lcd panel contrast ratio in stock

If you’re in the market for a new TV, projector, camera, or any other type of display, you should pay attention to the contrast ratio. But what does this measurement mean, and how do you know whether your display has good contrast?

While most displays have a contrast setting that the viewer can manually adjust, the ratio refers to the panel’s limitations—in other words, the largest possible difference between its lightest (white) and darkest (black) areas.

Contrast ratio is the measurement of the difference between a display"s maximum and minimum brightness; put another way, it"s the ratio between the brightest white and the darkest black. For example, a contrast ratio of 1,000:1 means that the brightest white image is 1,000 times brighter than the darkest black.

Generally, a higher contrast ratio is better since a display with a 100,000:1 ratio can produce darker black levels and more saturated colors than one with a 1,000:1 rating, thus achieving a more natural-looking image. That said, a bigger number isn"t always better, as you need to take external lighting conditions into account the lighting conditions and the type of display into account.

As previously mentioned, a higher contrast ratio has its benefits but isn’t the only thing you should consider. For example, a projector with a lower contrast ratio could provide an optimal viewing experience if you’ll be using it in a room with a lot of ambient light.

Contrast ratios can also vary significantly across different display types. While a transmissive digital projector may only have a contrast ratio of 200:1, many newer TVs are over 4,000:1. But even these figures don’t tell the whole story, as contrast ratios are dependent on the underlying technology and how they are measured.

When looking at a display’s contrast ratio, it’s important to understand the various ways in which they are measured. The actual ratio you see can be broken down into two different types: Static Contrast and Dynamic Contrast.

Static Contrast, otherwise known as “native” or “onscreen,” is a ratio comparing the brightest and darkest shade a display system is capable of producing at the same time. Since this ratio reflects the results from when the panel was made, industry experts typically consider this a more accurate representation of a display’s capabilities.

Dynamic Contrast offers a more theoretical range of a display’s contrast ratio, as it’s heavily dependent upon the screen’s underlying technology. Here, the range between the lightest areas of an all-white/light scene and the darkest areas of a black/dark scene is measured.

The problem with dynamic contrast measurements is that they are typically dishonest, as you’re unlikely to experience such a wide contrast range in the same scene. On top of this, manufacturers can manipulate contrast to make a scene lighter or darker using a display’s backlighting and firmware.

Unfortunately, there is no standardized measurement of contrast ratio. Particularly in the TV market, manufacturers can essentially inflate their ratings due to a combination of measurement and unstated variables. That said, most contrast ratios are measured using one of two methods:

Displays that measure with this method tend to register lower contrast ratios as ANSI contrast provides a more realistic measurement of the screen’s capability. However, since the test can include a room’s lighting conditions in its measurement, it needs to be performed in an ideal environment for the most accurate reading.

This method measures an all-white screen with an all-black screen and reflects equal proportions of light from the display to the room and back. It"s the preferred method for many manufacturers, as it cancels out exterior lighting conditions and results in an ideal (and thus higher) contrast ratio. Unfortunately, dynamic contrast specs are often misleading since they can be inflated and don"t indicate much about how an average image"s contrast will look.

The eye test is the best tool at your disposal — if a display’s black levels look washed out and gray, its contrast ratio probably isn’t high enough. However, there are other ways to ensure you’re not being misled:

Look for vendors that publish ANSI contrast specs, as this is a more accurate reflection of the display’s true contrast range. Unfortunately, many companies don’t disclose these figures, as ANSI readings tend to be much lower than Full On/Off, and it’s simply a better marketing strategy for these companies to focus on the latter.

Pay attention to backlighting technology.If you’re looking for a TV with a high contrast ratio, an OLED display will offer a better viewing experience than an LCD panel, as the OLED’s pixels don’t rely on a backlight and can display deeper blacks without a “blooming” effect.

Stick to the same manufacturer when making comparisons.Since every company arrives at its contrast ratios through different means, comparing displays produced by the same manufacturer is an excellent way to get consistent figures.

As it pertains to monitors, the contrast ratio is the ratio between the brightest white’s highest lumination level and the deepest black color the monitor is capable of producing. If a monitor has a high contrast ratio, it means it offers deeper shades of black, indicating a higher level of picture quality overall.

Contrast ratio is crucial for projector image quality. The higher the contrast ratio, the more detail viewers can see on the image projected. A higher contrast ratio also means more color subtlety is available, and more shading is visible.

Modern computer LCD monitors typically have a contrast ratio of between 1000:1 and 3000:1. A good gaming monitor may range toward the higher end of the spectrum, but use your eyes when considering a monitor you"re comfortable with and note that ambient light will affect what you"re seeing.

