Spent $60 on a dark mode testing tool and it caught 14 contrast issues I missed

I design mostly on a nice calibrated monitor but never thought about how my dark themes look on cheap laptop screens or phones with auto brightness. Last week I bought a subscription to a contrast analyzer that simulates different screen types and lighting conditions. Found issues in all three of my recent projects. Has anyone else used one of these tools or do you just rely on your own eyes and design software?

2 comments

2 Comments

betty_shah13d ago

Yeah dark mode looks totally different on a crappy screen, learned that one the hard way too.

simonreed13d ago

Man you are not alone on this one. I had the exact same wake up call after I launched a site that looked amazing on my monitor but was basically unreadable on my buddy's old laptop. I grabbed one of those contrast tools after that and found out my dark mode was straight up failing on about 20% of my color combos. The biggest surprise for me was how much auto brightness and cheap screen backlighting washes out text contrast. Now I run everything through a simulator before I ship anything.