The VESA responsible for video standards has added another level to its HDR certification for OLED displays. DisplayHDR True Black 600 places higher demands on the brightness, which has to reach at least 600 cd/m² in certain points.
When asked how good a monitor or one is Notebook display suitable for HDR content, the open standard DisplayHDR of the VESA should help since the end of 2017. Initially, only LC screens were certified in several stages, each with different requirements. At the beginning of 2019, DisplayHDR True Black also followed, a standard for OLED and MicroLED displays that had slightly different criteria.
The standard DisplayHDR True Black already bears an essential property of the “emitting displays” in its name: “True Black”. Because with OLED and MicroLED displays, the light-emitting diodes themselves form the pixels and can be switched off precisely to the pixel, which leads to deep blacks and high contrast. In contrast, LCD monitors work with liquid crystals, which are illuminated by a backlight consisting of mostly a few LEDs. The alignment of the liquid crystals determines how much light shines through and thus also the brightness. But even with a “black” picture, light still shines through, which is why LCDs do not offer real black.
This is new with DisplayHDR True Black 600
The name alone suggests that with the new Level, a peak brightness of at least 600 cd/m² is required for a small area of the screen. The standards True Black 400 and True Black 500 are content with 400 cd/m² or 500 cd/m². The total image area of the True Black 600 must now reach at least 350 cd/m².
The requirements for the black value remain unchanged, which in the center of the display must not be brighter than 0.0005 cd/m². The same requirements exist for the color space (DCI-P3 at least 90%, BT.709 at least 99%) and color depth (at least 8 bits + 2 bits via FRC) as with the previous true black standards. The official website provides more details on the criteria that displays must meet in tests so that manufacturers can advertise their product with the corresponding HDR logo.
First products with True Black 600
The first products to be certified according to DisplayHDR True Black 600 include new notebooks from Asus. Specifically, it concerns the OLED models of the series Vivobook Pro 14, Vivobook Pro 14X and Vivobook 15.