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| 17-INCH LCD | Contrast ratio1: Tested | Contrast ratio1: Published | Tested versus published ratio |
Dell UltraSharp 1702FP | 892:1 | 500:1 | 78% better |
Samsung SyncMaster 172B | 590:1 | 350:1 | 69% better |
Planar PX171M | 584:1 | 400:1 | 46% better |
| Hyundai ImageQuest Q17 | 683:1 | 500:1 | 37% better |
| Hitachi CLM174SXW | 525:1 | 400:1 | 31% better |
| AG Neovo F-17 | 496:1 | 400:1 | 24% better |
| BenQ FP767 | 610:1 | 500:1 | 22% better |
NEC MultiSync LCD1760V | 545:1 | 450:1 | 21% better |
| Iiyama ProLite AS4314UTG | 550:1 | 500:1 | 10% better |
| ViewSonic VG700 | 461:1 | 450:1 | 2.4% better |
| Eizo Nanao FlexScan L565 | 386:1 | 400:1 | 3.5% worse |
| LG Electronics Flatron L1710B | 405:1 | 450:1 2 | 10% worse |
| Hansol H750 | 247:1 | 350:1 | 29% worse |
| ViewSonic VE175 | 352:1 | 500:1 | 30% worse |
| CTX S730 | 252:1 | 500:1 | 50% worse |
Tested contrast ratios varied widely from vendors' specs, but these differences have no relationship to the display's quality as reflected by its PC World star rating.
1 Ratio of the luminance of a display's whitest white to that of its blackest black.
2 As we went to press, vendor lowered figure, from 500:1.
HOW WE TEST: Tests were developed in collaboration with Raymond Soneira, president of DisplayMate Technologies, and were based on the NIST/VESA FPDM standard, together with a method for setting the monitor's gray scale precisely. A level, a straight edge, and a protractor were used to align a photometer perpendicular to the LCD screen. Black felt masks were constructed to carefully control the light reaching the photometer. In a dark room, we took two sets of luminance measurements, the first with LCD brightness and contrast set to maximum, the second with brightness and contrast optimized manually to make the displays look as similar as possible. To that end, we tried to focus only on the part of the 256-color gray scale between 8 and 247. First we lowered the brightness level until all grays darker than 8 disappeared. Next, we lowered the contrast level until all grays 247 and darker appeared. We rechecked to ensure that the outer 3 percent of both ends (grays less than 8 or greater than 247) of the scale was not visible. Some displays did not give us sufficient controls to achieve this adjustment; in those cases, we took measurements with the closest range approximation. CHART NOTES: "Published" is the vendor's spec; "Tested" is the rating reported by the PC World Test Center.