iPhone 11 Pro Max Display Earns Highest Ever A+ Grade, ‘Visually Indistinguishable from Perfect’

The iPhone 11 Pro Max might have the best smartphone display currently on the market, according to display testing and calibration firm DisplayMate.

In fact, Apple’s latest 6.5-inch OLED handset outperformed every other smartphone that DisplayMate has tested to date. As a result, the iPhone 11 Pro Max currently holds the firm’s “highest ever A+” grade.

During its testing of the iPhone 11 Pro Max’s Super Retina XDR display, the firm found “major” performance improvements across a broad spectrum of metrics — including peak brightness, color accuracy and screen reflectance — when compared to its iPhone XS Max predecessor.

The iPhone XS Max, for its part, either matched or set a slew of smartphone display records. At the time, the 2018 handset was also ranked as the best smartphone display on the market.

Apple’s latest handset also either matches the iPhone XS Max’s scores or sets new records in several categories, which led to DisplayMate rating the iPhone 11 Pro Max’s display performance as “Record Setting Outstanding” levels.

For example, testing found that the display had a record high full brightness for OLED devices — up to 17 percent higher than the iPhone XS Max. It managed 770 nits for 100 percent Average Picture Level (APL) and 821 nits for 50 perfect APL.

It also packs impressive color accuracy with a score of 0.9 JNCD, which DisplayMate notes is “visually indistinguishable from perfect.” DisplayMate notes that this is likely a lot better than even your “existing smartphone, 4K UHD TV, tablet, laptop and computer monitor.”

While there were some criticisms in the contrast department, DisplayMate still notes that photos taken during testing still looked “absolutely stunning and beautiful” even to the tester’s “experienced hyper-critical eyes.”

When it came to screen reflectance, the iPhone 11 Pro Max clocked in at 4.5 percent. That’s the lowest that DisplayMate has measured in any smartphone to date.

Despite all of the significant performance improvements, the Super Retina XDR display still managed to be up to 15 percent more power efficient than past OLED panels.

All in all, DisplayMate says that the improvements result in “considerably better performance display than other competing smartphones.”