New monitor check. Eight checks, before the window closes.
A new screen has a return window, usually two to four weeks, and most faults are easiest to act on inside it. This runs the checks that find them in one sitting: the rate it really runs at and whether it skips frames, dead and stuck pixels, backlight bleed and clouding, black and white levels, full colour over the cable, whether HDR is on, and how local dimming haloes. Each ends in a plain verdict and what to do.
8 checks · about 4 minutes
- Refresh rate
- Frame skipping
- Dead pixels
- Uniformity and backlight bleed
- Black and white levels
- Chroma subsampling
- HDR and wide colour
- Local dimming
One check after another, with your progress along the top and a plain verdict on each. Nothing you show the camera or say into the microphone leaves this page.
What it measures
Measured here, not assumed.
In the order the checks run.
- Refresh rate and frame skipping
- The rate the screen really runs at, timed frame by frame, and a strip to photograph for refreshes the panel skipped.
- Dead pixels and uniformity
- Six solid colours with taps where a dot is wrong, then black and 25% grey in a dark room for bleed and clouding.
- Levels and chroma
- Whether the darkest and brightest steps show, and whether fine colour arrives in full or subsampled.
- HDR and local dimming
- Whether the browser is offered HDR and which gamut, and whether a halo follows bright shapes on black.
If it fails
The usual failures, and what fixes each.
- A pixel fault
- Photograph it on the colour that shows it and contact the seller inside the return window; a return needs no fault count.
- Below its rated refresh rate
- Choose the rate in the system's display settings, and use DisplayPort or an HDMI cable rated for it. The refresh rate check names the likely cause.
- Clouding or heavy bleed
- Tilt to rule out IPS glow, then raise it with the seller. Camera photos exaggerate it; say so.
- Smeared fine colour
- Set the output to RGB or 4:4:4 in the graphics driver, or name a TV's input PC.
Where a browser stops
What it cannot tell you.
- Your eyes judge the pixel, bleed, levels, chroma and dimming checks; a page cannot see its own screen.
- A page cannot measure brightness, contrast, response time or the panel's true gamut.
- On a phone or tablet, chroma and local dimming are left out: there is no monitor menu to change them.
Privacy
Nothing leaves this page.
The camera and microphone are read on this page and stopped as soon as they have been measured. The clip you can play back lives in the browser's memory and is discarded when you leave. The location check discards the position. The internet test sends random bytes to this site and nothing else. The result is stored nowhere unless you ask for it by email, and then only the fact that an email was sent is kept.
Questions
New monitor check, answered
- What should I check on a new monitor?
- That it runs at its rated refresh rate without skipping, that no pixel is dead or stuck, that bleed and clouding are acceptable in a dark room, that blacks and whites resolve, that colour arrives in full, and that HDR is on if the screen has it. This runs all of it.
- How long does it take?
- About ten minutes, most of it your eyes on the full-screen fields. Do the bleed check with the lights down.
- Can I return a monitor for one dead pixel?
- Inside the seller's return window, usually yes, without a fault count. Under a maker's warranty, policies set a threshold, often echoing the ISO 13406-2 classes that ISO 9241-307 carries forward.
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