How to Calibrate Your Monitor for Better Color (Free and Hardware Methods)
If your monitor looks too blue, too bright, or just wrong, start with sRGB mode, lower brightness, 6500K, and built-in calibration tools before buying a colorimeter.
View browser-rendered gradients and reported color-depth values to look for banding. Browser values do not prove your display panel's maximum hardware bit depth.
Shows your display's color depth and renders gradient patterns to reveal color banding.
On an 8-bit display you should see a smooth transition. On a 6-bit panel you may see visible steps.
Each row shows a gradient from black to full saturation. Banding appears as visible steps rather than a smooth sweep.
This compressed range reveals banding most clearly. If you can count individual steps, your display may be using dithering or is a 6-bit panel.
How many distinct steps can you see in the banding test above?
Color depth determines how many distinct colors a display can show. The progression from 6-bit to 8-bit to 10-bit represents exponential increases in color precision: 6-bit panels can show 262,144 colors, 8-bit panels show 16.7 million, and 10-bit panels show over 1 billion. This matters most for smooth gradients, HDR content, and professional color-critical work.
The gradient tests on this page reveal whether your display and browser can render smooth color transitions. For best results, view the gradients in a darkened room at your monitor's native resolution and default gamma setting.
Continue with another check for the same device or signal.
Check your monitor, laptop, TV, or phone for dead pixels, stuck pixels, backlight bleed, and IPS glow with full-screen color patterns.
Check backlight bleed, IPS glow, dirty screen effect, clouding, and color tinting with full-screen solid colors.
Check monitor Hz, 60Hz, 144Hz, 240Hz, frame pacing, and display refresh rate online.
Check monitor ghosting, motion blur, inverse ghosting, overdrive artifacts, and pixel response online.
Calibrate monitor brightness and contrast with near-black, near-white, ANSI contrast, PLUGE, and white clipping patterns.
Learn about monitor color accuracy, bit depth, and display calibration.