Analysis: Sony Xperia Z3 display quality and comparison

Sony’s latest and greatest flagship smartphone, the Sony Xperia Z3 has a lot of tech and features crammed in, offering what Sony claims as the best of Sony in a smartphone. The display on the Sony Xperia Z3 is one of the big changes and enhancements over the previous flagship smartphone the Xperia Z2. And, the key claim to fame for the Z3 display is super bright display rated at 600 nits of maximum brightness levels. We put the Sony Xperia Z3 display on test by testing its abilities in terms of brightness levels, color reproduction and even compared it with a latest generation Super AMOLED display. Before we get onto the tests and comparison, let’s check the specifications and enhancements that Sony has incorporated in the Xperia Z3 display. 

The Xperia Z3 comes equipped with 5.2-inch full HD display which is an IPS panel. It comes with Sony’s patented technologies including Triluminos display for mobile and Live color LED for a brighter display and richer colours and X-Reality for mobile that improves sharpness and contrast.

We challenged the Sony Xperia Z3 display by comparing it to a latest generation Super AMOLED display, refer to the comparison images along with analysis under each of them to check how Sony Xperia Z3 display performs when pitted against a Super AMOLED display. 

Note: For all our test shots, the Sony Xperia Z3 is at the bottom and the Super AMOLED display based device is the one at the top. We set both the devices to default display profiles with all the optimizations turned to "off". We also disabled the "adaptive display" feature for both the devices to ensure the display settings aren't dynamically adjusted as per the test image. For all test shots, both displays were cranked up to full 100% brightness.

 In the image above the Sony Xperia Z3 exhibits better contrast and is less warmer compared to the S-AMOLED screen. 

The Z3 appears to be brighter and the green tones are more natural, but at the same times we so see some highlight clipping at the edges of the leaf

Sea blues are clearly better on the Z3, the screen has very good white balance. The subtle gradients at the top right corner are a lot more smoother, indicating a better color gamut capability.

In low-light images, the blacks on the S-AMOLED screen appear richer. Having said that, we like the fact that the Sony Xperia Z3 handles the sun flare better and the dark areas (the deck) preserve a lot more details on the Sony Xperia Z3 screen.

In this scene, the Sony Xperia Z3 screen exhibits superior white balance and contrast.

Again, in this particular test shot the reds are more natural on the Sony Xperia Z3. Though, the Z3 display generally is slightly on the cooler side by default. The gradients in the back ground and the orange streaks in the flowers demonstrate the Sony Xperia Z3's ability to produce excellent contrast and produce wider color gamut, even at maximum brightness levels.

Color reproduction: The display on the Xperia Z3 produces much natural looking colours and even the tones offered by the display have a wide range. Rather than going for a vivid colour profile, Sony has used a display which offers true to life colours and tones.

Contrast: The contrast levels of the display are excellent and surprisingly the blacks look good even after the cranking the brightness levels to maximum.

Brightness: The display offers really high brightness and probably the best we have seen on a smartphone. The Live Color LED technology helps here as it combines red and green phosphor with blue LEDs to produce brighter and more uniform light which is also power efficient. 

Also Read:
Analysis: Sony Xperia Z3 & Z3 compact design and build quality
Sony Xperia Z3 Review
Sony Xperia Z3 Compact Review
Sony launches Xperia Z3 & Z3 compact flagship smartphones in India

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