Gradient & Colour Banding Test

A smooth gradient should fade evenly from one shade to the next. Visible "steps" or hard bands in the gradient point to limited colour depth, poor dithering, or panel/cable compression — switch channels above to check greyscale and each primary colour separately.

What Causes Banding?

Most commonly an 8-bit (or lower) colour depth panel or output signal, which simply doesn't have enough distinct shades to render a perfectly smooth gradient — the eye sees visible steps instead.

Dithering Can Hide It

Many displays use temporal or spatial dithering to fake extra shades between steps. A well-dithered 8-bit panel can look nearly as smooth as true 10-bit — banding severity varies a lot between panels.

Software vs. Hardware

Banding can also come from the source content or GPU output rather than the panel itself — try this test at native resolution with any OS-level colour scaling or filters turned off.

Check Each Channel

Banding often shows up more on one colour channel than others — blue gradients in particular tend to reveal banding first on lower-end panels.

FAQ

Banding usually comes from limited colour depth (8-bit vs 10-bit) or aggressive image compression, showing up as visible steps in what should be a smooth gradient instead of a seamless transition.
Sometimes — enabling dithering in your GPU or monitor settings can mask banding by mixing adjacent colours to simulate intermediate shades. Otherwise, it's usually a hardware or content limitation.
Blue gradients typically reveal banding first because the human eye is more sensitive to subtle blue tone shifts, and blue often has fewer available steps in 8-bit colour compared to red or green.
Contrast Test Black level · Shadow detail · Stepped grid Dead Pixel Test 5-colour cycle · Auto mode · Monitor & TV testing Colour Screen 10 presets + custom picker · Photography · Design