Chinese TV brand Konka claims to have hit a new milestone for Mini-LED displays, with its newest 110-inch A8 Ultra television said to feature an astonishing 230,000 local dimming zones and deliver a peak brightness of 10,000 nits.
Those are some impressive specifications and the latest hard blow in a battle between Chinese TV brands to show who is capable of building the most powerful Mini-LED TV display of all.
Earlier this year, TCL laid down the gauntlet when it announced its new 115-inch X955 Mini-LED TV, which boasted some very impressive numbers, with more than 20,000 local dimming zones. However, it was quickly surpassed by Hisense, which claimed over 40,000 dimming zones in its prototype 110-inch ULED X TV.
However, Konka’s newest TV has upped the ante by a staggering amount, and it has done so by switching to an 8K resolution panel, the company explained. According to the Chinese language site Projection Times, each local dimming zone covers an area of just 144 pixels, which should ensure super-precise lighting control. However, Konka didn’t make it clear if each of the 230,000 local dimming zones can be controlled independently of one another.
In any case, the development highlights how Chinese TV brands have emerged as the real pacesetters in the Mini-LED display industry, while leaving the OLED innovation to their South Korean rivals.
Konka itself pointed to the rapid pace of development in Mini-LED displays, noting that it first cracked the 100 dimming zone barrier in April 2022, before following up with a 2,000 zone model in April 2023, followed by a 20,000 zone model that was launched in January this year.
Still, it’s notable that these developments come at a steep cost for consumers who actually want to benefit from them. The Konka A8 Ultra will launch in China later this year, priced at 300,000 RMB, which equates to around $42,000. For those with slightly slimmer wallets, the company is launching a 110-inch A8 Pro model with 4K resolution that will feature 20,000 local dimming zones and 5,000 nits brightness, costing 80,000 RMB or $11,000.
Neither of the two sets can be classed as “cheap” or “affordable”, but we can be reassured that the rapid pace of innovation in Mini-LED suggests that the technology might trickle down into lower-end TV sets quite quickly. And by the time everyone can afford an 8K Mini-LED set with 200,000-plus dimming zones, the higher-end models might well boast even more astonishing numbers. It’s not exactly clear at this stage, what level these display makers can reasonably expect to achieve.
It’s not clear if we’ll ever see the Konka A8 Ultra and A8 Pro outside of China. While the company is a top-five brand in its home nation, it’s barely recognizable in other markets. The company has sold models in the U.S. and Europe before, and it made a big splash about “re-entering the U.S. market” back in 2020 with its first OLED TV and a lineup of more affordable Android TVs, but it doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact.
