Display Quality, Tests

The Mate ix packs a five.9-inch 1920 x 1080 IPS LCD with a pixel density of 373 PPI. I'm a petty disappointed this phone has used a 1080p brandish over 1440p at this size, as I experience 1440p would evangelize noticeably crisper text and imagery in some situations, likewise as being amend suited to mobile virtual reality. 1080p is still decent enough in 2017 and this display looks great, it'due south merely not the all-time hardware available.

Aslope excellent viewing angles, the Mate 9's display produces over 600 nits of brightness at peak, which is a fantastic consequence that places this display amid the best LCDs. Due to this high level of brightness, you'll have piddling problem viewing the Mate nine in potent sunlight. The display's contrast ratio is also respectable; information technology's not at the level of AMOLEDs, simply it does assistance make colors pop.

Color accuracy out of the box isn't terrible, but it'due south not fantastic. Default color temperature is very cold, giving the display a bluish tint in all situations. This leads to poor grayscale accuracy and gamma. Saturation and full general accuracy are disappointing for a phone that doesn't exceed the sRGB spectrum (I recorded 98.six% sRGB coverage); in other words, the display isn't oversaturated, information technology's just inaccurate in full general.

The only option Huawei provides for calibrating the brandish is a color temperature circumvolve that allows you to tint the display towards any color in the spectrum. There are also "warm" and "common cold" options. For all-time results, you should manually drag the dot all the way to the edge of the circumvolve, approximately in the orangish zone. This doesn't fully correct the display's colour temperature, simply it does make information technology closer to the platonic 6504K.

With the display 'calibrated' in this way, color accuracy improves to a small extent. The biggest gains are seen in grayscale performance, but even in this area the display is still not properly accurate. It's a shame Huawei doesn't include an sRGB calibrated selection here, though the display looks pretty good in general for casual users.