Now that the OLED is about to drop (and hopefully SteamOS 3.5 soon behind), lets go over the new display customization options present in the new OS version as they relate to the LCD Deck. Namely, Color Vibrance and Color temperature.
I have a Calibrite ColorChecker Display colorimeter and an Xrite i1 Pro 2 spectrophotometer that I used to take measurements.
First thing - Gamma
of 2.1 (Yellow is measured gamma, grey is ideal sRGB gamma curve). As you can see, it’s relatively flat.
Next, “Color Temperature” setting measurements
In the “7500K” Color Temperature setting I measure:
- 7690K (White chromaticity coordinates 0.2976, 0.3104)
- Brightness of 530 nits
- Contrast of 968:1
In the “6500K” Color Temperature setting I measure:
- 6660K (White chromaticity coordinates 0.3106, 0.3245)
- Brightness of 512 nits
- Contrast of 930:1
Finally, “Color Vibrance” measurements
First, a primer on how to read a CIE diagram. The colored part of this diagram represents all the colors humans can theoretically see. The triangle toward the center represents the sRGB color space. Ideally, the Deck display (and any computer display) should be able to display all colors in this triangle. This would represent 100% coverage.
The below image displays color and saturation measurements in the “Native” Color Vibrance setting. The white triangle represents all the colors the LCD Deck screen can display. Ideally, all the measurement dots would fall inside the small squares. sRGB coverage is roughly only 60-65% but the color saturation is uniform, which we can tell by the evenly spaced colored measurement dots.
Next, the “sRGB” Color Vibrance setting. This is a mode that appears to try to emulate correct sRGB color values, but it can only achieve this in low saturations. The color measurement dots are closer to the ideal square locations, but the colors shift as they get higher in saturation. Some colors like Cyan and Magenta are clipping beyond 50-60% saturation.
Last, the “Boosted” Color Vibrance setting. The measurement changes are a bit subtle, but in this mode all colors clip above around 80% saturation at most.
Summary
The “Color Temperature” setting values are fairly accurate. On my Deck, they measure about 200K cooler than the setting value. The “Color Vibrancy” setting can cause colors to clip and/or change in hue as saturation increases. The LED display is pretty ok. Personally, I’d set my color temperature to 6500K and vibrancy to a couple clicks above Native.
As an aside, the “Color Vibrancy” setting will have different settings on an OLED deck, but it will have the opposite saturation problem - you may want to clamp the gamut to sRGB since it can display colors way outside the sRGB color triangle (into DCI-P3 space).
Thanks for coming to my TEDx talk.