A Comprehensive Review of Xiaomi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED

Currently, two TV display technologies with the best picture quality are OLED and Mini LED. Both technologies have apparent advantages and disadvantages. OLED has unparalleled black control ability and no need for a backlight to achieve a good HDR picture. But the burden is that the brightness is not high enough. Except for the sky-high price models, most can only accomplish a long-lasting shine of 600nit. In addition, the cost of large-screen OLEDs is too high for ordinary consumers to reach, and the price of 86-inch models is usually six figures. If you want to make a high-quality TV that consumers can afford, Xiaomi TV Master is the best choice! Xiaomi has to be mentioned here.

So what technologies did Xiaomi incorporate into the Xiaomi Mi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED?

1. Quantum dots

Unlike the Mi TV Master 82-inch, this time, the Mi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED uses quantum dot Mini LED technology.

A unique property of quantum dots is that whenever stimulated by light or electricity, quantum dots emit very pure colored light. This feature determines that quantum dots can bring pure colors and high color gamut coverage.

Mi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED can achieve 99.5% BT.709, 99% DCI-P3, and 94.5% Adobe RGB color gamut coverage, much higher than ordinary Mini LED TVs.

2. 2000nits peak brightness

Now it’s hard to call yourself a high-end TV without a peak brightness of 2000nits. However, ordinary TVs can only provide 10s of instantaneous peak brightness in windows below 20%. As for the constant brightness of the entire screen, few manufacturers mentioned it, and only a handful of manufacturers can achieve 800nits. In addition to the peak brightness of 2000nits, the Mi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED can achieve a full-screen stable 1000nits brightness output. We will test this later.

3. Global light control engine

There are quite a few TVs with 1,000-level backlight partitions, but most of them are just gimmicks. It is not a small challenge for current TV manufacturers to accurately control the brightness of the backlight of more than 1,000 partitions.

Mi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED adopts the self-developed Local Dimming algorithm and built-in 36 custom driver IC chips, which significantly simplifies the difficulty of light control.

Each chip only needs to control 216 lamp beads in 30 partitions, calculate the brightness value of each partition frame by frame and division by division, improve the details of highlights and dark fields, and finally realize the 4096-level brightness adjustment of divisions.

In other respects, Mi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED uses MediaTek MT9653 quad-core processor and a 4GB+64GB storage configuration. The built-in 9-unit center speaker can simulate 3.1-channel effects, and the output power of the sound system is as high as 70W. It is not easy to do so in the limited space of the TV.

To care for gamers, the Mi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED reduces the display delay to 10ms. At the same time, it is equipped with an industry-native 4K 144Hz gaming-level high refresh screen, supports VRR adaptive frame rate, and FreeSync Premium Pro technology. In addition, it is equipped with 2 HDMI 2.1 ports, which can be perfectly connected to PC game consoles. The game technology that can be used on TVs now, Xiaomi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED, does not miss any of them.

Design

86-inch quantum dot + Mini LED screen. Supports 99% DCI-P3 color gamut coverage. This screen has a peak brightness of 2000nits, BT.709 color gamut coverage of more than 100%, and color accuracy Dleta<0.7.

The frame adopts a metal wire drawing process, and the design is exquisite and high-end. Center metal base. The I/O interface is hidden on the left, marking each interface. From top to bottom are coaxial audio interface, debugging interface, audio and video input interface, HDMI 2.1, HDMI 2.0 (eARC), HDMI 2.1, USB 3.0, USB 2.0, AV in, Optical fiber, and a network port.

Let’s talk about the HDMI 2.1 (eARC) port here. In addition to receiving video and audio signals, it can transmit audio signals from TV sources to external power amplifiers or audio devices supporting related technologies. This interface can connect various power amplifiers and sound bars.

The overall layout of the NEC Bluetooth voice remote control is consistent with the previous Xiaomi TV remote control, adding an NFC function.

Screen Test

1. Color gamut

The 100% sRGB color gamut, 89% aRGB color gamut, 99% DCI-P3 color gamut, and 87% NTSC color gamut coverage. Since Starscream X does not support testing the BT.709 color gamut, we can convert 97% of the DCI-P3 color gamut ≈ and 135% of the BT.709 color gamut.

2. Brightness contrast

Select “Standard” for the image mode, the measured contrast ratio is about 5000:1, and the maximum full-screen brightness can reach 986nits. This is the highest brightness we have measured with the Starscream X color calibration instrument, surpassing all previous display products, including monitors and flat-panel TVs. In addition, the white point color temperature of 6400K is also very close to the standard color temperature.

