4092 possible colors indicates that a display can reproduce 16 gray scales. This is more than adequate unless later on you decide you wish to pursue some multimedia functions which require more than 32 levels of gray scale. Sharp has recently demonstrated 10 inch 640 X 480 displays running on Apple Macintoshes displaying 64 gray scales. These 6 bit drivers are supposedly entering production and will enter the commercial market shortly. The color reproduction of these displays is excellent.
Digital video divides the number of colors or gray scales into a distinct number of points.
So if the system is 16 bpp for the combined primary colors, the system can produce a total of 65536 colors. The small table below summarizes the Bits confusion. Subpixel refers to the individual red, green, or blue pixel. The number of gray scales for a monochrome display is always the same as a triad calculation bpp display. The numbers listed down the columns refer to how many gray scales or colors that a system configuration can produce.