First off, let’s not get the issue confused. The literal contrast a display has is extremely important, and is one of the key factors that differentiates a mediocre display from a WOW one.
But the spec you’d see on a feature list for a device that’s usually written as 5000:1, in my experience, is not very reliable. Mostly because the marketing around it is fluffy.
What this spec is supposed to mean is that the brightest part of the screen will be that many times brighter than the darkest part. Obviously the higher this number, the more intense/impressive that contrast will look.
So why is contrast ratio sometimes misleading?
From what I’ve seen, it’s not a rigidly defined spec that allows you to really compare apples to apples between two different brands.
Apple states that the older LCD iPad Pros had 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, for instance. (That’s what my 11-inch M2 says it is.) Aside that the number seems astronimically high, it’s also internally inconsistent.
How is their mini-LED display also rated at 1,000,000:1 despite having objectively higher brightness and deeper blacks? (I own both, and the XDR definitely has better contrast than LCD.) Even more so with their new dual-stacked OLED displays.
Apple seems to be saying this spec is meaningless, because while to the eye there’s an obvious difference between these displays, they all share the same “score” as far as contrast ratio goes.
If it were ONLY the mini-LED or OLED iPad Pro display that had the 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, I’d probably believe it because it’s one of the best looking displays I’ve owned. But since that figure is shared by certain iPads with LCD and much greyer blacks, that figure is kind of suspect.
The newer stacked-OLED iPad Pros are rated at 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio. While their being higher than mini-LED is believable, it’s still weird to me that this figure is lower than Samsung’s Galaxy Tabs. Yes, Galaxy Tabs use OLED, but it’s not double-stacked. If the double stacked is so superior, what gives here?
Samsung states a 3,000,000:1 contrast ratio for the Galaxy Tab S9+. While I have experience with this display also and agree that its contrast is better than the mini-LED on the iPad Pro, three million to one is still less helpful knowing that I can’t necessarily trust Apple’s numbers because of the reasons mentioned above.
If I can’t trust at least one of the device’s numbers, a comparison to the other isn’t meaningful.
Only seeing with your own eyes tells the story at that point.
And sure, arguably that’s what you should be trusting most anyway when comparing displays. But these specs are supposed to be there for a reason: to give a useful way of comparing devices in the absence of seeing them in person. When these numbers don’t seem consistent, that kind of falls flat.
Brian Watkins has worked as a copywriter, SEO strategist, and photographer since 2007. He’s helped numerous businesses level up their revenue through stronger copy, and is also a YouTuber. Blending creative and technical disciplines has been a passion since he was a teenager, growing up in a home with two IT tech parents while he practiced creative writing and camera work.