The Galaxy Note 4 has earned the top prize in DisplayMate’s Color Accuracy Shoot-Out. In order to determine which smartphone or tablet has the display with the most accurate colors, DisplayMate takes into account several factors.
Determining color accuracy
According to Android Community, those factors are Skin Tone Color, Blue Region Color, White Point Color, Full Color Gamut and Organic Color. DisplayMate did not test all smartphones and tablets, which would be impossible. The firm tested the most popular ones, particularly those with reputations of having excellent displays.
In addition to the Galaxy Note 4, DisplayMate tested Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)’s Kindle Fire HDX 8.9, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s iPad Air 2 and iPhone 6 Plus, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s Surface Pro 3, and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (LON:BC94) (KRX:005930)’s Galaxy Tab S 10.5.
How the Galaxy Note 4 won
According to DisplayMate, the Galaxy Note 4 topped the charts in all of the factors in the test except for one. The only category in which the Note 4 didn’t top all the others was Blue Region Color Accuracy. The phablet was still close to the top, however. It came in third place but just barely behind the Surface Pro 3 and the Galaxy Tab S.
The iPhone 6 Plus and iPad Air 2 performed poorly in all but two of the tests. He iPad Air 2 landed in second place after the Galaxy Note 4 in Skin Tone and Organic Color. The iPhone 6 Plus was in third place in those two categories, coming in at the top of third place in Skin Tone and just a smidge behind the Surface Pro 3 and the Galaxy Tab S in Organic Color.
The Surface Pro 3 did pretty well overall, tying for second with the Galaxy Tab S.
What’s the point of the test?
Of course everyone likes to read reviews and comparisons of different devices before choosing one, so this color test certainly isn’t out of the ordinary. However, DisplayMate has a very specific reason for running these tests.
For one thing, the firm aims to demonstrate that consumers are already pretty used to mediocre color on their devices. Primarily though, DisplayMate wanted to demonstrate that device manufacturers are not calibrating devices for color accuracy before they ship them from the factory. The firm suggests that manufacturers use standard instrumentation to calibrate devices for color accuracy before shipping them out.
