Contrast ratio (Black quality)

Consider contrast performance – in other words – how well a flat screen can produce deep blacks and peak whites, and everything in between! Contrast is essential to making a convincing video picture, yet it’s something that’s often overlooked in the TV-buying process.

Contrast ratio figures show the ratio of the light intensity of the brightest and darkest possible colours a TV can produce simultaneously. TVs with a high contrast ratio should reproduce dark scenes that actually contain a believable black colour and plenty of subtle shadow detail information. TVs with low contrast ratios will probably ‘grey over’ black areas, making the picture seem flat.

67% deem Plasma to have the best Black Quality performance

*According to Synovate research participants


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Plasma

LCD

You should treat contrast ratio figures with caution as different manufacturers measure them in different ways, but they are useful in proving a key point: plasma technology can produce better contrast than LCD.

With plasma screens, each pixel creates its own light source independent of the others, meaning that only the bright parts of an image need to lit. This results in deeper black levels. With LCDs, individual pixels need to block out bright light from the constant backlight to make themselves dark, and since they can’t achieve this completely, they typically don’t reproduce blacks as well as plasma displays.