Compare two laptop screens side by side before you buy

Open the tool on each laptop. Each one needs a browser and an internet connection. In a shop, your phone's connection might work for this, but ask a member of staff before you try it. Create the session on one laptop, then type its 4-character code into the others or open the share link. Put the laptops side by side with their screens at the same tilt, and keep your eyes at the same height for each one, looking straight on. Start with the white field, which is the page's color. Then change the color to a mid gray, and then to a strong color such as pure red, using the tool's controls. Shop lights and a shop's display settings change how screens look, so treat a shop check as a rough one. At home, turn off automatic brightness on each laptop, set the brightness the same way on all of them, and keep the room light steady.

A white field makes differences in brightness and tint easy to see, so start there. Look at whether one laptop is brighter, or whether its white leans warm, cool or greenish next to the other. Then check the mid gray, and finish with the strong color, which can show whether one screen looks duller or flatter. The same strong color may look different from one laptop to the next. Write down what you see in plain words for each laptop.

This tool doesn't measure anything. It can't read the color a screen produces, and it doesn't show a screen's maximum brightness, its range of colors or how it looks in sunlight. It also can't tell you which laptop is right, so the final call is yours. The Monitor Test pages cover pixel faults, uniformity and banding, and the New monitor checklist puts those checks in order. For real measurement and calibration, you need a hardware colorimeter (also called a calibrator or spectrophotometer) and its software.