OLED and LED TVs use different technologies to display an image. While LEDs use backlights behind an LCD panel, pixels on OLEDs emit their own light and don"t need a backlight. OLEDs can turn individual pixels on and off, meaning that they display perfect blacks because the screen is completely off when there"s a black scene. Since the luminance level of blacks on an OLED is 0, and you can"t divide anything by 0, then the contrast ratio of OLEDs is considered infinity to one.

Between LED TVs, there are different panel types which each have their own effect on the contrast. Many TVs use Vertical Alignment (VA) panels, while others use In-Plane Switching (IPS) panels. VA panels provide a much higher contrast ratio than IPS, and this is because of the way pixels interact with each other. On either panel type, the pixels rotate to allow light through, which produces the image. However, when there"s a black image, the pixels return to their regular position in an attempt to block off the light from the LED backlights. The vertical positioning of pixels in VA panels is more efficient at blocking off light, while IPS panels still let some light through, making blacks look gray.

There are a couple of settings that can improve the contrast ratio, with the most important being local dimming. However, changing each of these settings can also affect picture quality, so there"s a trade-off between improving the contrast and having the best picture quality available. Also, contrast may vary between units of LED TVs a bit; this means that the unit you buy may have a slightly higher or lower contrast ratio than the one we tested, even if the model is the same.

Local Dimming: Dims the backlight behind darker portions of the screen. It improves the contrast most of the time, and it"s worth using if it performs well. However, it can introduce issues like blooming around bright objects in dark scenes, and when it"s done poorly, it can dim the entire image.

Contrast:The contrast setting on most TVs increases the luminosity of the brightest whites. This could improve the contrast, but most of the time, it negatively affects image quality.

Brightness:Similar to the contrast setting, the brightness setting makes blacks darker when you decrease it. Once again, it can affect image quality, and we don"t recommend using it, but it"s up to you. However, some TVs may call their backlight setting "Brightness", and this doesn"t affect the contrast ratio, it just makes the entire screen brighter. If that"s the case, the brightness setting to change the black level may be called "Black Level".

Dynamic Contrast: Uses software to process the blacks and make them darker. Unfortunately, this removes detail from the image and may not be worth using.

Highlight Brightening: Makes highlights in images extra bright, which affects how contrast looks. It may be worth using with HDR media, but not really useful for most videos.

The contrast ratio of a TV defines how well it displays blacks. The higher the contrast, the better, as it improves picture quality in dark scenes. If your TV has a low contrast ratio, blacks look gray. A high contrast ratio is most noticeable when viewing content in dark rooms, but there"s less of a noticeable difference in well-lit rooms. Although there are multiple ways to test for contrast, we test for it using a checkerboard pattern, and we measure the difference in luminance between the white and black squares. Also, the TV"s panel technology affects the contrast as there are panel types that produce deeper blacks than others. Overall, if you tend to watch movies in dark rooms, then the contrast ratio is important for you.

As a first step, try using the calibration settings we recommend (provided we have reviewed your monitor). This will get good, basic contrast - meaning no additional contrast-enhancing settings - and with no loss of detail in dark portions of the image. You can find this information in the "Post Calibration" section of the review.

Contrast:Adjusting this will let you affect how much contrast the monitor has. We list a recommended setting with all of our reviews, but it"s almost always fine to just set this to the maximum. On rare occasions, gamma might be affected, leading to a loss of detail in highlights.

Local Dimming: The local dimming feature dims the backlight behind darker portions of the screen. It can deepen contrast, and it"s worth using when implemented well. It can introduce issues like light blooming off of light objects within dark areas, and when done especially poorly, can dim the entire image. We discuss local dimming in more detail here.

Backlight settings have a very minor impact on contrast, and so you should set it to whatever looks best in your viewing space. With LED Monitors, both white and black will become about equally brighter or dimmer when the backlight is adjusted, preserving the ratio of light to dark. With OLED monitors, adjusting the OLED light only increases the peak brightness; blacks are still perfectly black.

One frequently asked question is which is more important, a panel"s native contrast or contrast with local dimming? It"s a good question. The answer is a bit complicated, but basically, it depends. Unlike TVs, most monitors don"t have a local dimming feature. The few that do, generally speaking, don"t work very well. They usually have very small zone counts, and the algorithms can"t keep up with fast-paced motion, so the leading edge of a bright object in a dark scene ends up looking darker than the rest, and there"s a trail of light behind it.

Because of these issues with local dimming, it"s almost always more important to look at the native capabilities of a monitor instead of the contrast ratio with local dimming. Because most monitors have poor local dimming features, there"s usually not that much of a difference between the native contrast of the panel and the contrast with local dimming when tested with a checkerboard pattern. In fact, of the 23 monitors with local dimming that we"ve tested on our latest test bench, only 4 of them can improve contrast by 10% or more with our test pattern through local dimming.

