Each member of our jury individually scores the quality of six different screen images. Jury members are asked to assign a score of Superior, Very Good, Good, Fair, or Poor. As noted above, some of the test screens were produced by the PCWorld Labs, while others came from .

Plain white screen: We use this test to check for hot spots as well as for brightness and color uniformity from the center of the screen to the corners.

Microsoft Word text document: This screen shows how well a monitor displays typical text documents with various text formats.

Grayscale chart: This DisplayMate test shows how accurately a monitor displays shades of gray at the black and white ends of the grayscale spectrum.

Color photo: This detailed, very colorful digital photo of a picnic scene (including fruit, vegetables, and people) lets us check a monitor's color accuracy, saturation, and detail.