So, about 2 years ago, when I tried the Razer Blade 14 in 2021, I noticed that something was off about its color saturation, most evident in its rendering of skin tones. I posted about it here and dismissed it as a one-off problem with that particular model's color accuracy, despite reviewers measuring it as perfectly excellent and choosing it as a creative machine for that reason. You can judge for yourself with it next to my 2020 13" MacBook Pro:
![tempImagel6VVbq.png]( "tempImagel6VVbq.png")
Unfortunately, fast forward 2 years later and as I make another attempt to find a Windows machine that I like enough to ween myself off of Apple's hardware, I encounter the same problem. Bellow's my screenshot (not that kind, but I think I can still call it that, no?) of the 2022 Asus Zephyrus G14 next to the 2021 14" MacBook Pro, and though it's far less offensive than the previous example, I still felt that her face is weirdly red. Still, I understand people just dismissing this as a warmer display that falls within the realm of reality. I bet some might even prefer how the Zephyrus renders the image.
![tempImagewQ8seA.png]( "tempImagewQ8seA.png")
What made me feel like there was something wrong here that I was missing was the Razer Blade 16 from this year. See, this machine is meant to have an incredibly bright, incredibly color accurate screen that uses miniLED to achieve spectacular HDR to boot, all tied together with 4K resolution. It's been reviewed as a better screen than even the 2021/2023 MacBook Pros, and at times, I could see what people meant. Unfortunately, it somehow still suffered from the same exact problem:
![tempImagex1EFgp.png]( "tempImagex1EFgp.png")
In 3 cases, this wasn't an example of me enjoying the machine until I saw this particular moment: I could tell something was weirdly oversaturated and warm about the system's colors. Even when I was enjoying the Blade 16's HDR, I could tell the colors were drastically off. Even with the Asus, the least offensive of the systems, things didn't look quite right.
To make it clear, my goal in writing this isn't to rant about these machines or laugh at them; it's all written from a place of confusion: how is this possible if professional tools measure these screens to have excellent colors?? I've had people tell me that despite these measurements, the simplest explanation is that these are gaming oriented screens and they simply aren't meant to be color accurate and that this is all par for the course. But I don't buy that, because of the following image. That's from the Dell G2410, a 1080p TN panel from 2010, the sort of display known to have mediocre to terrible colors connected to my MacBook through an antiquated VGA port. And indeed, while the colors of Tammy's face look uneven and poor, they're still not skewed toward the warm side in the same way they are in these other Windows machines. Point being, I can't imagine these computers, gaming oriented or not, having worse colors than this thing. There's something else going on here.
![tempImageVyJRxm.png]( "tempImageVyJRxm.png")
The only other explanation would be that the displays are actually super accurate and Tammy's face just looks like a tomato. So, what's up? What am I doing wrong, perhaps at a software level, to see what I'm seeing? Does anyone have any experience with this or any theories? Let me know what you think.
Unfortunately, fast forward 2 years later and as I make another attempt to find a Windows machine that I like enough to ween myself off of Apple's hardware, I encounter the same problem. Bellow's my screenshot (not that kind, but I think I can still call it that, no?) of the 2022 Asus Zephyrus G14 next to the 2021 14" MacBook Pro, and though it's far less offensive than the previous example, I still felt that her face is weirdly red. Still, I understand people just dismissing this as a warmer display that falls within the realm of reality. I bet some might even prefer how the Zephyrus renders the image.
What made me feel like there was something wrong here that I was missing was the Razer Blade 16 from this year. See, this machine is meant to have an incredibly bright, incredibly color accurate screen that uses miniLED to achieve spectacular HDR to boot, all tied together with 4K resolution. It's been reviewed as a better screen than even the 2021/2023 MacBook Pros, and at times, I could see what people meant. Unfortunately, it somehow still suffered from the same exact problem:
In 3 cases, this wasn't an example of me enjoying the machine until I saw this particular moment: I could tell something was weirdly oversaturated and warm about the system's colors. Even when I was enjoying the Blade 16's HDR, I could tell the colors were drastically off. Even with the Asus, the least offensive of the systems, things didn't look quite right.
To make it clear, my goal in writing this isn't to rant about these machines or laugh at them; it's all written from a place of confusion: how is this possible if professional tools measure these screens to have excellent colors?? I've had people tell me that despite these measurements, the simplest explanation is that these are gaming oriented screens and they simply aren't meant to be color accurate and that this is all par for the course. But I don't buy that, because of the following image. That's from the Dell G2410, a 1080p TN panel from 2010, the sort of display known to have mediocre to terrible colors connected to my MacBook through an antiquated VGA port. And indeed, while the colors of Tammy's face look uneven and poor, they're still not skewed toward the warm side in the same way they are in these other Windows machines. Point being, I can't imagine these computers, gaming oriented or not, having worse colors than this thing. There's something else going on here.
The only other explanation would be that the displays are actually super accurate and Tammy's face just looks like a tomato. So, what's up? What am I doing wrong, perhaps at a software level, to see what I'm seeing? Does anyone have any experience with this or any theories? Let me know what you think.
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