Tag Archives | DisplayMate

DisplayMate’s Latest Tablet Display Shoot-Out

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 28, 2011 at 2:08 pm

Some people review phones and tablets. My friend Ray Soneira, the display guru who runs DisplayMate, reviews phone displays and tablet displays–and he just published an update to his ongoing review of tablet screens. Executive summary: He thinks that Apple’s iPad 2 and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 are both really good, and very close–and that, even though the Tab’s colors are oversaturated, it’s slightly better than the iPad overall. None of the other tablets he tried rival the iPad and the Tab.

Ray also points out an important fact that many of us trip up on: Android tablets with 10.1″ screens don’t give you more real estate than the 9.7″ iPad 2.

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The iPad 2’s Display: Nice, But Not Perfect

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 16, 2011 at 10:43 am

My friend Dr. Ray Soneira of DisplayMate Technologies has reviewed the iPad 2′ screen, comparing it to the iPhone 4’s “retina” display. The news is mostly good–he likes the iPad 2’s display a lot and says that “retina” resolution isn’t all that important–but he also has some interesting technical quibbles which he says Apple could fix with a software update.

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Notes on the iPhone 4's "Retina Display"

Posted by Raymond Soneira on July 1, 2010 at 12:23 pm

[A NOTE FROM HARRY: Here’s a guest post by my friend Dr. Ray Soneira, founder of DisplayMate Technologies, whose display-testing products are widely used by manufacturers and tech publications.]

The article by PJ Jacobowitz “Is the iPhone 4’s LCD the Best?” on PCMag.com with lab measurements comparing four high-end smartphone displays is especially interesting because it has the first published lab results for the iPhone 4 Retina display. Below are my own comments for some of the PCMag article results.

The iPhone 4 is 25 percent brighter than the iPhone 3GS, which was the previous record holder, so the iPhone 4 is now the brightness king for smartphones.

Steve Jobs promised a Retina display Contrast Ratio of 800 and PCMag measured 1097, 37 percent more than the Apple advertised spec. That’s very impressive because you seldom ever see manufacturers conservatively understate their specs to that degree – but then see my widely reported (and often misquoted) comments on the iPhone 4 Retina Display, where it falls short on that spec. The iPhone 4 is a tremendous improvement over the iPhone 3GS, which only had a measured Contrast Ratio of 138. But note that the Motorola Droid remains the Contrast Ratio king of mobile LCDs with 1436, which I measured in our own DisplayMate Lab tests.

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Busting the Biggest Display Myths

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 19, 2010 at 8:27 am

My friend Dr. Raymond Soneira, founder of DisplayMate Technologies, knows as much about displays and what makes them look good–or bad–as anyone. And he’s written an eye-opener of a story for Maximum PC on the specs that display companies use to sell their products. Many of them are inflated, confusing, and/or just plain useless. Which isn’t clear to most people, since normal humans know very little about display technologies.

It’s all driven by marketing hype: Manufacturers figure you’ll buy the monitor with the most impressive-sounding sounding numbers. Tech companies have a long history of making claims about their products that devolve into deceptive gibberish, and this may be the most troubling current case. Ray proposes an Energy Star-like program for certifying displays using standards that really mean something, which is a fabulous idea.

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