There are different ways to measure contrast. We measure contrast with a checkerboard pattern and take the average black level from four squares, but some other review sites measure it differently, which can lead to a difference in posted numbers. Some of the other methods we"ve seen websites use include:

Full On/Off: Some websites measure the contrast using a full white screen, and a full black screen. This is generally considered a less accurate way to measure contrast, and it isn"t very realistic. Contrast measurements with local dimming tend to appear much better with this measurement technique, as it"s easy for any monitor with local dimming to turn the entire screen off at once.

Small Samples: Similar to the full-screen method, but instead of large slides, contrast is measured using small slides that only cover part of the screen. This method isn"t ideal either, as imperfect uniformity can significantly skew the results.

ANSI Checkerboard: The most generally accepted way to measure contrast; a checkerboard pattern very similar to ours is used, but with an asymmetric test pattern. The ANSI method measures the output in all 16 squares and averages the values for the white and black squares. It usually produces very similar results to our own.

Because of differences in measurement techniques, equipment used, and even differences between units, it"s extremely common for different websites to report different contrast measurements.

Monitors use different display technologies, each with advantages and disadvantages. Knowing which type of panel is used in your monitor can already give you a good indication of what to expect in terms of contrast ratio:

OLED: Very few OLED monitors exist, but they essentially have perfect contrast, as each pixel is self-emissive, the black level of black pixels is essentially zero.

Even within the same panel types, it"s normal for the contrast to vary a bit between units, even of the same model, due to manufacturing tolerances. Manufacturers used to provide the typical contrast ratio for each monitor, but recently, some brands, including LG, have started listing the minimum contrast ratio you could get. For IPS and TN panels, this difference usually isn"t very significant, and most people shouldn"t worry about it, but for VA panels, the variance between individual units and measurement techniques can be significant. For example, the LG 32GN600-B is advertised to have a typical contrast ratio of 3000:1, but according to LG, it could be as low as 1800:1 for some units. We measured a contrast ratio of 3248:1, almost double the minimum contrast for that model.

A monitor’s contrast ratio indicates the depth of blacks – a higher contrast ratio means deeper blacks – and, by extension, better picture quality. It’s a very important part of picture quality, so if you want something that looks good (particularly in a dark room), be sure to get a monitor that has good contrast.

There are a few things that can be done to improve contrast, but there are limits. As a good first step, look to our recommended picture settings (listed with every review), as those can help you get a good baseline. From there, you can enable or disable a few different settings that might help deepen blacks. Just remember that some of those settings will have other consequences on picture quality.

Such factors are listed below.Display technology (Twisted Nematic panels, In-plane switching panels, Vertical alignment panels, and super vertical alignment)

Nothing beats the vertical alignment panels and super vertical alignment panels in contrast ratios regarding the display technology and probably the panel types.

The vertical alignment panels have liquid crystals aligned naturally to the glass, ensuring a more comprehensive contrast ratio range. These panels also have minimum light leakage; meaning prevents the backlights from reaching the deepest blacks. Its whites have better clarity and are uniform.

The display brightness determines the contest ratio integrity in the real action. It counters the surrounding lights" effect on the display. Calibrate the backlight luminance settings to match the display contrast calibration.

To enjoy the best contrast ratio experience, consider a monitor with high brightness levels of up to 5,000 nits. The high luminance counters the effect of ambient lighting.

Glare and reflection of light to the screen affect contrast ratio. When ambient light hits the screen surface, it reflects into your eyes, disrupting your vision. A monitor with an anti-glare coating addresses the glare and reflection issues effectively. Also, ensure your room has minimum ambient and natural light striking the screen directly.

Ambient light from the surroundings directed towards the monitor affects the contrast ratio. This light strikes the screen, scattering in all directions. The reflected light then strikes the eyes of the monitor used. This condition results in unclear image display due to lowered contrast quality.

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If the games you play and movies you watch on your best computer display, HDR monitor, or HDTV seem a bit washed-out or not as detailed as they should despite high resolutions and high-end settings, you might want to look into adjusting your contrast ratio.

Contrast ratio (which we’ll refer to here sometimes as “CR” is defined by the range between the luminance (brightness) of the brightest white and the darkest black that any given monitor or tv can display. More technically speaking, luminance is a number used to measure the intensity of light present on any given surface, as expressed in candelas per square meter (ced/m²)- more commonly referred to as “nits.” The contrast ratio of a display is determined by measuring the luminance of white and black and then calculating the ratio between the two extremes. If you’re conscious about your eye health, check out our guide on the best monitor settings for eyes.

It’s particularly noticeable in dark scenes in a game or video, where shades of black will be a prominent part of the image, but it makes a huge overall difference in image quality and sense of detail and depth regardless of the image, and it’s a concept a lot of people aren’t aware of. Luckily, Windows, macOS, and most modern displays all offer plenty of calibration options to ensure that you’re getting the best contrast ratio possible for your system, like the quality contrast you can see on an HDR computer monitor.

