iPhone 12 Pro Max receives ‘highest ever’ rating from DisplayMate, sets 11 records

DisplayMate has put the iPhone 12 Pro Max Super Retina XDR display through its highly detailed testing and the outcome isn’t surprising: Apple has once again earned “DisplayMate’s highest ever Display Performance Grade of A+” and “Best Smartphone Display Award.” However, going beyond the iPhone 11 Pro’s accolades last year, the 12 Pro Max has matched or set 11 smartphone display performance records.

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DisplayMate just published its deep dive review of the iPhone 12 Pro Max display. As has become a tradition, this year’s iPhone has garnered another highest ever A+ rating from the firm but more notably it has hit a milestone for how many new records it’s broken or matched: 11. For comparison, the iPhone 11 Pro matched or set 9 display performance records last year and did the same for 8 with the iPhone XS Max in 2018.

Here are the smartphone display records that DisplayMate says the iPhone 12 Pro Max has set/matched:

Note that Numerical Performance Differences that are Visually Indistinguishable are considered Matched and Tied Performance Records.

· Highest   Absolute Color Accuracy  (0.9 JNCD)  –  Visually Indistinguishable From Perfect.

· Highest   Image Contrast Accuracy and Intensity Scale Accuracy  (2.19 Gamma)  –  Visually Indistinguishable From Perfect.

· Smallest  Shift in Color Accuracy and Intensity Scale with the Image Content APL  (0.2 JNCD)  –  Visually Indistinguishable From Perfect.

· Smallest  Shift in Image Contrast and Intensity Scale with the Image Content APL  (0.00 Gamma)  –  Visually Indistinguishable From Perfect.

· Smallest  Change in Peak Luminance with the Image Content Average Picture Level APL  (1 percent)  –  Visually Indistinguishable From Perfect.

· Highest   Full Screen Brightness for OLED Smartphones  (825 nits for 100% APL).

· Highest   Full Screen Contrast Rating in Ambient Light  (172 at 100% APL).

· Highest   Contrast Ratio  (Infinite).

· Lowest    Screen Reflectance  (4.8 percent).

· Smallest  Brightness Variation with Viewing Angle  (27% at 30 degrees).

· Highest   Visible Screen Resolution 2.8K (2778×1284)  –  4K Does Not appear visually sharper on a Smartphone.

DisplayMate also touches on the iPhone 12 lineup featuring a 60Hz display instead of an upgraded 120Hz one like on the iPad Pro. It concludes that it “should be fine for most applications.”

The iPhone 12 Pro Max display has the standard 60 Hz Refresh Rate, rather than the higher 90 Hz and 120 Hz Refresh Rates now being introduced. With the very fast Response Time of the OLED display, and the very fast CPU and GPU processors on the iPhone 12 Pro Max, the lower 60 Hz Refresh Rate should be fine for most applications.

For a detailed look at all the ways DisplayMate tested Apple’s latest state-of-the-art iPhone display, check out the full report here.

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