Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Has One of the Best Displays Yet

[megatronium]

With its third-generation Surface Pro 3, Microsoft has produced an excellent professional-grade high-performance display for Windows. In fact, based on our extensive lab tests and measurements, the Surface Pro 3 has one of the very best and most accurate displays available on any mobile platform and OS. It joins near the top of a small set of tablets that have excellent top tier displays —for professionals that need a very accurate and high performance display for their work, and for consumers that want and appreciate a really nice and beautiful display. We'll cover these issues and much more, with in-depth comprehensive display tests, measurements and analysis that you will find nowhere else.

http://gizmodo.com/microsoft-surface-pro-3-one-of-the-best-displays-yet-1613261169

 

[GreyFox7]

MS could save themselves a lot of flack and improve their image if they just thought a little deeper first and released the quality of their third effort the first time.

Kudos to MS for putting a top quality display into the SP3 and generally rocking with this one.

 

[Moonsurface]

Nice

I'm sure this has been answered somewhere but presumably it can be calibrated? I use a colormunki calibrator on my main desktop monitors. WOuld be good to calibrate the surface too when I get it.

 

[GreyFox7]

Nice

I'm sure this has been answered somewhere but presumably it can be calibrated? I use a colormunki calibrator on my main desktop monitors. WOuld be good to calibrate the surface too when I get it.

Moon, I don't know anything about that monkey but it sounds like the Surface Display is calibrated pretty good from the factory id be skeptical about achieving better results. IOW you may make it worse.

 

[Moonsurface]

Well if it makes it worse I can delete the ICC display file from the munki, (at least I know how to do that in Win 7 and I'm sure i could find it in Win 8 eventually......)

It's quite important for my work that's all. Colormunki is pretty good usually. Displays can often be too bright and saturated out of the box as it appeals to consumers but it's a bit false when editing photos. I'm sure you're right that the Surface, as a Pro device is pretty good anyway.

 

[GreyFox7]

Well if it makes it worse I can delete the ICC display file from the munki, (at least I know how to do that in Win 7 and I'm sure i could find it in Win 8 eventually......)

It's quite important for my work that's all. Colormunki is pretty good usually. Displays can often be too bright and saturated out of the box as it appeals to consumers but it's a bit false when editing photos. I'm sure you're right that the Surface, as a Pro device is pretty good anyway.

This is not my area of expertise but I read the Displaymate report which makes it sound pretty impressive.
http://www.displaymate.com/Surface_Pro_ShootOut_1.htm

 

[Moonsurface]

This is not my area of expertise but I read the Displaymate report which makes it sound pretty impressive.
http://www.displaymate.com/Surface_Pro_ShootOut_1.htm

Does sound great not fair still a while before I get mine :-(

 

[Bandito]

Moonsurface,

I, too, have a ColorMunki and use it to calibrate all of my displays. While the SP3 looked good to the eye right out of the box, the calibration process made a pretty significant difference in the display. It, as I recall, was rather on the bluish side before calibration and the saturation was high. It calibrated nicely, however, and has been doing well ever since.

 

[Moonsurface]

Moonsurface,

I, too, have a ColorMunki and use it to calibrate all of my displays. While the SP3 looked good to the eye right out of the box, the calibration process made a pretty significant difference in the display. It, as I recall, was rather on the bluish side before calibration and the saturation was high. It calibrated nicely, however, and has been doing well ever since.

Excellent, thanks for the info.

 

[Geneo]

Coming from a MBPro/retina, the sp3's display is excellent. I don't edit photos (anymore), but the colors seem quite accurate to me. Basically, to me, it looks great. I'm very happy, and that's all that counts, right?

 

[wmgreenjr]

Nice

I'm sure this has been answered somewhere but presumably it can be calibrated? I use a colormunki calibrator on my main desktop monitors. WOuld be good to calibrate the surface too when I get it.

Just giving some pointers on calibrating the SP3 (I am not an expert and you may not have to do any of what I had to do to get proper results). I did my calibration with the i1 Display Pro, but I also have a Spyder4 Express. My display had just a little too much green before calibration - and I was having issues with color shifts after calibration until I did some online searching (did not keep all of the links but easy to find) and, in short, there was an issue with Intel's "Dynamic Contrast" that caused weird post-calibration shifts for me until I turned it off and re-calibrated. Below are the steps that I took after doing a lot of searching:

• Turned off Adaptive Brightness under power options
• Turned off Intel's Dynamic Contrast...there are several ways to do this but none are built in since MS removed Intel's power options for us to change:
  • Search online for the registry edit method (I didn't want to do this method and did not keep link)
  • Download Intel's latest driver for your graphics card. This will allow you to manually turn off some of the features that we are not able to since MS removed the options. Note that from reading up on this method, you will have to turn off auto updates because Windows will always download and install the display firmware from MS which will just get you back to where you started. There are some methods to overcome this but just do a search if you go with this method. I did not go with this method because I assume MS made some decent adjustments (minus the lack of control for Dynamic Contrast lol) specifically for the Surface Pro, but not really sure.
  • Download the 'Surface Tweak Tool' from forum user Goodbytes (see his post here: http://www.surfaceforums.net/threads/surface-tweak-tool-for-surface-pro-2-release.8219/ or a link to the tool here http://www.nvgpupro.com/surfacetweaktool/Surface_Tweak_Tool.zip). I did this method and I only use the option to turn off Dynamic Contrast (I don't mess with the other tweaks). The obvious drawback to this method is that you have to trust the developer - but if I had issues I was going to do a restore or reset. I had no negative issues and am very grateful to the developer for this as I was getting very frustrated lol. Note though that I have been unable to turn dynamic contrast back on via this tool, but only tried a couple of times...not sure why but I am ok with it since I don't want it on anyway. I assume this is just a GUI based registry edit so it may be good to just learn which registry entries to edit, but I liked the easy GUI method. Thanks Goodbytes
• My settings in i1Profiler (not sure if you will have same options since I have a different puck):
  • Display type: White LED
  • White Point: D65 (your preference)
  • Luminance: 120 cd/m2 (your preference)...I manually adjusted my display brightness and mine was set at 61% brightness to get 120 cd/m2)
  • Contrast ratio: Native
  • Flare Correct & Ambient Light Smart Control: I left these off
  • Chromatic Adaptation: default
  • ICC Profile Version: Version 2 (default is version 4)
  • Tone Curve: default
  • Profile type: edit: matrix (default)
    
  • Patch set size: Large (462 color patches)
  • Auto display control / adjust manually: I adjusted manually - only one I clicked to manually change was brightness level to get the display to 120 cd/m2

Like I said I am not an expert and you may not have color shift issues like I had with Dynamic Contrast turned on. Sorry I did not keep all of the links that I found doing the initial research but a big thanks to all of those out there in the cloud that helped out on this issue. And a big thanks to user Goodbytes in these forums. His method of turning off Dynamic Contrast was the easiest and in the end helped me from throwing color pucks against the wall

 

[Moonsurface]

Wow thanks, I guess like other tablets the surface would have lots of adaptive stuff for the screen since it can be used in any light and this can effect how the screen looks. With my desktop Ican leave the colormunki plugged in to monitor the ambient light and adjust the all the time to suit . I'm not going to be doing that with the Surface....Lol. But I think a compromise will suit. Although it would be good to have the display accurate I will probably still be"finishing " any work and preparing for printing on my desktop.