Free Color Range Test: Is Your Monitor Full or Limited RGB?

How to Read Your Color Range Test Result

Run the test fullscreen in a dim room with browser zoom at 100%. On a correctly configured full-range chain, every numbered patch is distinguishable from its neighbor: the near-black row steps visibly from RGB 1 upward, and the near-white row stays distinct all the way to 254. If the first 10-15 dark bars merge into one solid black slab, or the brightest bars disappear into pure white, part of your chain is treating the signal as limited range. The flashing bars make this judgment much easier than static patches — your eye detects a patch blinking against the background at far lower contrast than a static edge. Tap the faintest bar you can see and the verdict wizard converts that number into a named diagnosis.

Full RGB vs Limited RGB: What 0-255 and 16-235 Actually Mean

A digital RGB pixel has 256 possible values per channel (0-255). Full range uses all of them: 0 is the blackest black the panel can show, 255 the brightest white. Limited range — also called video range, TV range, or 16-235 — maps black to 16 and white to 235, reserving 1-15 for "blacker-than-black" and 236-254 for "whiter-than-white" headroom inherited from analog broadcast standards. Movies and TV are mastered in limited range; PCs, games, and everything you see in a browser are full range. The conversion is exact: full = round((video − 16) × 255 / 219). Neither range is "better" — what breaks the picture is a mismatch, where one end of the cable speaks 0-255 and the other expects 16-235.

Why Blacks Look Grey — or Dark Scenes Crush to Black

The mismatch fails in one of two directions. If your GPU outputs limited but the monitor expects full, black arrives as RGB 16 and renders as visible dark grey: the whole image looks washed out, foggy, and low-contrast. If your GPU outputs full but the display assumes limited, everything from RGB 0-15 clips to the same pure black (black crush) and 236-255 clips to white — shadow detail vanishes and gamers stop seeing enemies in dark corners. The test tells the directions apart: grey-looking black with every bar visible points to a limited source; the first 15 bars dead while black still looks black points to a display expecting limited. Pure panel-level black crush on OLED and VA screens looks similar but only eats the first few bars — the wizard's severity scale separates that from a real range fault.

How to Fix Washed-Out Colors over HDMI (NVIDIA, AMD, Intel)

NVIDIA is the classic case: over HDMI at TV-style resolutions it has historically defaulted to limited output. Open NVIDIA Control Panel → Display → Change resolution → Output dynamic range → Full. On AMD, open Adrenalin/Radeon Settings → Display → Pixel Format / Color Range → Full RGB 4:4:4. On Intel, open Graphics Command Center → Display → General → Quantization Range → Full. Then make sure the monitor or TV agrees: the golden rule is that both ends of the cable must match, and "Auto" detection fails often enough that setting it manually is worth thirty seconds. DisplayPort connections almost always negotiate full range correctly — this is overwhelmingly an HDMI problem.

Full or Limited RGB for Gaming: PS5, Xbox and PC Settings

On a PC monitor, use Full everywhere. On consoles: PS5 Settings → Screen and Video → RGB Range (note the PS5 forces limited in some 120 Hz modes — that is normal); Xbox Settings → TV & display options → Video fidelity → Color space, where "Standard" means limited and "PC RGB" means full. Connected to a TV, the safer pairing is usually Limited/Standard on the console and the TV's default black level, because TVs are built for video range. Whichever you choose, run this test afterward: if the darkest flashing bars are visible down to single digits and the white end stays distinct, your chain is set up correctly for gaming.

HDMI Black Level: Should It Be Low or Normal?

TVs hide the range setting under a brand-specific name. Samsung calls it "HDMI Black Level" (Normal pairs with a full-range source, Low with limited). Sony also calls it HDMI Black Level; LG calls it simply "Black Level" with High/Low options where High expects full range. If your console or PC sends full RGB and the TV's black level is set for limited, blacks crush; the opposite mismatch makes blacks grey. Change one setting at a time and re-run the flashing-bar test after each change — the correct combination is the one where bar 1-4 is barely visible and bar 250+ is still distinct from white.

Black Crush vs Color Banding: Don't Confuse the Two

A range mismatch clips entire ends of the scale. Color banding is a different defect: visible stair-steps inside a gradient that should be smooth, caused by low effective bit depth, aggressive monitor processing, or compression. This page's gradient lab draws a pixel-exact ramp (CSS gradients are dithered by the browser and hide banding), so you can check both: regular repeating bands in the smooth grey ramp corroborate a limited-range round-trip, while fine stepping at every level suggests a 6-bit panel or FRC dithering. For deeper level checks, pair this test with the black level test, white level test, and monitor gamma test.

Blacks Look Gray Or Washed Out?

If black renders as dark gray and the whole picture looks foggy, work through the full blacks look gray on monitor fix guide. It pairs this test with the exact NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel menu paths, the monitor OSD black-level table by brand, the HDMI vs DisplayPort handshake explanation, and the Windows HDR washout fix.

Related Tools

• Black Level Test
• White Level Test
• Monitor Gamma Test
• Contrast Test