Contrast ratio is generally expressed in product descriptions of most HDTVs computer displays using the default value of 1000:1- that is, a range of approximately 999 nits between the blackest black and most luminous white a display can generate at default settings. Here, default settings would be defined as brightness= 50, contrast= 50, and gamma (if offered) = 50- both in the native display window, with high contrast mode set to off if using Windows 10.

In terms of CR numbers, the higher, the better, so it’s good to look for numbers of anywhere from a fairly standard 1000:1 to an exceptional 3000:1. There is, however, a caveat here- if a product is described as having a contrast ratio higherthan 3000:1, it’s most likely purely a marketing gimmick, and not really a noticeable or effective ratio.

As ever, though, you should trust your own eyes before anything else. If you happen to be shopping for a new television or display in-store, take the time to check the contrast ratio between products, and test settings while you’re at it. Due diligence in this regard will pay off.

Lastly, a factor many don’t consider when purchasing a new display is ambient light– or the light in a room or space falling directly on the display. This will have a real impact on your perception of contrast and is something you should consider when hunting for a new monitor or HDTV. If you want to learn about more monitor setting guides, check out how to fix input lag on a monitor.

Processing time (input lag). This time is almost never mentioned, but critical for serious gaming! There are 3 big reasons for input lag. On TN displays only 200k colours can be shown. To get the idea of true 24 bit colour, the screen logic calculates either a dither pattern, or a kind of pulse-width dimming of the pixels. S-PVA and S-IPS have a similar circuit to calculate overdrive characteristics to get the pixels to the next shade based on 2 frames of input. Last is upscaling and analog conversion processing. These three processing tasks put a delay between the actual input of the screen image, and the display. With most TN screens and some S-IPS screens the input lag is under 1 frame. With other IPS panels and big TN screens (>23 inch) input lag is around 2 frames. With S-PVA input lag is mostly around 3 frames.

Contrast ratio is the most important aspect of a TV"s performance. More than any other single metric, a set"s contrast ratio will be the most noticeable difference between two TVs.

In its simplest form, contrast ratio is the difference between the brightest image a TV can create and the darkest. In another way: white/black=contrast ratio. If a TV can output 45 foot-lamberts with a white screen and 0.010 ft-L with a black screen, it"s said to have a contrast ratio of 4,500:1.

There is no standard as to how to measure contrast ratio. In other words, a TV manufacturer could measure the maximum light output of 1 pixel driven at some normally unobtainable maximum, then measure that same pixel with no signal going to it at all. This hardly represents what you"d see at home, but without a standard, such trivialities don"t matter to TV manufacturers.

Worse, contrast ratio numbers have gotten so extreme, there is literally no way to measure some of them. What happens more often than not is the marketing department will come up with the number it needs to sell the product. The engineers will shuffle their feet, and stare at the wall, and magically the TV has that contrast ratio.

Because you"re reading this article on a device that has its own contrast ratio, I can"t give you real examples of what good and bad contrast ratios look like, so I"ll have to fake it. If you can, make sure your computer monitor is set decently; you can use

There are two more aspects of contrast ratio. Most often these are referred to as "native" and "dynamic." Native contrast ratio is what the display technology itself can do. With an LCD, this is what the liquid crystal panel itself is capable of. With DLP, it"s what the DMD chip/chips can do.

Imagine putting the image above on your TV"s screen. Native contrast ratio is how dark the darkest parts of the image are, compared with the brightest parts of the same image. I like to call this "intra-scene contrast ratio" though I"m certainly open to something better if anyone has an idea.

When an adjustable backlight, or a projector"s iris, is used in conjunction with circuitry to monitor the video signal, it is able to adjust the overall light output in real time depending on what"s onscreen. This dynamic contrast ratio looks like this:

A bright image is bright, a dark image is dark. Done well, this does increase the apparent contrast ratio of a display, but not nearly as much as the numbers would suggest. A TV with 5,000,000:1 contrast ratio would be unbelievable to look it. Too bad one doesn"t exist. A TV with a high dynamic contrast ratio may look better than a TV that has no such circuitry, but it won"t look as good as a display with a high native contrast ratio.

Yes, the LED"s of an LED LCD can turn off, creating a true black, but it will never do this when there is any amount of video on the screen. Picture the end credits of a movie. A display with a high native contrast will show this as a dark black background, and punchy white text. A display with a high dynamic contrast ratio may have a similarly dark background, but the text won"t be bright.

As you can see, a display with a high native contrast is the way to go, if that"s what you"re going for. The night sky is black, but the streetlights pop out. The day sky is bright, but the dark jacket is dark. This is more like CRT, more like film, more like life.

