Your Laptop display: What is the colour gamut and why is it important?

Dear HONOR fans,

When considering buying a new laptop it can be difficult to make sense of all technical terms used to describe the device’s capabilities. You might encounter complex terms like OLED, resolution, or colour gamut that make the process of choosing the best display for you confusing. The colour gamut sounds particularly mysterious but is very useful to understand. Today we’ll try and make some sense of it, so you can make an informed choice when the time comes.

What is the colour gamut?

You may have heard people say that a particular * ‘runs the whole gamut of emotions. Gamut here just refers to the range of the emotions we can experience. Similarly, colour gamut refers to the range of colours visible to the human eye. When it comes to screens however, not all colour gamuts are created equal. Depending on the display, they may employ different ranges which lead to slight differences in the depth and vibrancy of the colours being shown.

The technical stuff

To show the extent of the colour gamut, we use a triangle, with the points XYZ. The Y axis represents luminance, while the X - Z axes represent chromaticity, that is hue and colourfulness. The three primary colours for screens, Red, Green, and Blue are mapped to these points to depict how wide a range a particular colour gamut can display. The two most common colour gamuts are sRGB (Standard Red Green Blue) and NTSC (National Television Standards Committee).

sRGB * NTSC

sRGB is a colour gamut developed in the 90s for digital devices and is the most common gamut for things like digital cameras and laptops. NTSC on the other hand is the colour gamut originally created for analog * screens, and at full capacity allows for a wider range of colours to be displayed than sRGB. In fact, 72% of NTSC coverage is equal to 100% sRGB capacity.

This might make you think that you should opt for an NTSC screen, but 100% NTSC is rare in laptops. In fact, some laptops may offer just 45% NTSC displays. In addition, most browsers render colours in sRGB anyway, so wider colour gamuts can end up looking somewhat washed out depending on the media being displayed.

Hopefully this article has been useful explaining how colour gamuts work, and how they are important when it comes to choosing the display that’s right for you.

Were you familiar with colour gamuts before? Do you usually consider the colour gamut when choosing your devices?

Regarding the HONOR MagicBook series, we know that the HONOR MagicBook 14/15 2020 is equipped with 45% NTSC screen.

The HONOR MagicBook Pro 2020 is equipped with 100% sRGB screen.

You may have heard some news about a new MagicBook 14/15.

What kind of display do you think will the new HONOR MagicBook 14/15 2021 have?

Sources:

https://www.viewsonic.com/library/photography/what-is-color-gamut/

https://www.faceofit.com/ntsc-*-srgb/

https://www.format.com/magazine/resources/photography/srgb-*-rgb