Display efficiency: Which phone displays do the most with the least?

Brightness specs are part of what sells phones. A panel rated for 3,000 peak nits sounds objectively better than one rated for 2,000. But spec sheets don't tell you everything about a display. They don't tell you how long a phone can sustain its peak brightness. And, they don't tell you how much energy that brightness actually costs to deliver.

Bandicoot Lab measures battery drain at two different brightness levels -- something that allows us to compute a metric we call "Display Efficiency." Essentially, Display Efficiency is a measure of how many nits you gain for each additional milliwatt of power, above a 200-nit baseline.

The full rankings of our Display Efficiency metric are interesting -- though perhaps not totally surprising. Here's a look.

How the metric works

Display Efficiency is computed from two battery video playback tests -- one at 200 nits, and one at the panel's maximum typical brightness (that's the maximum brightness you'll get with auto brightness off). The difference in playback time, normalized by battery capacity, gives the difference in power draw between the two operating points. The difference in delivered brightness is the max manual brightness measured in our display tests, minus 200. Dividing one by the other yields "nits per milliwatt" above the 200-nit baseline -- which is what Display Efficiency measures.

We convert battery capacity to energy assuming a 3.8V nominal cell voltage. Actual nominal voltage varies slightly by manufacturer and chemistry, but this affects the absolute nits/mW number, not the relative rankings. We use 200 nits as the baseline because it approximates what most people use indoors.

The metric is designed to isolate display behavior from system overhead. Both video playback tests run with the same chip, same software, same Wi-Fi state, and same baseline power draw from background processes. Our video playback tests are run in airplane mode, with the same firmware, background sync turned off, and so on. When we subtract one from the other, any other background processes cancel out. What's left is the display panel. No measurement is perfect — maybe one scheduled background task ran on one test, but not another. But our test, at least, minimizes variables as much as possible.

Of course, it's worth noting that our Display Efficiency metric is mostly a display brightness efficiency metric. When a phone plays video, the screen's refresh rate is locked to a static rate — while in actual use, modern phones vary their refresh rates. In other words, our display efficiency metric doesn't take into account the fact that in general day-to-day use, LTPO panels are likely to be much more efficient given the fact that they can scale all the way down to 1Hz when the user isn't scrolling, to save on battery.

Samsung's double advantage

Samsung phones have the most efficient displays in this dataset. The Galaxy S25+ delivers 22.99 nits per milliwatt, beating the second-place phone, the Honor 600, which delivers 20.2 nits/mW. Seven of the top 10 displays in the dataset belong to Samsung phones, and Samsung's brand-level average rank is the best of any major manufacturer in the database.

Of course, it’s not just about the phones themselves — most phone manufacturers don’t make their own display panels. But, according to our data, as long as the word Samsung is in the name of the phone company or the display company, the device is likely to have a more efficient panel. That’s to say, phones with Samsung Display panels were, as a whole, more efficient than those with panels from other suppliers. Samsung phones with panels from Samsung Display were even more efficient.

Some of that is down to the adoption of new display technology. Recent Samsung phones use new CoE (Color filter on Encapsulation) technology, which builds the color filter directly into the panel’s encapsulation layer — replacing separate polarizer film that previous-generation panels used to cut down on reflections. The elimination of that layer means that more light is able to pass through the display panel as a whole. That makes a difference. Within the Samsung phones tested, those with CoE had a roughly 33% higher Display Efficiency score than those without.

But, even when you remove phones that use CoE technology from the data set, Samsung phones with Samsung Display panels were far more efficient — suggesting Samsung simply tunes Samsung Display panels better, at least regarding efficiency. Samsung’s non-CoE phones had an average Display Efficiency of 9.86 nits/mW, while non-Samsung phones that use panels from Samsung Display averaged 5.33 nits/mW.

Everyone else lagged in our Display Efficiency score. Non-Samsung phones with non-Samsung Display panels averaged far lower in efficiency than both non-Samsung phones with Samsung Display panels, and Samsung phones themselves.

Resolution adjustment changes the picture

Raw nits-per-milliwatt understates the work that high-resolution panels are doing. A panel driving 4.5 megapixels worth of pixels to 1,000 nits is doing more total work than one pushing 2.5 megapixels to the same brightness, even though both produce the same per-square-meter luminance.

Adjusting for total pixel count multiplies efficiency by megapixels driven. The ranking shifts most for foldable inner displays and QHD+ flagships.

The OnePlus Open's inner display, which has one of the higher screen resolutions we’ve tested at 5.53 megapixels, climbs roughly ten ranking positions despite its unremarkable raw efficiency. Samsung's QHD+ S-series phones all benefit because they're driving 4.49 megapixels each, more than most flagships.

The 1080p phones in Samsung's lineup (the Galaxy S25 and S26) drop in the ranking after adjustment, even though their raw scores are decent — they don’t have to do as much work to be efficient as the higher-resolution panels. The same applies to the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro, which use 1206 × 2622 panels.

One thing doesn’t change much though. Even when adjusted for resolution, Samsung phones have the best display efficiency. We don’t adjust for resolution in our Display Efficiency score — the resolution is part of how efficient a display panel is, after all, and our goal is to measure how the hardware impacts the end user.

What this means for buyers

For most flagships in this dataset, the difference in display power draw between the most efficient panel and the median is around 100 milliwatts at full brightness. On a typical day with a phone spending most of its time at moderate brightness indoors, the difference is hard to perceive.

On average, phones lasted 22% longer in our 200-nit video playback test, compared to the max brightness test. That’s actually a relatively big difference in battery life — however most people vary brightness over a day, whether automatically or manually.

Where it matters is sustained max-brightness use cases, like outdoor video playback, navigation in direct sunlight, long HDR sessions, or camera viewfinders in bright environments. In those scenarios, an efficient panel buys more screen-on time.

Display efficiency as a whole, of course, is more than just brightness efficiency. LTPO panels pick up some of the slack left by increasing brightness levels, plus technologies like CoE on Samsung’s newer panels allow those displays to output more brightness from the same amount of power. That doesn’t automatically mean more battery though — in some cases manufacturers give their phones a higher brightness instead, while in others, battery lives are similar due to more power-hungry silicon.

As a whole, however, the trend is clear — if you want to get the most out of a phone’s display from a charge, then it may be worth looking at a Samsung phone for your next upgrade.

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