The Secret Sauces of THG's LCD Tests

Introduction

We've taken great pains to put the displays we review through the most stringent and detailed tests we can find, and according to your feedback, we're at least doing some things right. And we're not standing still either; we've recently made some improvements in the way we determine what is worth your money and what is not, regardless of whether we're reviewing a 17" monitor or a 37" TV. We also took note of your feedback when we set up our new tests, particularly for latency measurements.

So what exactly is our methodology and what have we added in the way of new tests?

In addition to our practical tests, we gauge the following for the displays we test:

  • color rendering
  • contrast
  • uniformity
  • latency

We have added:

  • gammut
  • overdrive

We've also put some effort into the readability of our test results and decided to judge each display on a scale of one to five for:

  • design and finish
  • ergonomics
  • color rendering
  • video
  • games
  • price/performance ratio

And to that we're also adding a combined score to serve as an overall assessment.

Below, we show you how we're going to conduct our tests, and which criteria we'll evaluate for the various products (monitors, TVs, etc...). To ensure the best level of transparency and openness, we scrutinize everything, even down to the test probes.