Color Range Test
Check how faithfully your display reproduces color. Full-screen gradients, a hue sweep and solid color fields reveal banding, color cast and bit depth — quantized to true 8-bit steps so banding shows honestly, not smoothed away by the browser.
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What to look for
Visible stripes in a gradient instead of a smooth blend. Fewer, softer bands mean higher effective bit depth and better dithering.
A tint across the white, gray and grayscale patterns — often blue, green or pink. Neutral gray should look truly grey, with no color.
8-bit shows 256 levels per channel, 10-bit over a billion colors. Cheaper 6-bit panels use FRC dithering to approximate 8-bit.
Bit depth and color
| Bit depth | Levels per channel | Total colors | Where you find it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6-bit + FRC | 64, dithered to 256 | ~16.7M (simulated) | Budget TN and entry IPS panels |
| 8-bit | 256 | ~16.7 million | Most monitors and laptops |
| 10-bit | 1,024 | ~1.07 billion | Pro, HDR and high-end displays |
Two things decide a display’s color: gamut — the range it can show, from sRGB for everyday content to wider DCI-P3 and Adobe RGB for photo, video and HDR — and bit depth, how finely that range is divided. This test steps each gradient through all 256 true 8-bit levels, so a good 8-bit or 10-bit panel looks smooth while a weaker 6-bit one bands.
Banding is visible stepping in a gradient — flat bands instead of a seamless blend — when there are too few levels to render the transition. Beyond low bit depth, it can come from an aggressive gamma curve, heavy source compression, or an ICC profile or OSD that stretches the tone curve.
A color cast is an unwanted tint — often blue, green or pink — easiest to spot on the white and gray fields, where neutral gray should look truly grey. It comes from an off white point or color-temperature preset; correct it with the sRGB or a ~6500K preset, a good ICC profile, and 10-bit output plus dithering where supported.