The technology with the highest native contrast ratio is... LCOS. At the moment, JVC front projectors using their version of the technology (D-ILA) have the highest native contrast ratios I"ve measured. Sony"s version (SXRD) comes in a rather distant second. Third is plasma, though some DLP projectors are close.

LCD has come a long way in the past decade, but still lags behind the other technologies. Thankfully, the better LCD manufactures know this and have come up with a few ways to mimic the high native contrast ratio of the other technologies.

The best way to get a high intra-scene contrast ratio with LCDs is with local dimming. This is when the backlight of the LCD is an array of LEDs, all of which can dim depending on what"s on screen. It"s not done on a per-pixel level, but LED zones are generally small enough that the overall effect is quite good. It"s far better than what the LCD panel can do itself. The downside is an artifact known as "halos" where the LEDs are lit behind small bright areas of the screen, but these areas are visible because the other parts of the screen are dark. This is very noticeable on specific types of content (like movie credits or star fields) but generally local dimming works really well. I was going to Photoshop some halos onto a screenshot of the one movie where I actually had a screen credit, but it came across more douchey

Most LED LCDs these days are "edge lit," as in their LEDs are along the sides (or the top and bottom, or both). Several companies have developed methods to dim areas of the screen with LED edge lighting, though the effect isn"t as good as full array LEDs. Again, every bit helps though, and many edge lit LED LCDs look amazing.

You may be asking yourself: How can you, as a consumer, find out what display has the best contrast ratio? Good question. You can"t tell in a store, as the store lighting will throw off any comparison (biasing towards LCDs or TVs with antireflective and/or antiglare screens that have better ambient light rejection). As mentioned, all manufacturers manufacture their numbers with little basis on reality, so spec sheets are out.

So that leaves reviews. Sadly, few review sites measure contrast ratio, and those that do don"t have consistency between them. There is no set standard for reviewers on how to measure contrast ratio either, so numbers are going to be extremely different. I may measure 20,000:1, while Joe Numbnutz over at TVAwesomeReviews.com measures 1,000:1 with his Datacolor Spyder (a decent product, but not a valid measurement tool for contrast ratio).

ANSI contrast ratio is a good addition. This is where eight-each white and black boxes in a checkerboard pattern are measured and averaged. This gives a good idea of what a display is doing, and is far more relevant to compare to actual video. Even this, though, is problematic, as the brightness of the white boxes can affect the measurement of the black boxes. Done right, it is also exceedingly time consuming. When I started measuring ANSI contrast ratio when I was at Home Theater, it nearly doubled the total amount of time spent measuring a television. Spending that much time on one measurement that most people will overlook is not an effective use of time.

Like nearly all TV buying guides say: It"s all in what you want to do with the TV. If you"re a movie buff and you watch TV in a dark room or at night, the added contrast of plasma will be very cinematic.

Somewhere in between is an LED LCD with some kind of local or zone dimming, offering better intra-scene contrast ratio than a "normal" LCD, but still offering that technology"s extreme light output.

There are "dynamic contrast ratios" and then there are "static contrast ratios". Static contrast ratios is defined by the ratio of the brightest part of an LCD screen to the darkest part of an LCD screen that can be simultaneously displayed on the screen. Dynamic contrast ratios are measured by the darkest dark from one image to the brightest bright from another image being displayed at different times.

This effectively allows LCD makers to claim a larger dynamic contrast ratio of "3000:1" as oppose to a static contrast ratio of "800:1". While this technique can definitely improve the video quality for some mostly bright scenes or mostly dark scenes, you can"t actually get that level of contrast on the screen and the actual contrast ratio is not altered.

So when you see these inflated contrast ratio scores, you"re not being lied to but the numbers are confusing. Having an LCD that dynamically shifts brightness is a desirable feature but it isn"t a substitute for true contrast ratios.

Contrast ratio is one of the go-to measurements to define the picture quality of a consumer electronic display. In its simplest definition, contrast ratio is the relationship between the maximum and minimum light intensity that can be generated by a display (e.g. the whitest white vs the richest black). Typically, a high contrast ratio is desirable — displays with a big difference between black and white will look crisp and clear. One does need to be careful when looking at the numbers, especially when comparing across different display technologies.

The environments used for most current standard contrast measurements do not always represent the lighting conditions where we actually view our screens nowadays. The metrics were created for the home theater experience (complete darkness). In other words, they were created when we thought of screens only as large TVs, before we put them in our pocket or backpack and took them everywhere we go.

There are three usual ways contrast ratios are measured and reported as:Static —This is the ratio between the light intensity of white and black areas that the display can show at the same time for a given brightness setting.

Dynamic — This is the ratio measured between the light intensity of a full screen of white vs a full screen of black. The difference seems subtle but it allows many display technologies to “game” this number as they can usually do things like dim the backlight on dark scenes or bump it up in bright ones to get impossible large numbers; you will usually find this figure in advertising materials.

