Inside The Specs: Display Enhancements

• 9 years ago

Tablets are pretty much all about the display. Afterall, what is more important? A tablet can be light or super thin but if the display isn’t as great? It’s going to make everything else matter not so much.

For this installment of Inside The Specs, let’s have a look at what Asus put into the ZenPad tablets for display enhancements. First, Asus is marketing their enhancements under the VisualMaster branding. As they say in their official product pages, it is “a suite of exclusive visual enhancement technologies that combine hardware and software to optimize all aspects of the display…”.

All the ZenPads have a form of the VisualMaster technology. The Asus Tru2Life is what it is branded as. Confused yet? Think of VisualMaster and the umbrella and Tru2Life as being under that umbrella of enhancements.

So Tru2Life is for photo and image enhancements and Tru2Life+ is for video enhancements. Only the ZenPad S 8.0 – Z580CA comes with the “Plus”. Afterall, with that amazing display, it should be made to look as great as possible to take advantage of that pixel density.

Asus TruVivid is yet another enhancement that falls under the VisualMaster umbrella of technologies. This technology improves screen clarity, brightness, and touch responsiveness.

Under the hood, what’s powering the VisualMaster enhancements? It’s Pixelworks True Clarity technology. Certainly it’s going to be compared and reviewed based on the other mainstream tablet displays on tablets like the iPad mini, iPad Air and Galaxy Tab S2. We can talk about True Clarity technology but until it’s seen, how can words say how good it is?

So with the ZenPad S 8.0 (Z580CA) in particular, the video will be enhanced thanks to the True Clarity technology. We will list some of the benefits which the companies both mention. Keep in mind though that it’s fine on paper, but it’s ultimately up to you and I to decide how impressive these enhancements really are. Will these be to the point where the ZenPad S stands far above the competition? The answers should be coming soon.

Pixelworks True Clarity list of enhancements:

•  We are told that the high resolution displays on some tablets cause artifacts and blurring. On that basis, the True Clarity technology is said to smooth video playback. It will be very hard to rate this improvement unless there is a side by side comparison. It’s likely impressive, but it’s not possible to say how much better this will make the Z580CA over the competitors.
• Automatically compensates for ambient lighting. Now this is interesting. The ZenPads will be able to adjust their display based on the lighting conditions of your environment. Now this is something interesting. Sound promising! To an extent, most every smartphone and tablet has some form of auto adjust brightness. So for this technology to stand out, we are hoping to see some advancements in auto adjustments.
• Better gaming visuals. This is what’s promised and if you consider the moving pixels of video games, some enhancement to deal with those game details could be a strong selling point. Again, real hands-on usage is going to be required before making a judgement on how much better gaming will be on the Z580CA.

Here is a quote from the makers of True Clarity regarding the ZenPad S 8.0 (Z580CA):

“This tablet will set the standard for the mobile viewing experience and will change how these devices are made, sold and used.” – Bruce Walicek, Pixelworks President and CEO