Roku is entering premium TV territory at CES 2024 with its new Pro Series TVs, featuring Mini LED backlighting for better brightness and contrast, as well as improved sound. The company announced its first homemade TVs at CES last year – a surprising move, since it also partnered with TCL and others for years to build "Roku TVs" powered by Roku operating system. Roku's first batch of TVs, the Select and Plus models, were clearly focused on value, with prices ranging from $149 to $999. The Pro series, which includes 55-inch, 65-inch, and 75-inch models, tops out at $1,500.
I call them "top of the line" TVs are relative, of course. You can easily spend thousands more on QLED TVs from Samsung, Sony, and LG, and prices only go up when you look at OLED TVs. Rather than aiming for the high end, Roku still seems to target value-oriented buyers who would normally consider TCL's cheaper TVs. (Roku told us last year that it had no plans to compete with partners like TCL, but that seems harder to believe now.)
While Roku's previous mid-range Plus TVs included notable features, such as QLED displays and support for Dolby Vision and Atmos, the Pro Series TVs' Mini LED backlighting will be a notable upgrade. Most mid-range TVs feature a small amount of locally dimming backlight zones, which can increase brightness and contrast in specific areas of the screen. Mini LED backlights offer higher brightness, and because they're so small, they allow for hundreds (and potentially thousands) of dimming zones.
At this point, mini LEDs are the closest thing to the power of OLEDs – which can turn individual pixels on and off for perfect blacks and extreme contrast levels – on a standard LED display.
In addition to a new family of TVs, Roku also announced that it will leverage AI and machine learning for its new Roku Smart Picture features, which can automatically adjust Roku TVs for specific content types. The company says most consumers typically don't adjust their TV settings, meaning they're likely forced to watch content suboptimally. We won't see Smart Picture in action until spring 2024, but it could potentially help alleviate motion smoothing during movies and increase it for sports, where you want images to look more realistic. (And of course, image purists can always turn it off.)
Roku says its new Pro Series TVs will arrive in the United States in spring 2024. The company will also expand the retail availability of its Select and Plus Series TVs, but we don't yet have specifics on where they will appear .
We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Follow all the news from the show here.
This article was originally published on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/roku-high-end-pro-series-tvs-feature-mini-led-screens-164354589.html?src=rss
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