Now that the OLED is about to drop (and hopefully SteamOS 3.5 soon behind), lets go over the new display customization options present in the new OS version as they relate to the LCD Deck. Namely, Color Vibrance and Color temperature.
I have a Calibrite ColorChecker Display colorimeter and an Xrite i1 Pro 2 spectrophotometer that I used to take measurements.
First thing - Gamma
of 2.1 (Yellow is measured gamma, grey is ideal sRGB gamma curve). As you can see, it’s relatively flat.
Next, “Color Temperature” setting measurements
In the “7500K” Color Temperature setting I measure:
- 7690K (White chromaticity coordinates 0.2976, 0.3104)
- Brightness of 530 nits
- Contrast of 968:1
In the “6500K” Color Temperature setting I measure:
- 6660K (White chromaticity coordinates 0.3106, 0.3245)
- Brightness of 512 nits
- Contrast of 930:1
Finally, “Color Vibrance” measurements
First, a primer on how to read a CIE diagram. The colored part of this diagram represents all the colors humans can theoretically see. The triangle toward the center represents the sRGB color space. Ideally, the Deck display (and any computer display) should be able to display all colors in this triangle. This would represent 100% coverage.
The below image displays color and saturation measurements in the “Native” Color Vibrance setting. The white triangle represents all the colors the LCD Deck screen can display. Ideally, all the measurement dots would fall inside the small squares. sRGB coverage is roughly only 60-65% but the color saturation is uniform, which we can tell by the evenly spaced colored measurement dots.
Next, the “sRGB” Color Vibrance setting. This is a mode that appears to try to emulate correct sRGB color values, but it can only achieve this in low saturations. The color measurement dots are closer to the ideal square locations, but the colors shift as they get higher in saturation. Some colors like Cyan and Magenta are clipping beyond 50-60% saturation.
Last, the “Boosted” Color Vibrance setting. The measurement changes are a bit subtle, but in this mode all colors clip above around 80% saturation at most.
Summary
The “Color Temperature” setting values are fairly accurate. On my Deck, they measure about 200K cooler than the setting value. The “Color Vibrancy” setting can cause colors to clip and/or change in hue as saturation increases. The LED display is pretty ok. Personally, I’d set my color temperature to 6500K and vibrancy to a couple clicks above Native.
As an aside, the “Color Vibrancy” setting will have different settings on an OLED deck, but it will have the opposite saturation problem - you may want to clamp the gamut to sRGB since it can display colors way outside the sRGB color triangle (into DCI-P3 space).
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I’m so confused what should I set this to for optional?
Can you test oled when it come to you?
So you’re saying I need to upgrade to the OLED tomorrow? Got it.
I don’t care if my colors ‘clip’ or slightly change hue. I’ll take actual color and saturation over a more ‘accurate’ washed out default settings any day of the week. That and contrast. Idgaf about ‘accuracy’, I just want visuals to actually pop and the default values make games look flatter than they should. Keeping the slider turned up.
Great stuff, many thanks for that.
I’ve been looking for how CIE diagrams look after 3.5 and couldn’t find any, I think you’re the first one who posted them.
The thing im interested in are the new refresh rate options. 90hz halved is 45 while on the lcd you get 30 or 15hz. Changing the refresh rate of the lcd panel to 40 as an example always produces screen flickering in various situations and i dont like it. If its possible to get 60, 45 and 30hz straight, that would be a big improvement.
I found it interesting to observe that in gaming mode the colour temperature setting works on an external monitor, but not the vibrancy slider.
So let me ask, because I have a simple caveman brain, right now I have it set to boosted color vibrance and 7500k color temperature, although I’m thinking I’ll drop that to 6500k. I thought it looked pretty nice, but I was wondering, will changing these settings affect battery life adversely at all? Because I’d rather favor whatever helps the battery last longer.
Also, possibly important info, I have color vision issues. I’m not quite colorblind, but shades of certain colors tend to blend together. I’m wondering if that’s why the boosted color vibrance looks better to me. Maybe it just makes the colors easier to distinguish.
No I don’t expect they’d affect battery life at all.
I could see how it would make lighter shades easier to distinguish but richer shades will get blown out.
I just wanna know how does a good quality lcd panel compare to it
Low cost modern LCD displays blow this away
This is the kind of content I come to Reddit for.