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Whether you love Apple, hate them, or feel nothing at all,

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they do a great job of capturing the imagination of would-be tech buyers with sexy-sounding branding

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like Liquid Retina XDR, one of the major features

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that they're pushing with their new MacBook Pro lineup. But what the heck does Liquid Retina XDR mean?

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Is it just more marketing fluff, or is there more to it?

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Let's start by quickly talking about what a retina display is.

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You probably first heard the term quite a while ago, as Apple's been using it since the days of the iPhone 4.

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And all it means is that the display has a pixel density that is high enough that you can't make out

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individual pixels at a normal viewing distance. So really, just about any display is a retina display

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if you're sitting far enough away from it. Though of course, pixel density is still important

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if you're holding a phone close to your face or sitting arms length away from your laptop.

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Apple then started using the term Liquid Retina in 2018 with the release of the iPhone XR.

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But the iPhone XR was actually a lower-priced model

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within the iPhone X lineup. So Liquid Retina was just a cool way of saying

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that the phone had a relatively bog-standard Liquid Crystal

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or LCD screen, similar to what you'd find

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in completely average TVs or monitors.

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So is the new Liquid Retina XDR

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on the 2021 MacBook Pros and iPad Pros just more marketing hype?

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It turns out the answer is not quite.

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The XDR stands for Extreme Dynamic Range.

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And after we get through the mandatory eye roll over the use of X for extreme,

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it turns out that Apple has put some really interesting tech

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into these new displays for deeper blacks and crisper colors.

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Probably the most important improvement Apple brought to Liquid Retina XDR is the array of many LEDs

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that backlight the display. All LCD screens need a backlight to function,

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but nicer displays tend to have more and brighter LEDs for their backlights

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that allow finer control over smaller areas of the screen.

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This allows them to be made dimmer, to deepen shadows,

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or to be made brighter to make bright details pop.

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The Liquid Retina XDR display in the iPad Pro has more than 10,000 mini LEDs backlighting it,

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organized into nearly 2,600 individual dimming zones.

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And this is all fit into a relatively small tablet screen,

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meaning that Apple had to custom engineer its own manufacturing methods,

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because packing so many tiny LEDs into a small space

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is a pretty delicate operation. But the result is a display that can,

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for supported content, get to 1,000 nits across the screen

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and 1,600 nits in smaller areas.

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That's a high number for any display, but it's especially impressive for a mobile device

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that has to run on battery. And it's something that might be a selling point

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for folks who wanna watch HDR content on their laptop or tablet,

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assuming they have deep enough pockets. But mini LED, as cool as it is,

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still isn't quite as good in terms of contrast

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as an OLED display, which has individual pixels that produce their own light.

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And rumors are flying that Apple may transition to OLED for some of its future iPad models,

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like they've already done on the iPhone. But considering that OLED is an expensive,

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difficult to produce technology that typically can't get as bright as mini LED,

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not to mention the fact that OLEDs can suffer from burn-in. If you leave UI elements on the screen for long enough,

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we might be seeing liquid retina XDR and its mini LEDs on Apple products for quite a while.

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Maybe they'll sell it to us with a less gimmicky name down the road,

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but I wouldn't really bet on it.

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Thanks for watching. Like, dislike, check out our other videos,

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