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In cablingAC Senior Editor Harish Jonnalagadda delves into all things hardware, including phones, audio products, storage servers, and networking gear.
If you want to buy a TV, your options are LED, QLED or OLED. LED TVs are popular and are budget models that have decent picture quality. QLED TVs have steadily gained momentum over the last decade, offering better picture quality and brightness levels, but they’re still quite affordable. OLED TVs continue to dominate thanks to their unmatched picture quality, but they are expensive and often limited to the high-end category.
That’s why I was excited to see the rise of Mini LED technology, particularly Xiaomi’s latest TV series that just debuted in India. The Xiaomi TV S Mini LED 75 2026 is a mouthful, but the 75-inch TV ticks all the boxes and coming in at ₹99,999 ($1,065), costs less than the My QLED TV 75 which I have been using for the better part of four years.
Mini LED TVs are the natural evolution of standard LED TVs, and the smaller LEDs that make up the Mini LED (as the name suggests) allow for larger dimming zones, much better contrast levels, higher brightness levels, and less glare, particularly with HDR content.
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Now, Xiaomi is using QD-Mini LED (Quantum Dot Mini LED) technology in its latest TVs, and this essentially has a layer of quantum dots that provide better color intensity intertwined with a Mini LED backlight. The result is that you get much better brightness, vibrant colors, and detailed clarity that you simply don’t get with a regular LED TV.
That was evident in just two days of using the TV S Mini LED 75. As I mentioned above, I was previously using Xiaomi’s 75-inch QLED TV and there is a clear difference in picture quality with the TV S Mini LED 75. Colors overall look much better and there is a level of detail that I hadn’t gotten before.
What I like the most is how it handles HDR content; There isn’t as much blooming, where light leaks due to the inherent nature of LED lighting, and this makes a big difference when watching movies in particular. Fortunately, the TV S Mini LED 75 did a great job in this regard, and although the colors are not exactly the same as an OLED, the TV costs less than half the price of an equivalent OLED model, so I’m not too worried about that.
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It’s the brightness levels where Mini LED technology really shines; the TV gets much brighter than a regular LED or OLED, and this is a pretty decent differentiator with the TV S Mini LED 75. Xiaomi also has a good selection of modes, and although MEMC is enabled from the factory, it’s quite easy to disable. I like that the TV adjusts colors based on ambient lighting, and Filmmaker mode is the one to use if you want accurate color reproduction.
In fact, the only problem with the TV S Mini LED 75 is that it’s limited to a 60Hz refresh. Yes, there’s a gaming mode that lets you go up to 120Hz, and while it makes a difference when using the TV with a PS5, I would have liked at least native 120Hz, and not having that makes the TV a little less exciting if you’re looking to pair it with a gaming console.
The design of the TV is quite good; It’s not as big as the previous 75-inch Xiaomi TV, with thinner bezels all around. The bottom bezel is branded Mini LED and is a little thicker, but overall the TV S Mini LED 75 has a decent design. Connectivity includes a trio of HDMI ports (with an eARC), two USB ports, optical output, Ethernet, and 3.5mm audio.
Basically, Mini LED TVs solve many of the problems that LED and QLED TVs have, and the best part is that these TVs don’t cost as much as their OLED rivals. Now, while the Mini LED doesn’t have the same picture quality as an OLED, it is much better than the LED and QLED, and you also get higher brightness, making these TVs the ideal choice, if you are interested in getting a larger 65 or 75-inch variant. TCL and HiSense even sell 98- and 100-inch Mini LED TVs in India, and I’m thinking of buying one of these in the coming months.
Until then, however, the 2026 version of the Xiaomi TV S Mini LED is a great alternative, and the price makes it a great option all things considered.
