Monitor Colour Accuracy Explained - sRGB, DCI P3, DeltaE and more!

You’ve heard us reviewers talk about monitor’s colour accuracy, colour gamut coverage and DeltaE’s plenty, even things like sRGB, AdobeRGB and DCI P3 colour spaces, but often we don’t actually explain what all that means, so give me a few minutes to run you through it. At a base level, your display is generally made up of red, green and blue sub pixels. How much light each of these sub pixels lets through determines what colour you perceive. It’s an amazing trick that we use to make our eyes see a whole range - literally millions - of colours, without needing a way to actually produce more than three.

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Monitor Colour Accuracy Explained - sRGB, DCI P3, DeltaE and more!

TechteamGB

[he]

Being colour blind, the first thing I do with new games is change the colours so they look completely different to what they're supposed to 😂

[ash]

As someone who uses two different monitors at home for work (I have an M28U, and a Lenovo Thinkvision that my work gave me to use) trying to match the colour and brightness levels are impossible. Even using sRGB mode (and I know both have different coverage) doesn't help either. The tools online doesn't help, and sometimes I feel the only way to make sure your monitors are set up correctly, and matching is to have an expensive tester that reviewers use

[alwaysemployed]

My sweet spot is 275 nits brightness for both lit rooms and dark rooms. I find 275 nits to be the closest to true life brightness. THEY say 120 nits is the standard, but I think it's way too dim.

[DJWolves]

DCI-P3 makes thed most sense for the average consumer as P3 is the same color gamut used in film and TV. Adobe RGB makes sense for image editing.

[McPebbster]

Exactly the explanation I was looking for, thank you!

[jaakkooksa]

My Lenovo P32u-10 professional monitor, which cost about 1000 euros/dollars a couple of years ago, has a gamut that is significantly larger than AdobeRGB, and vastly larger than SRGB. As measured using SpyderX. There are very real and very significant differences between monitors, other than just size and resolution.

[afelias]

Oh my god, thanks for this.

I was thinking about upping my game and maybe transitioning to more "creator" focused stuff and I wanted to start looking into things like 10 bit color video encoding and GIMP (screw Adobe products, that's just me) color space stuff. Thinking of buying a monitor with better than sRGB color coverage. I knew some stuff like the Delta-E but explaining why we have the Adobe RGB vs. DCI-P3 competing color spaces was really helpful.

What do you guys think about the advertised color space values you sometimes get? Have you found any major discrepancies between any reported values and review test results? Trying to interpolate information between stuff I see on sale where I am and whatever I can gather from display reviews.

[SDJSound]

Really informative and useful summary... I'd always wondered what those terms meant. Cheers.

[zaboss.]

Awesome video my man! now I can send this to people I'm attempting to explain all this too lol. As a side I would love for you to do a video like this about something like DisplayCal but more in depth unlike most old videos about it, they always leave out so much. 👍

[supersaiyangandhi]

Amazing video!
Thanks for all the info!!

[Blue_Dun]

I just purchased a Lenovo Legion that says it has 126% sRGB color area ratio, and 95% DCI-P3 color gamut. I dont know anything about color gamuts, etc., but how do I know if I am utilizing the DCI-P3 functionality of this monitor? The icc file downloaded for my Lenovo monitor is just named y27q30 (the model of the monitor).There is nothing in the color management on Windows, display settings in Windows, or the on-screen monitor settings that indicate anything about DCI-P3. My monitor settings show sRGB, but its grayed out as if not an option. Please help. I want to take advantage of DCI-P3 unless it's useless for a 1440p monitor. But why would they advertise it then?

[mcd]

Is a 99% in the Adobe RGB space about the range or the accuracy of the colors? 4:31

[Zayn_y]

my question is: is it ok if i use contrast as 100% or does it ruin something else?

[PsGetSid_]

great video and make more videos with an equally simple explanation !

[IstyManame]

Does it mean that the 8bit 130% sRGB monitor will have more color banding than 8bit 100% sRGB one? because there is more range but the amount of colors is same

[Lobanium]

I couldn't figure out what he was saying when trying to pronounce Adobe. It's uh · dow · bee, not uh · dow · b

[CathyMoon]

Sometimes my computer screen randomly goes black for a few seconds, and then when it turns on again the colors are much less saturated and there is a blue glow at the bottom of the screen. I have checked and no color filters are activated. Can someone help?

[timjourdanmedia]

stupid question to which I still cannot get an answer: Does 125% sRGB mean the monitor has around the same colors and accuracy as an 98 to 100% dcip3 display? or is it just another marketing thing and actually counterproductive for color accuracy? Or does it mean the monitor is able to simulate HDR functions by being able to go darker and brighter or something like that (as some of the many keyboard warriors argue on reddit)?

[Konstantinos-Chtenelis]

Does this mean that we don't need to buy expsensive monitors with acurate colors since we can use a calibration device to calibrate even a cheap monitor?

[benimaru]

so what is the best for gaming ?srgb or p3?