it should and skin tones sometimes are missing reds, making characters look slightly flat during lower light scenes.
Even with the included subwoofer the inbuilt 2.1 speaker system is also slightly safe, lacking the dynamics and low end heft needed for a truly immersive home cinema experience. If you buy the Fire TV Mini LED, we'd recommend getting a soundbar at the same time as a result.
But even with these minor issues, the Amazon Fire TV Omni Mini LED is the best value option we’ve tested with the backlight tech right now.
Read our full Amazon Fire TV Omni Mini LED review
Also consider
Hisense U7N: If the Amazon Fire TV Omni QLED doesn’t meet your needs you should check out the U7N. Though it costs a little more it offers a wonderfully punchy, but accurate picture and outside of some blooming issues is a fantastic value option if you want your next TV to be a Mini LED set.
How to choose the best Mini LED TV for you
After settling on how much you have to spend and how much space you have to fill, which only you can decide (although we have something to help with the latter here), we would normally advise you on the pros and cons of each panel type, but as you have found your way to the Mini LED page we’ll assume you’ve already made that decision. In short, it tends to deliver the brightest and most vibrant pictures.
A lot of people plug third-party boxes into their TVs to handle all the streaming apps that so many of us now rely on for our entertainment, but if you just plan to use whatever the TV’s operating system provides, make sure it has all the apps you want.
If one of those boxes you plan to plug in is a current-gen games console or gaming PC, it’s also worth checking that the TV in question supports all the latest gaming features, otherwise your games won’t look their very best. What you’re looking for here is 4K/120Hz, VRR and ALLM, which require higher-bandwidth HDMI sockets. If gaming is your top priority, you’re probably better off perusing our best gaming TVs guide.
It’s an unfortunate fact of life that the majority of TVs you can buy today are much better to look at than they are to listen to. If you plan to add a soundbar or speaker system to your new TV there’s no real need to worry about its audio performance, which is why we always advise people to take that into consideration when budgeting, but if that’s not an option for you it’s vital to take sound into consideration. There’s nothing worse than having a brilliant picture spoiled by a flat, weedy audio experience.
How we test Mini LED TVs
Testing a new Mini LED TV is a time-consuming and involved process that requires long hours in one of our test rooms, thoroughly examining every aspect of a TV’s performance.
That mostly involves feeding it a variety of sources, from 4K Blu-rays and Ultra HD streams to standard-def DVDs, and comparing all aspects of its performance to that of one of our reference models using an HDMI splitter.
As well as fully evaluating picture and sound quality, we will also check that each streaming service is fully supported by the television. All major apps will output both audio and video in certain formats, including the various HDR and audio codecs, so we actively check each one to ensure that it’s performing as advertised.
Every TV arrives with its default factory settings in place, but we never assume that it can’t be improved by some judicious tweaking in the menus. While we don’t go as far as getting a sample professionally calibrated (that shouldn’t be necessary for us or you) we will spend many hours adjusting the settings and changing the picture modes until we’re satisfied we’ve seen the best a TV has to offer.
When it comes to gaming performance, input lag is tested using a Leo Bodnar device, while each individual HDMI socket will be tested to determine which ones (if any) support today’s more advanced gaming features, such as 4K/120Hz, VRR, ALLM and HGiG.
We also dedicate plenty of time to testing the sound quality of every Mini LED TV. That includes everything from the clarity, tonal balance and detail to spaciousness and dynamics, although it’s almost unheard of for any television to perform well enough from a sonic perspective that we wouldn’t recommend adding one of the best soundbars or, if space and budget allow, a dedicated AV amplifier and speaker package.
All of our TV testing takes place in state-of-the-art testing facilities in the UK, by an expert team that has decades of combined experience in the industry, so you can be sure that our reviews are fair and consistent. When you choose a product from one of our buying guides you can be confident that you’re getting something we would be happy to spend our own money on.
Mini LED TV FAQ
What is the best 55-inch Mini LED TV?
Our review of the TCL C845K covered the 65-inch version, but it’s reasonable to expect its 55-inch equivalent to perform very similarly – and for even less cash. It’s capable of the same level of brightness, albeit with slightly fewer local dimming zones, so it should deliver an equally tempting combination of price and performance.
What is the best 65-inch Mini LED TV?
Yep, it’s the TCL C845K again. While other TVs on this list are also available at 65-inches, none of them strike such a great balance between performance and price. The C845K is brilliantly bright, colourful and capable of displaying excellent contrast, and while its sound isn’t quite as good, it still outperforms many TVs of this size.
Is Mini LED better than OLED?
There are areas where Mini LED is capable of outperforming an OLED, most notably brightness, but with superior contrast, better lighting control and unbeatable viewing angles, we still prefer OLED over Mini LED as a whole – at least for now. Our Mini LED vs OLED explainer goes into more detail.
Useful links
- Looking for a bargain? Here are the best cheap TVs
- Hardcore gamer? These are the very best gaming TVs
- Need a certain size? We've rounded-up the best 55-inch TVs
- Need something bigger? What about the best 65-inch TVs
- Want a future-proof TV? Here are the best 8K TVs
