Microsoft Surface screen scientifically compared to Apple iPad 3 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, produce mixed results

Dr Raymond Soneira is President of DisplayMate Technologies Corporation has posted a scientific comparison of the Microsoft Surface screen against a wide variety of other tablets on Gizmodo Australia.

He found the screen did indeed have the best reflectance and the highest contrast ratio, and that Cleartype did indeed do a good job in compensation for the lower resolution, but that the screen only had a 57% colour gamut, which meant the device was not very good at presenting very saturated colours. The screen was however well calibrated, better than the iPad, but text was still sharper on the Retina Display iPads.

He concludes:

The display on the Microsoft Surface RT outperforms all of the standard resolution full-size 10-inch tablets that we have tested in our Display Shoot-Out series. The lab tests and measurements documented in the Shoot-Out Comparison Table below indicate that Microsoft has paid a lot of attention to display performance for the Surface RT. In particular, on-screen text is significantly sharper, it has a better factory display calibration, and also significantly lower screen reflectance than the iPad 2 and all full size 1280×800 Android tablets. But it is not as sharp as the iPad 3 or 4, nor does it have their large full colour gamut. We’ll have to wait for the high resolution Windows Pro tablets that will be launching in early 2013 for direct comparisons with the high-resolution iPads and Android tablets. This is a great start for Windows tablets and brings much-needed competition to the tablet marketplace. In addition, many other manufacturers will be launching their own branded Windows RT and Pro tablets — we’ll include the best of them in futureMobile Display Shoot-Outs.

Read his full and detailed explanation here.