This test runs the gray uniformity fields first: 5%, 10%, 20% and 50% gray, then full white. Each one is a single flat shade, so anything that isn’t flat belongs to the screen. The color swatches and the viewing angle pattern follow, because a tint you see in the white field is easier to judge next to known colors, and a patch that moves when you move your head isn’t the panel at all.
The run opens in full screen from the start button above; the next field is one Space away, and ← goes back to compare two fields.
Setting up
- Dim the room and sit where you normally watch or work. Uniformity looks worse with your nose on the glass and better from across the room, and only your normal distance matters.
- Turn off dynamic contrast, eco or ambient light modes and local dimming if you can: they change brightness across the screen while you look at it.
- Let a TV warm up for a few minutes, and use its own browser or a computer over HDMI at the native resolution.
What each field shows
- 5% and 10% gray: clouding and lines. On an LCD, brighter patches and vertical or horizontal bands near black; on an OLED, faint lines or a slightly blotchy near-black.
- 20% gray: vignetting, edges or corners darker than the center, and clouding that you could miss in 5%.
- 50% gray: the dirty screen effect, darker blotches across the middle, the thing you notice when a camera pans across a football field or a hockey rink. RTINGS uses a 50% gray image as its mid-tone uniformity test, because poor uniformity there will show in other uniform colors too.
- White: color uniformity. Look for a pinkish, greenish or yellowish area, or one side cooler than the other.
Reading the result
A faint vignette or a little clouding in 5% gray is common and rarely visible in normal content. Blotches in 50% gray that you notice from your seat, or a tinted patch in white, are the problems that show in sports, games with flat skies and video calls with a plain wall behind.
RTINGS points out that uniformity varies even between units of the same model, so a poor result is a reason to exchange the screen, not to give up on the model (as of October 2026). Mark the uniformity test as Fine or Problem in the list, note which field and where on the screen, and share the result with the seller. For light leaking at the edges on black, run the backlight bleed test; for a TV’s overscan and blooming, the TV test.