Grayscale Gradient Test
Use this grayscale gradient test to check how smoothly your screen displays shades from black to white. Look for visible banding, missing gray levels, uneven transitions, or areas that appear significantly darker or brighter than expected.
What is a Grayscale Gradient Test?
A grayscale gradient test measures your display panel's ability to smoothly transition across all 256 levels of luminosity in the standard 8-bit RGB color space (from pure digital black at RGB 0, 0, 0 to pure digital white at RGB 255, 255, 255).
High-quality IPS, OLED, and VA panels with proper gamma tracking display a completely seamless, continuous sweep from dark to light. In contrast, poorly calibrated displays, 6-bit panels with low-quality FRC dithering, or incorrect graphics card dynamic range settings will exhibit noticeable vertical bands, stepped jumps, or color tinting across gray tones.
What to Look for During Grayscale Testing
1. Color Banding (Striping)
Instead of a smooth fade, look for visible vertical or horizontal steps, bands, or sudden brightness jumps across intermediate gray levels.
2. Crushed Shadows (Black Level)
Switch to the "Shadow Detail" test. If near-black shades (RGB 1 to 10) blend into solid black, your display's brightness or gamma is set too dark.
3. Blown-Out Highlights (White Level)
Switch to the "Highlight Detail" test. If near-white shades (RGB 245 to 254) blend into pure white, your display's contrast setting is clipping highlights.
4. Color Tinting / Neutrality
Pure grayscale shades should appear perfectly neutral. If midtones show pink, green, or blue tinting, your monitor's RGB color temperature requires calibration.
8-Bit vs 10-Bit Displays & Banding
The smoothness of a grayscale gradient is directly tied to the bit depth of your panel and graphics signal:
- 6-Bit + FRC Panels: Produce 64 shades per channel and rely on temporal dithering to simulate 256 levels. Often exhibit subtle banding or shimmering on smooth gradients.
- True 8-Bit Panels: Provide 256 discrete levels per channel (16.7 million colors) for clean, artifact-free standard sRGB reproduction.
- 10-Bit (8-Bit + FRC / True 10-Bit) Panels: Provide 1,024 levels per channel (1.07 billion colors) for ultra-fine HDR gradients with zero perceptible banding.
Check your screen's resolution and hardware capabilities using our Screen Resolution & DPR Test and verify panel refresh rate with our Refresh Rate Test.
Explore Additional Diagnostic Tools
Test every aspect of your display panel with our client-side testing suite.
Dead Pixel Test
Scan for solid black dead pixels and stuck colored subpixels in fullscreen mode.
Start Test →Backlight Bleed Test
Evaluate edge bleeding, IPS glow, and dark room uniformity on black screens.
Start Test →Refresh Rate Test
Accurately measure your monitor's true active refresh rate in Hertz (Hz).
Start Test →Frequently Asked Questions
Color banding (or posterization) occurs when a display cannot produce smooth, continuous tonal gradations between adjacent brightness shades, causing visible vertical or horizontal stripes instead of a seamless gradient.
Color banding is typically caused by limited display bit depth (6-bit vs 8-bit or 10-bit panels), incorrect GPU color output range settings (Limited vs Full RGB), aggressive panel compression, or inaccurate gamma calibration.
Ensure your graphics card is set to 8-bit or 10-bit color depth with "Full RGB (0-255)" dynamic range in NVIDIA Control Panel or AMD Radeon Settings, calibrate your display gamma to 2.2, disable dynamic contrast features on your monitor, and use DisplayPort or high-bandwidth HDMI cables.
Crushed blacks occur when the monitor's brightness is set too low or the gamma curve is too steep in dark regions, causing subtle dark gray shades (RGB 1 to 15) to be displayed as solid black.