With regard to display technology, Color Depth refers to the total number of colors that a display can express. In General, a display reproduces a variety of colors by blending R, G, B sub-pixels and adjusting highlight and shadow details (gradation) of each R, G, B sub-pixel. The higher the color depth, the finer shades of color a display can represent.

Color depth refers to the total number of colors that a screen can render, and “bit” is the unit for color depth measurement.

Each pixel generates colors by adjusting R, G, B sub-pixels, thus simply turning on/off a sub-pixel can have eight different shades of color. When adding a gradation, the number of color possibilities of the pixel exponentially increases.

3bit = 2³ =8 colors | 8bit = 2⁸ = 256 colors | 24bit = 2²⁴ = 16.78M colors

Displays with higher color depth can express a much wider tonal range smoothly.