Grayscale Test: Check Gray Ramps, Banding and Tint Online
A healthy monitor walks from pure black to pure white in perfectly even steps, with no color creeping in along the way. This free grayscale test stacks stepped ramps, smooth gradients and a uniform 50% gray field on one screen — banding, purple-green tint shifts and crushed shadows have nowhere to hide.
Reading the ramps and gradients
Press F for fullscreen and start with the 16-step ramp: every bar should be distinguishable from its neighbors. Switch to the 32- and 64-step versions — the finer the steps, the harder the test. On a good 8-bit panel the 64-step ramp shows each bar; on 6-bit + FRC panels a few steps may merge, which is acceptable. Then open the smooth horizontal and vertical gradients: they should transition continuously. Visible stripes or staircases in the gradient are banding, and any patch that turns pink, green or blue reveals a tracking error in the panel’s red, green or blue channel.
The 50% gray uniformity field is the last checkpoint: it should be the same neutral gray everywhere, without clouds, blotches or a tint that changes from left to right. If the gray looks uneven, cross-check with the backlight bleed test to decide whether the fault is lighting or electronics. Uniform color casts across all grays — a global pink or blue wash — usually point to a wrong color temperature setting rather than panel damage.
What to change when the test fails
Banding in the smooth gradients is usually a bit-depth or processing problem: disable any "dynamic contrast", "black tone" or low-bit video enhancers in the monitor’s menu, set the OSD color mode to Standard/sRGB instead of Movie or Vivid, and make sure the graphics driver outputs full RGB range rather than 16-255 limited. A calibrated gamma of 2.2 makes the ramps distribute their steps most evenly.
If gray steps carry a visible tint that flips from pink on one side to green on the other, the panel or its electronics are at fault — no setting will fully remove it, and on a new unit that is grounds for exchange. Before concluding, run the color calibration page: sometimes what looks like gray tinting is simply an over-saturated color preset. For the complete picture, finish with the all-in-one screen test — its solid fields catch the faults the grayscale leaves ambiguous.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a grayscale test on a monitor?+
It displays stepped gray ramps and smooth black-to-white gradients. You check that every step is distinguishable, the gradients are free of stripes (banding), and no pink, green or blue tint contaminates the grays.
Why do my gray gradients show stripes?+
Stripes — banding — appear when the display or its processing chain cannot produce enough distinct gray levels. Disable dynamic contrast and video enhancers, select the sRGB/Standard picture mode, and set the GPU output to full RGB range.
Should all 64 steps be visible on a 64-step ramp?+
On a native 8-bit panel, ideally yes. On 6-bit + FRC panels a couple of adjacent steps may merge, which is normal. What matters more is whether the merging is uniform — systematic large gaps indicate a real fault.
What does it mean if gray looks pink or green?+
A uniform cast means the color temperature or white balance is off — fix it in the OSD or with the color calibration page. A cast that changes across the screen (pink on one side, green on the other) is a panel fault and typically justifies an exchange.
Does this test also measure gamma?+
The ramps reveal gamma indirectly — how the steps distribute between black and white. For an explicit measurement, use the gamma chart on the gamma & banding page, which matches each solid gray against a 50% black/white dither at five gamma values.