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Nexus 7 display "noticeably washed out": DisplayMate

A blog post by the president of DisplayMate has heavily criticised the screen of Google's Nexus 7 tablet, describing images taken from the tablet as looking like "over-exposed photographs with missing highlights, reduced image contrast and weak colours".

Joseph Hanlon Special to CNET News
Joe capitalises on a life-long love of blinking lights and upbeat MIDI soundtracks covering the latest developments in smartphones and tablet computers. When not ruining his eyesight staring at small screens, Joe ruins his eyesight playing video games and watching movies.
Joseph Hanlon
2 min read

A blog post by the president of DisplayMate has heavily criticised the screen of Google's Nexus 7 tablet, describing images taken from the tablet as looking like "over-exposed photographs with missing highlights, reduced image contrast and weak colours".

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

Dr Raymond Soneira said that he knew "something was seriously wrong" when he looked at test images produced from the tablet to use in comparison screen testing, but he blamed factory calibration of the screen for the flaws, not the LCD panel itself. Our colleagues at CNET in the US reached out to him to clarify his position and to explain how an excellent screen can produce an image as described above.

"The LCD panel itself is excellent. Good luminance, high contrast ratio, excellent colour gamut and colour saturation. So the raw LCD display itself is great. The problem is that the factory calibration of the display parameters (generally performed via firmware) is way off (particularly the Intensity Scale), so the images that appear on this fine LCD display look washed out," said Soneira.

We've been reviewing the Nexus 7 tablet at CNET in Sydney this week, though our initial impressions of the quality of this screen are quite different. Colours on our review unit are a bit softer than we've seen from competing devices, especially the bold look of Samsung's AMOLED products, but we wouldn't describe the screen in the Nexus 7 as looking "seriously wrong". In fact, for the money, we're seriously impressed.

This criticism follows closely on from complaints by some consumers who have found that the screen on their Nexus 7 tablets are loose, and may need the screws securing the display to be tightened.