ANSI — The measurement is done with a checkerboard patterned test image where the black and white luminosity values are measured simultaneously and averaged. This is a standardized version of the Static contrast ratio discussed previously, usually used for comparing projectors.

At Azumo, we are working to solve real problems for how we actually use our devices — how can we make devices hold a charge longer and be viewable in the full range of real-world conditions? Part of that is taking ambient light into effect. When we measure contrast ratios, we make sure it’s done in all sorts of conditions, and not boiled down to engineer impressive numbers.

Metrics associated with Transmissive LCD with backlight (LCD + BLU) and Reflective LCD with front light (RLCD + FLU) under various lighting environments.

This chart may not be consumer-friendly, but it reveals a few things. Ambient light makes a huge difference in contrast ratio in terms of power consumption and readability. If your product is used in an environment other than complete darkness, you’ll want to also consider Ambient Contrast Ratio metrics when selecting your display.

If your product goes outside or requires a long battery life, an RLCD might be the right choice. Not every device will be used in the perfect lighting environment — most devices should be designed with flexibility in mind.

In the world of flat panel monitor systems, many technical terms are used daily that are considered “normal” to anyone in the industry. These terms get used so freely and frequently that we forget lay people may not be fully familiar with their meaning. At least in the context in which we’re using them. We hope our readers find this list helpful.

Extreme Dynamic Range.Extreme Dynamic Range (XDR) takes brightness and contrast to the extreme, surpassing what is considered standard dynamic range (SDR) and high dynamic range (HDR).

1,000,000:1 contrast ratio.A contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1 provides an incredible range of contrast, which along with extreme brightness, better replicates what the eye can see in real life.

Super-wide viewing angle.Polarizer technology reduces light leakage 25x off-axis versus a typical LCD display, providing accurate viewing from any angle.

Note:The Pro Display XDR undergoes a state-of-the-art factory display calibration process on the assembly line to ensure the accuracy of the P3 wide color panel and the individual backlight LEDs. Color professionals who use a workflow tuned to a particular calibration instrument can recalibrate the Pro Display XDR. See the Apple Support article Measuring and calibrating Apple Pro Display XDR.Subscription required for Apple TV+.

The article covers the most important parameters of LCD TFT Sunlight Readable Displays that need to be considered if the LCD display is to be used in the outdoor environment. It means we will cover issues like contrast, brightness, and reflections, and how these parameters influence what we see; and what we do see, in fact, is the contrast, not the brightness of a display. Contrast is derived from the value of brightness of a display and reflections of it, and hopefully by the end of this article, you will know exactly how it works, and how to get the best possible one.

As the agenda presented outlines, we will go through items like contrast, because this is the key factor to see the image and content clearly. We will also mention sunlight and other light sources and how they influence what we see on the display. Then we will move on to reflections, display brightness, and at the end, how a display operates in different temperatures, as there are special displays solutions for the outdoor environment (very high or low temperatures).

Contrast ratio is a parameter that you can easily find on every display data sheet. It is measured post-manufacturing and given to the customer in the form of a reference number. The contrasts from our data sheets in the examples above are a couple of hundreds high and this is standard for the industrial display type.

For low-end displays the contrast value range is 300 to 500 and for high-end ones it can go as high as 1000 to 2000. If we have a display with such high contrast, then we can see the image perfectly. The number will be different, however, if you buy a standard TV. If you go to the specification of the TV, you might find a number like 1 to 1,000,000, but it’s a little bit tricky and is not necessarily the most important to have. As we will see in the next part of this article, the true contrast in the real world is much lower than even the numbers given here for industrial displays, and could be even a hundred thousand times lower than you can see in a TV specification, and still see the picture clearly.

The first thing about contrast is the ratio of the bright parts of the display to the dark parts; this is simple to measure – just measure the brightness. If we imagine the picture of a black and white spiral is on an LCD display, we can measure how many candelas there are in the white part. Let’s say it’s a thousand candelas display or the like. Then, having the backlight on and the pixels blocked, we can measure how many candelas there are in the black part. Because the difference between them is big, we will see this black and the other parts white, but this is not true black. Because pixels are not perfect, and some light is coming out of them (they are not blocking the light perfectly), when we measure brightness, the result could be around 10 candelas.

In some TVs, like OLEDs for example, the contrast can be very high because when the TV has pixels turned off, they are not emitting any light, and what we experience is true black. I suggest you go and see this kind of TV at a store because it’s a different kind of experience. If you have a completely black background, true black, this is not something that we are used to in standard TVs with a TFT LCD display. That is why we could have contrasts like a couple of hundreds or a thousand, or a million, depending on how you measure that.

