TCL SQD-Mini LED TVs | Ultimate Color, Contrast & Brightness with X11L
TCL Introduces SQD-Mini LED: The Future of Extraordinary Color in 2026
2026 is shaping up to be the year of extraordinary color in TVs, and at TCL, we’re leading that charge. With breakthrough panel engineering and nextgen display materials, our new SQD-Mini LED TVs unlock a level of color, contrast, and clarity that simply wasn’t possible before.
If you're wondering what this means for your next home entertainment upgrade, stick with us. We’ll break it down from the basics and then introduce why our new X11L SQD-Mini LED TV is set to redefine premium viewing.
How Mini LED TVs Create a Picture
Every Mini LED TV uses several layers of components to create an image. Better Mini LED TVs expand on each part of the layer to ensure that each piece is working for high picture quality:
- Mini LED backlight: Thousands of LEDs divided into lighting zones
- Quantum Dot layer: Converts light into vibrant color
- LCD panel: Controls pixellevel brightness (the true shape outlines and contrast in every frame)
- Color filter: Adds precise pixelbypixel color for detail in every scene
- Antiglare layer: Boosts clarity in real living rooms usually in the form of a anti-glare matte finish
Understanding these layers helps explain the big leap coming in 2026.
2026 Is All About BT.2020 Color – Why Does it Matter for Users?
Hollywood will begin mastering movies and shows using a much wider color palette known as BT.2020. To enjoy these colors at home, TVs need to reproduce more tones, more shades, and more saturation than ever before.
In 2026, two major technologies promise to hit this new benchmark:
- RGB Mini LED backlights
- TCL’s SQD-Mini LED
Both expand color, but how they do it and the performance tradeoffs are dramatically different. TCL will introduce models that feature both advancements to reach 100% BT.2020 color to showcase our expertise as a world-class display manufacturer.
RGB Mini LED: Great, but not exactly Perfect
RGB Mini LED replaces the traditional white LED backlight with individual red, green, and blue LEDs. In theory, mixing those colors creates the full spectrum of BT.2020. RGB Mini LED can look fantastic, especially from a pure color perspective, but even with all that color, there are still a few potential challenges that all RGB Mini LED TVs will have to overcome.
1. Zone Level Color vs. Pixel Level Accuracy
Each lighting zone (about 1" square) includes hundreds or thousands of pixels that receive the same RGB blend. When these pixels require varied colors or shades, it is challenging for three primary colors to reproduce all variations at once, especially with rapid video motion.
2. Color Crosstalk (The “Brown Problem”)
RGB light spreads like flashlight beams. If a red zone touches a green zone this creates a small section of overlapping light, it may reproduce a shade of color like a brown-ish hue. This is called “color crosstalk” and can be something that interrupts the viewing experience.
3. Thicker Panels
Combining RGB light effectively necessitates additional space, resulting in increased television thickness. This means TVs are a bit thicker when they sit on your media consoles as well as when you mount them onto your walls, making things a tad unsightly.
Introducing TCL SQD-Mini LED: A Better Way Forward
At TCL, we are launching something truly nextlevel. While we feel our RGB TV (known as the RM9L and showcased at CES2026) will be an industry leading RGB TV, we are now proud to launch SQD-Mini LED with our new X11L, one of the best TVs of 2026.
SQD-Mini LED with our new X11L - powered by Super Quantum Dot technology.
SQD stands for “Super” Quantum Dot. Super Quantum Dot means that the layer used to create billions of colors is made with more effective and dense materials so light can shine and create more pure and accurate colors. SQD-Mini LED solves RGB’s issues while delivering even better color performance.
How SQD-Mini LED Works
- Uses blue Mini LED backlights, not RGB
- Light passes through a new Super Quantum Dot layer and Ultra Color Filter for zone levels of color which then narrows down to a pixel level for 100% BT.2020 color.
What This Means for Viewers Like You
- No color fading
- No color crosstalk
- No RGB mixing artifacts
- True 2026 color accuracy — everywhere on screen
In short: all the benefits of RGB Mini LED with none of the drawbacks and increased contrast for better quality picture.
More Performance, Reinvested into What You Care About Most
Because SQD-Mini LED is simpler to manufacture and TCL is vertically integrated, we reinvest those efficiencies where they matter. The X11L has more contrast and more brightness in levels that we have never seen before.
Ultimate Contrast – With up to 20,000 local dimming zones, viewers can get OLEDlevel blacks with zero blooming that would distract viewers from the best experience.
Ultimate Brightness - Dolby tells us that their goal is HDR content delivered at 10,000 nits of peak brightness and that’s what the X11L delivers that 10,000 nits!
This is brightness and contrast that has never been seen before! But it does not stop there! The X11L is not just powerful, it’s beautifully engineered.
- Ultra slim 0.8" chassis
- Premium acoustic system built in by Bang & Olufsen
A premium TV that looks as good powered off as it does on.
The Verdict: SQD-Mini LED Changes the Debate
Reviewers have already gone handson, and the reactions say it all:
“I went handson with TCL’s first SQD-MiniLED TV – and it made me forget about RGB TVs” – Tom’s Guide
“Forget Micro RGB: TCL's new SQD-Mini LED TV is the model to beat for me at CES” – ZDNET
2026 is packed with display innovations, but TCL’s SQD-Mini LED stands out as the technology that delivers the new color era without compromise. TCL is here to cement itself as a leader in the overall TV industry by providing premium visual experiences for a wide range of customers.