Color Accuracy

In sRGB mode, the color accuracy is impressive, with an average Delta E value of only 0.79.

4. Viewing angleWhen the horizontal angle is 140 degrees, the picture distortion is minimal.

HDR Experience

Let’s experience the picture effect after turning on HDR with a peak brightness of 2000nits.

In terms of black control ability, Xiaomi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED has made significant progress compared with previous products, which are already comparable to OLED TVs.

Screencasting experience

Mi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED supports screen projection from mobile phones, laptops, apps, and NFC remote control.

Let’s take a look at the video APP projection. This prediction method is smoother than screen mirroring, and after that point, turning off the mobile phone’s screen will not affect the issue. Open the common video APP on the mobile phone, click the “TV” icon in the upper right corner when playing the video, a search screen will appear, and you can find “Xiaomi TV Master…” in about 2~3 seconds; click it You can cast videos played on your phone.   In addition, most video apps on mobile phones limit the projection resolution (720P). You need to install the corresponding APP on the TV to unlock 1080P and 4K resolution projection. For example, we click on the screencast on the mobile phone Tencent Video, and then open the Tencent Aurora APP on the TV; we can choose 4K picture quality and enable the HDR effect.

It can be seen that, regardless of the brightness, the performance of dark details, the version of highlights, the transparency of the skin, and the three-dimensionality of the picture, the Mi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED can completely kill the SDR picture.

Of course, this performance is also due to the 2000nits peak brightness of the 86-inch Mini LED of the Mi TV Master, 985nits full-screen stable brightness, 1080 partition backlights, and 36 driver chip architectures, and the self-developed master image quality engine and so on.

Read Also:Xiaomi POCO F5 Pro Appeared on Geekbench: Snapdragon 8+ Gen1 Mobile Platform

Verdict

The following is the summary of this test

1. Ability to control gangsters

The importance of black control ability for HDR TV is self-evident. Quantum dot technology coupled with 1080-level partition backlight, this time the progress of Xiaomi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED in black control ability can be said to be visible to the naked eye, basically already Comparable to OLED TV.

2. Brightness

Many TVs will advertise peak brightness, but the conditions to achieve peak brightness are incredibly harsh; not only the display range is minimal, but the duration is also concise (generally no more than 10 seconds).

This time we used the Starscream X color calibration instrument to measure the full-screen brightness as high as 985nits.

Many students may not know the meaning of this number. The Starscream X test is full-screen brightness, which means that the Mi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED can stably output a brightness close to 1000 nits under a 100% window, which is fantastic.

3. HDR effect

The only prerequisites for realizing high-quality HDR images are black control ability and maximum brightness. The number of partitioned backlights is also significant—theoretically, the more partitioned backlights, the better the HDR effect.

Mi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED has 1080 backlight partitions. But we know that most domestic TVs can only control the backlight algorithm of about 100 cells. Even big manufacturers like Sony and LG are helpless in the face of backlight partitions with more than 500 partitions. The actual effect is not even as good as 64 backlight partitions—the product.

Mi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED uses the self-developed master image quality engine to bring the picture quality to a new level. When playing HDR high-definition video, this TV has dramatically improved the details of the dark part, the picture’s three-dimensionality, and the image’s transparency.

4. Color gamut and color accuracy

The most significant advantage of quantum dot technology is the color gamut. The measured Xiaomi TV can achieve 100% sRGB color and 99% DCI-P3 color gamut coverage.

In addition, the color accuracy of the TV is also excellent, and the measured Delta E value is <1.

5. Display delay

The input delay of game TVs like Sony A9G is also about 20ms, while the input delay of Xiaomi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED is only 12ms, almost equivalent to that of a desktop LCD monitor.

In addition, this TV has made a lot of optimizations for games, such as supporting VRR adaptive frame rate, FreeSync Premium Pro, 144Hz high refresh rate, and also supports the direct display of game frame rate.

It can be said that Mi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED has also made complete and thoughtful considerations for gamers. Of course, this is also one of the secrets of Xiaomi’s success. Xiaomi will try its best to make whatever users and players want to meet the needs of the public.

Regardless of the picture quality, the TV products that use thousand-level backlight partitions, quantum dots, Mini LEDs, and 2000nits peak brightness are priced at more than 10,000 yuan, even for a 65-inch TV. The initial price of the Mi TV Master 86-inch Mini LED is only 14,999 yuan.

This is the horror of Xiaomi. While continuously creating high-quality products, it can also crush its competitors in terms of price and then force competing products to follow up with price adjustments. The ultimate beneficiaries are undoubtedly our consumers.