Shocky-FM said:
Could somebody tell how to actually test for the banding, im pretty sure its not present in desktop mode but allot of the above comments are concerning me a little.
Look. If you don't see it, it doesn't necessary mean that it's not there. However, maybe more important question is "how much banding exposure we have in the tests and if this is really affecting your monitor usage (desktop/video/gaming)" ? especially when we consider the fact that 90% of us are not in the colour critical work. OK .. I guess that colour critical work people will probably look for other "purpose built" models for this type of the job.
Back to the test. I already mentioned that I have my reservations about the gradient picture from the above, as it was taken by mobile phone and quite possibly some colour record is lost from the original source.
Couple of quick programs for the colour gradients testing and they should give you pretty much confident information about the panel capabilities (they are developed by xtnight from Anandtech forums):
http://xtknight.atothosting.com/tools/gradlin-v0.2-fs.exe
http://xtknight.atothosting.com/lcdtest/purplegreen2.png
On the first test, every second row should display nice & smooth gradients. On the second picture, you should have smooth circle transitions from inside out. For the both tests, gradients should be uniform without any particular distortion or banding of colours between each other and without any other colour in the specific colour gradient gamut, not belonging there. If you see tiny (very subtle) colour separation lines (forming the colour block), on the darkest shades of the gradient gamut and they are evenly stepped, or purely even (depending on the gradient row), visible relatively (only) from close proximity (3" or so), there are no other colours present in the scale or there is no "banding" of the colour between each other (separation lines are there, but subtle changes of the colour tone are not pronounced) ... your are OK.
Also, very good colour gradients test:
http://www.prad.de/en/monitore/color_gradients.html