White Saturation

The White Saturation test evaluates how well your monitor handles bright highlight detail. If your display is poorly calibrated or has the contrast set too high, subtle details in clouds, snow, or bright skin tones will “clip” and appear as flat white blobs.

🧪 Test Patterns & Layout

⬜ The White Grid: We display a sequence of boxes with high RGB values (200, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, and 254).

🔳 The Background: The background is set to absolute white (RGB 255, 255, 255).

🏷️ Labels: Tiny labels indicate the RGB value of each box.

📋 Instructions: What to Look For

1. 🎯 The Goal: You should ideally be able to distinguish the box labeled “254” as being slightly darker than the pure white background (255).
2. 🚫 Check for Clipping: If the last few boxes (250-254) look like one solid white mass or are identical to the background, your display is “clipping” highlights.
3. 🎨 Tinting Check: Look closely at the near-white boxes. Do they have a slight yellow, blue, or pink tint? This indicates a white-balance error in the high-brightness range of your display.

🧠 Expert Interpretation & Calibration

🔧 How to Fix Clipping: Go to your monitor’s physical menu (OSD) and lower the Contrast setting until you can see the boundary between Box 254 and the white background.

☀️ HDR Displays: On HDR-capable monitors, ensure you are testing in the correct mode. Some HDR implementations “hard clip” everything above a certain luminance to maximize brightness, which may lead to poor results in this specific sRGB test.

Free online highlight clipping test, monitor contrast calibration tool, white saturation checker, and sRGB dynamic range diagnostic.