Going more into detail, let us consider the real contrast that we call Effective Contrast Ratio (ECR). In our data sheets we have a CR, Contrast Ratio. It is a value that we measure under perfect factory conditions, in a dark room where we just measure the white and dark parts of the screen without any reflections. In the real world though, we have light in the room or outdoors. As every surface, which is not true black, reflects sunlight, we get reflections which add brightness to it. The brightness adds to both, the black and white parts, and that lowers the contrast significantly.

The table above presents an Outdoor LCD Display Readability scale, and as you can see, the Effective Contrast Ratios are very, very low comparing to the datasheet that we have seen before, where it was 500 to 1 or even 1,000,000 to 1 in a TV specification. Here we have only 1 to 2, or 3 to 4 and up to 20 and you can see that reasonable readability starts at 5. 5 is acceptable contrast and most of the things we see are between 5 to 10. As you can see when Effective Contrast Ratio is 10, it is well readable and if it 15, it is outstanding and 20 is excellent! What you see right now here on your screen could be like a 15 to 1 or a 10 to 1 contrast and we still see a perfect image.

The real contrast is much lower than what can we see in the specifications, that is why the contrast itself in a specification is not the most important factor for a bright environment. Were we to work in a dark environment maybe we would look at the contrast and say a display that has 1,000 to 1 is better than a display that is 500 to 1, but in real life when we have a bright environment these two displays will look pretty much similar and will be similarly readable because the real value of Effective Contrast Ratio will be much lower and it is connected with other factors, not the contrast itself.

The graphic above presents some additional calculations. As you can see, if we take a typical newspaper, we can expect a contrast of 20 to 1 in sunlight. This is very low, but perfectly readable and we would say that the newspaper is one of the best that you can see and clearly read in the sunlight. Then we have some information about notebooks where the brightness is lower and a formula where the ECR is calculated. We will go into detail of how to calculate it later, but as you can see, the typical notebook in 2007 had a screen brightness of 200, maybe 300 candelas. Nowadays the notebooks are going into higher brightness, but then, in 2007 we could expect very low contrast, that is why it was very hard to read or work with that kind of notebooks in the sunlight.

Now let us go a little bit more into detail and take the example with the numbers of a middle brightness display which is 400 candelas. As you know our high brightness IPS displays are 1000 candelas by standard, but here we have intentionally a lower brightness for the purpose of the calculation. So, we have 400 candelas, and we have a 400-contrast ratio, for easy calculation. Then we take our display outdoors to the sunlight, where we can expect about 10,000 candelas brightness of the light and assume four 4.5% reflections.

That means the surface of the display will reflect 4.5% of the light that is coming. In this case it will reflect about 450 candelas, and it will reflect on all the surface, both on the bright and dark parts. So, whatever we had before, if we go outdoors, we need to add the reflections and they are added into the whole surface, into the bright part, and into to the dark part and then the Contrast Ratio value is completely different, and we go down from 400 to 2 to 1 only.

As we have already learnt, 2 to 1 is rather unreadable or uncomfortably readable. We don’t like to look at this kind of displays because we need to make an effort and really try hard to actually see what is there. So, it is way too low, so how can we improve that in Sunlight Readable Displays? We can actually do two things. The first thing is easy, we can increase the brightness, so we go up and if we go to, for example 800 or 1000 candelas, we will have the contrast ratio of 3 to 1 or whatever. What else can we do? We can decrease the reflection rate, so we can change the surface of the display and make it to reflect lower. That is why we sometimes use an anti-reflective coating on the glass. And from, for example 4,5%, we will go down to maybe 1%, so the reflection brightness will go to 100 candelas. Then the real contrast, after a fast calculation would be 500 divided by 100, that means 5 to 1. So, if we decrease only the surface without even changing the brightness of a display, we are able to go with the contrast from 2 to 1 to 5 to 1, which will be good enough, or even perfect in sunlit conditions. Usually, we do both. We try to increase the brightness and try to decrease the reflections as much as possible, because the reflections in outer cases are high.

If we have a LCD display installed outdoors, we need not only an anti-reflective layer to reduce the reflections, but we also have to protect the display, usually by adding an additional glass. Because it is outdoors, we need to protect the display from vandalism, and also from the environment itself – from water, dust, and everything that we can expect outdoors. So, we put additional glass. Sometimes it is just a covered glass, sometimes it is a glass with touch, depends on the application, and they are usually separated by a layer of air. It has a lot of benefits: mechanical benefits, economical, easy assembly and also, if the glass gets destroyed, the display might still be OK; and we can replace just the glass without replacing the whole display.

But from an optical point of view, this solution has a lot of disadvantages. If the additional glass is not optically bonded to the surface of the display, we have air in between. That means we have more reflections. We have reflections from the glass itself, from the glass to the air, and from the display again because the glass is an optically different environment than the air. So, we have sometimes even 10% of reflections or more. That is why we need to increase the brightness as well. It is not that easy to handle, so the contrast could again be not good enough. Looking at our example, if we have 10% of reflections even with increasing the brightness to 2000 candelas, without lowering the reflections, we have a contrast of 3 to 1. That, again, makes the display go from unreadable to barely readable just by increasing the brightness and reflections.

