Colour giveaways
The days when a bog-standard monitor produced terrible colours are long gone: even entry-level displays will cover a solid range of colours with respectable accuracy. But that doesn’t mean you need to settle for mediocrity. If you want a display with colours that punch you between the eyes, or you prize accuracy over wide gamuts, there are clues.
The first clue comes in the type of panel (see IPS vs VA, below). This rule of thumb still holds: IPS produces the whitest whites, OLED the most vivid colours and richest blacks, and VA sits somewhere in the middle.
But if you’re willing to dig into the specs you’ll find more hints. As we discuss in “The magic of FRC” opposite, a 10-bit panel will produce more colours than an 8-bit panel and an 8-bit panel more than a 6-bit panel –until FRC gets involved. And it can be surprisingly effective.
