GuidesPlain English
Screen testing guides
Step-by-step help for checking phones, tablets, laptops, monitors and TVs, and for making sense of what you find. Each guide links to the free test it uses.
- Backlight bleed vs IPS glow: what’s normal and what isn’tLight in the corners of a dark screen can be backlight bleed, IPS glow or clouding. Here’s how to tell them apart, how to test fairly, and when it’s worth returning a monitor.
- Dead pixel vs stuck pixel: how to tell the differenceDead, stuck and hot pixels look similar but behave differently. Learn how to identify each one, which can sometimes recover, and what to do about warranties.
- How to test a touch screen on a phone, tablet or laptopA step-by-step way to find dead zones, ghost touches and multi-touch problems on any touchscreen, plus built-in options on Android, iPhone and Windows.
- Monitor stuck at 60 Hz? How to get 120, 144 Hz or moreBought a high refresh rate monitor but it only runs at 60 Hz? Check these settings, cables and power options on Windows, Mac, Android and iPhone, then confirm the fix.
- OLED burn-in: how to check for it and how to prevent itWhat OLED burn-in is, how it differs from temporary image retention, how to check a phone, monitor or TV for it, and practical habits that reduce the risk.
Test kit
The tests
- Touch Screen TestDraw, fill a coverage grid and count simultaneous touches.
- Dead Pixel TestFullscreen black, white, red, green and blue to spot faulty pixels.
- Refresh Rate TestSee the Hz your browser is drawing at, with a live frame-time graph.
- Ghosting TestMoving targets at set speeds to judge motion blur and trailing.
- Screen Color TestSolid colors, grayscale steps and gradients for uniformity and banding.
- Backlight Bleed TestDark screens for spotting light leaking from the edges of an LCD.
- Burn-In TestEven gray and color fields to reveal OLED burn-in and image retention.