Technical Support

Color variation in Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs)

Elo takes great pride in controlling many aspects of an LCD display, including brightness, contrast, color and other parameters. For more information about some of the parameters and tolerance expected from one monitor to the next, even when comparing identical monitors, please read the information below.

1. Tolerance of materials for the LCD panel:

The LCD panel is comprised of several materials, of which, the manufacturer generally allows a 5% tolerance for each part.

2. Difference from input video signal, in terms of Analog/Digital and Color format:
  • Analog video signal: Scalar needs to convert the analog to a digital signal and it’s unavoidable that there will be distortion of color performance in this process.
  • Color format: Different color formats can cause different color performance. RGB uses additive color mixing because it describes what kind of light needs to be emitted to produce a given color. RGB stores individual values for red, green and blue. RGBA is RGB with an additional channel, alpha, to indicate transparency.
3. OSD settings:

Elo includes some basic settings in the On-Screen Display (OSD) to control the appearance of the display. The available adjustments vary with the type of monitor. Please reference the “User Guides” located under the “Resource” section on the product’s webpage. Check the following settings and any other options that can affect the picture:

  • Brightness
  • Contrast
  • Color Temperature
  • Dynamic Color Modes like Gaming, Movie, etc.
  • Red/Green/Blue color values

Furthermore, the age and use of a monitor will affect its LCD screen. It is important to keep in mind that monitor manufacturers can use multiple part suppliers for the same products—two “identical” monitors might have LCD panels that are not from the same supplier.

How you can mitigate the issue

You don't necessarily want to set the monitors to the same settings. Even though they are usually close, two of the same exact monitors can show colors slightly different. You may need to adjust the RGB settings on one monitor to match the other. The best way to adjust them is to bring up a perfectly red screen on both monitors (use MS Paint because you can set the color just the way you want) and then adjust them till they look the same. Repeat for blue and green. Once you get it the way you want, write down the RGB settings just in case your monitor resets and you lose your settings.

About your Elo monitors

Each monitor is tested at the factory, and the color is manually calibrated to ensure it is within an allowable range. Please note, the Elo warranty does not cover color uniformity differences between two monitors. In fact, both are in the manufacturer specification for uniformity.

Elo follows CIE1931 to use sRGB (6500K with 150 nits) for the tolerances of panel:

  • Typical value would be 6500K (0.313, 0.329)
  • Maximum (Warm, yellowish) value would be typical value +0.03 ~ 0.045
  • Minimum (Cool, blueish) value would be typical value -0.03 ~ 0.045
  • Elo does “White Balance” to make sure all color temperatures (5500K, 6500K, 7500K and 9300K) are within the spec and records all of the data for each Elo monitor on the production line