Monitor Color Test

Run this free monitor color test in your browser, then click Start to fill the screen with one pure color at a time. Step through white, black, the primaries and the gradient screens in a dimly lit room and watch for tints, patches or banding. There is nothing to install and nothing is uploaded, so you can check any screen in under a minute.

Look for problems by eye: a red field should be pure red (not pink or orange), white and gray should be neutral with no green, pink or blue cast, and the gradient screens should blend smoothly without visible steps. If everything looks clean and even, your colors are likely fine for everyday use. Be honest about the limit, though — a visual test like this spots obvious faults but cannot measure exact accuracy the way a hardware colorimeter does.

Banding is when a smooth gradient shows up as visible bands or steps instead of a seamless blend. It often points to a lower-bit-depth panel (such as 6-bit + FRC), low-quality GPU output or heavy compression somewhere in the chain. Open the grayscale and RGB gradient screens in this monitor color test — a good display shows an almost imperceptible ramp with no clear stripes.

Use a full-screen solid white or gray field and look across the whole panel for dark patches, color shifts, clouding or brightness that drops off toward the edges and corners. White is best for catching tints and dirty-screen effect, while black reveals backlight bleed and glow. Run these flat fields here in a dark room and view the screen straight on, since viewing-angle shifts can fake or hide a problem.

You do not need to download any monitor color test images — this tool generates pure full-screen color fields live, so they are always crisp at your exact resolution with no JPEG compression to add false banding. Click Start and step through white, black, the primaries and secondaries, or type a custom HEX value to add your own color to the end of the cycle. That avoids the compressed test images that often create artifacts of their own.

A persistent tint or washed-out look usually comes from the wrong color-temperature, gamma or color-profile setting, an aging backlight, or sometimes a panel defect. Use the white and gray screens here to confirm the cast, then reset your display to its default or sRGB picture mode and check your operating system color profile and gamma. If the tint stays on a brand-new screen, it may be a hardware fault worth returning.

Not exactly — this is a visual test, not true calibration. It helps you judge color, tint, banding and uniformity by eye so you can decide whether to adjust your settings or return a new screen, and you can pair it with your built-in Windows or macOS calibration wizard for free improvements. Real calibration that measures and sets exact values needs a hardware colorimeter, but for most people this test catches the problems that matter most.

Open this tool in Safari on your iPhone and tap Start to run the same full-screen iphone color test. Tap the right half for the next color and the left half for the previous one, and the screen stays awake while you check for tints, dead pixels or uneven brightness. If colors look off, also check that Night Shift, True Tone and any accessibility color filters are turned off first.

OLED panels light each pixel individually, so they produce true blacks and very saturated colors but can show faint tints or uneven brightness on near-black and gray fields, especially off-angle. LCD and LED screens rely on a backlight, so they tend to be more uniform on bright fields but may reveal backlight bleed and glow on black. Run the black, gray and near-black screens here to see how your specific panel behaves.

The most important time is right after buying a new monitor, phone or laptop, while you can still return it within the warranty window if you spot banding, a tint or dead pixels. It is also worth a quick check if colors suddenly start looking off, before color-critical work like photo editing, or after changing display settings or cables. For everyday use a once-in-a-while visual pass with this monitor color test is plenty.