The coating is adding an extra layer to the surface. Usually, it is a glass so we add this coating to the glass to decrease reflections. As it was mentioned before, typical glass reflection is 4% or 5%. If we add something that we call AR coating that is Anti-Reflective coating, we can decrease this number to 1% – 2.5% so it results in a big difference in contrast that we see as the viewer of the display.

Now a quick reminder of Riverdi’s display lines. First, we have our old generation display line that was based on TN glass, Twisted Nematic standard glass. When we were introducing this line, most of the displays on the market at that time were 200 to 300 candelas. Our line was the industry’s higher standard and Riverdi’s displays were 500 to 600 candelas. Nowadays, the brightness is too low, that is why we decided to introduce a new line. We changed the glass from TN to IPS to have all the viewing angles possible and to have better colors and we also, at the same time, increased the brightness to 1000 candelas.

1000 candelas really is a universal number that we can use indoor in a very bright environment, like a bright medical room, or industrial facilities, or a coffee machine close to the window, where we have sunlight coming in from the window. With 1000 candelas we can have a perfect image and clear display and this 1000 candelas also allow us to build outdoor devices if we keep the reflection low. We can do it either by adding some shadow, so not having the direct sunlight, or having some additional anti-reflective layer on the last surface that would be typically glass. As you can see in the table above, if we add something on the top of the display, that is typically a touch screen, then the brightness goes lower because of the reflections. The glass is also not perfectly transparent. The typical glass has 95% to 97% percent of transparency, so few percent is lost in the glass itself, the rest is lost because of reflections. As you see if it is air bonded, we lose more comparing to optical bonded. When we have optical bonding, we lose less because there is no internal reflection. These numbers in our table are very conservative. In the real world they are typically higher, but this is the lowest you can expect. So typically, we could lose 10% to 12%, but we try to be conservative that is why we show 850 candelas so 15 percent down and this is the lowest that you can expect from our displays with pickup and pickup optically bonded. For the old generation line, we have also a version with resistive touch. Resistive touch includes more layers, we have another air gap which is necessary for us to press, because resistive needs to be mechanically pressed, that is why we have even lower brightness, so there are more reflections than with typical pickup without optical bonding.

Some of our displays, e.g. the 7”, were tested in a range from -30 to + 80 degrees and were working, so the real practical working temperature range is higher than in the spec, but this is what we guarantee. But for real outdoor LCDs it is too low, it’s too low on both ends. So –20 degrees in many cases is not enough. In Scandinavia and many other countries, we may expect lower temperatures than -20 and we need -30 or -40 degrees of operating temperature for outdoor displays. On the high end it is also a problem because if we are out there in the summer and we have direct sunlight reaching the surface of the display, we can go higher than even +70 or +80 degrees. So, we need different technology. In a typical LCD we have liquid crystals. Liquid crystals need to be in a liquid phase to work and below the minimum operating temperature they starts freezing. That means it becomes solid and the crystals cannot move or move very slowly. Above the minimum operating temperature, in the range from -20 to +70 degrees Celsius it is in the liquid phase and works normally. We call this phase nematic, so the nematic phase is a phase where the light can be operated by a liquid crystal.  The liquid crystal can change the polarization of the light, but it needs to mechanically move the crystals inside the liquid crystal cell, so it needs to be in the nematic phase. Below the minimum operating temperature, it becomes solid and cannot move. Above the maximum operating temperature, which is +70 or +80 degrees for typical displays, but sometimes only +50 degrees for consumer grade products, we will go to the isotropic phase. Isotropic means you cannot change the polarization of the light anymore. It becomes like all the light can go through the liquid crystal and you cannot control it with the voltage or anything, so you cannot switch the pixels on and off. That is why we have another solution that we call Hi-Tni displays. Hi-Tni means High temperature Twisted nematic – isotropic, and we use this technology for outdoor displays for example for the marine, automotive, and military industries.

And that will be all in this article about contrast, brightness, and temperatures. Just one more thing: if you are planning on buying a laptop today, you can find brightness in the specification. Look at this number because this will determine how good your laptop will be outdoors. There are laptops on the market today that will have 1000 candelas or even more. If you are looking for a new device my recommendation also goes for mobile phones. Low brightness mobile phones can have 300, maybe 500 candelas, but nowadays the standard will be around 1000 candelas, but there are phones on the market that already have 1500 or even 1800 candelas. That means if you are in the sunlight you will still be able to see the image clearly. Of course, the battery will be drained faster, but sometimes it is not so important, maybe you just want to check something quickly, to read something and you want to have a clear image just be aware that this number is pretty important when you buy new devices!