Soneira, the same display specialist who challenged Apple’s initial claims of a “retina” display on the iPhone 4, is now taking aim at Google‘s prize tablet. In his test of the Nexus 7 display, he found its resolution, viewing angle, contrast ratio and color all to be top-notch. However, when it came to grayscale, it fell far short.
Soneira discovered the Nexus 7 reduces the intensity of bright image content by up to 25% — meaning the brightest areas of an image are only about 75% as bright as they should be. That translates into some detail lost in the brightest areas of an image, and Soneira says the drop-off is “quite substantial.”
Mashable did test of their own to see if they could see problem. Putting the Nexus 7 side-by-side with a comparably sized tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, we looked at both a bright image and a grayscale test pattern, at maximum brightness.
On the image (this shot of a Typhoon Guchol posted by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center), they could see that some of the detail in the whitest areas was only visible on the Samsung, although the Nexus 7′s higher-resolution display — 1,280 x 800 to the Tab 2′s 1,024 x 600 — made things sharper overall.
The issue became clearer viewing this grayscale pattern. Looking at the strip of white and light-gray squares on the right side of the screen, the Nexus 7 makes them all look whiter than on the Galaxy Tab 2, with the 1% box appearing identical to 0%. You can see the issue in the photo below (100% brightness, Nexus 7 on the right). The problem persists even when the brightness on both tablets is turned down to 50%.
How serious is this problem, though? They didn’t notice it at all when rhey reviewed the Nexus 7, and most reviews have been glowing about the tablet and its 7-inch IPS (in-plane switching) LCD screen.
“The Nexus 7 has a high quality display, they just really messed up the factory calibration,” Soneira told Mashable. “This affects all displayed images, but it is most noticeable on any form of photographic image, including videos. The analogy of an over exposed photo is a good one. For high-contrast text and graphics, the display will look fine.”
Although Google is the brand on the Nexus 7, Asus makes the tablet. Soneira suspects Asus as responsible for the issue, as the manufacturer is responsible for the problematic grayscale. A software update may be able to correct the problem.
No comments:
Post a Comment