So I finally turned on HDR...

[jallenlabs]

Ive had my Acer 250hz gaming monitors for a bit now, but have never tried the HDR feature. I figured, these are cheap displays (for what they are), there is no way HDR would look good enough. Brightness only goes to 344 nits, but it is BRIGHT! and amazingly colorful. Playing 1080 60p HDR vids on youtube was impressive.

Guess I was missing out.

 

[Chomiq]

Ive had my Acer 250hz gaming monitors for a bit now, but have never tried the HDR feature. I figured, these are cheap displays (for what they are), there is no way HDR would look good enough. Brightness only goes to 344 nits, but it is BRIGHT! and amazingly colorful. Playing 1080 60p HDR vids on youtube was impressive.

Guess I was missing out.

Burning out your eyes isn't proper HDR.

 

[vigor]

No because my monitor gets very hot and too bright

 

[neatfeatguy]

I couldn't do it if the screen was really bright...

I hate things that are too bright. My wife can sit in a dimly lit room with her phone brightness up high....she's scrolling through some crap and finds something funny so she'll turn her phone screen towards me and it hurts my eyes. Worst is when we're in bed and her phone chimes and she tries to show me her phone screen because she thinks the text she got from her friend is important or funny - it's blinding! My eyes water and I see the light now burned into my retina.

I got a headache from the HUD on the Mazda CX-90 I got to borrow from the dealership while my car was getting repairs done under warranty. I couldn't figure out how to turn the HUD off nor if it had a brightness adjustment. Just some bright numbers and crap constantly up on the windshield in my line of sight.

 

[Rightness_1]

LCD without FALD can't do HDR. They just max the backlight and destroy the contrast.

 

[Ruru]

HDR on with my both 4K IPS monitors. I could live without it, but why not use it when the monitors support it.

 

[bug]

I do HDR on my TV any chance I get. Does that count?
On PC, HDR is mostly a joke. Monitors do not have proper HDR support. And stretching sRGB content into HDR space is just a bad idea. When done right, however, HDR is amazing.

 

[jallenlabs]

LCD without FALD can't do HDR. They just max the backlight and destroy the contrast.

Could you elaborate? When I tested, contrast, brightness were greyed out when enabling HDR. Its super bright for me (I typically keep my room dimly lit), but looks way better than SDR did. I found it easier to see targets in COD BO6 mp too. I look forward to testing it out some more this afternoon.

 

[freeagent]

HDR on PC is terrible imo.

I just go bareback.

 

[jak_2456]

I have HDR turned on with the TV that I use with my sim racing setup. Auto HDR also kicks in in certain games which is nice. However, I ran EA Sports WRC for a while without it because I didn't find the toggle in the menu to turn it on and it was off by default. Arguably the stages where it's most noticeable are the snowy stages (Sweden and Norway) where the snow has a very flat white without HDR and it has a much more realistic appearance with it.

 

[esserpain]

My monitor kinda supports HDR, but in the “burning your eyes out” way. In my experience, the display tech needs to be right for HDR to look good and accurate. That is, it needs to be either Mini-LED or OLED.

But my experiences with HDR have been constrained to my one LCD monitor and Apple devices, so IDK.

 

[JustBenching]

Ive had my Acer 250hz gaming monitors for a bit now, but have never tried the HDR feature. I figured, these are cheap displays (for what they are), there is no way HDR would look good enough. Brightness only goes to 344 nits, but it is BRIGHT! and amazingly colorful. Playing 1080 60p HDR vids on youtube was impressive.

Guess I was missing out.

HDR is not about brightness though, it's about the contrast. Basically the difference between a dark area of a scene and the bright area of the scene. Sure - brightness plays a part in it, but unless you get an oled or a super expensive FALD miniled with lots of zones, you are not really watching hdr.

 

[skizzo]

And stretching sRGB content into HDR space is just a bad idea. When done right, however, HDR is amazing.

this is why I think the vast majority of people who bitch about HDR looking like shit complain about that.

these folks being completely out of the loop with the tech don't understand when SDR color space gets put into HDR color space it ends up over saturating everything to the Nth degree. This by comparison ends up making HDR looks like it is less saturated, duller, washed out, dimmer, etc adjectives they would use. in reality it's not that HDR is bad or broken, what they have done is messed up SDR color space so bad that it in turn makes HDR look bad, in their opinion.

most TVs ship like this because they want the user to get the o0o0o0 ahhhhHHHhh effect. users need to make sure SDR to use SDR color space and HDR to use HDR color space, usually called native color space. In my case with a Samsung QN90A I had to make SDR use SDR color space, HDR was properly using native color space, but SDR was super over saturated also using the native (HDR) color space

I was one of these clowns until I stumbled onto this article one day and I finally connect the dots and the light bulb goes off

After Enabling HDR in Windows, the Colors Are Washed Out

This article describes an issue in which the colors and overall image looks darker and washed out after enabling HDR mode in Windows.

www.intel.com

 

[Easy Rhino]

I really think HDR desktop monitors are a bad idea and once they have more data they will conclude it is terrible for your eyes!

 

[Rightness_1]

Could you elaborate? When I tested, contrast, brightness were greyed out when enabling HDR. Its super bright for me (I typically keep my room dimly lit), but looks way better than SDR did. I found it easier to see targets in COD BO6 mp too. I look forward to testing it out some more this afternoon.

It's simply because they are both set to max. Sometimes some manufacturers hold a little backlight power back from the GUI for that extra "dazzle" to help the HDR mode a little.

You could also see if they are expanding the colour gamut while in HDR mode by putting up a full red screen in paint or something, then switch to HDR mode and see if the red gets redder, and less orange looking (by comparison). If the red gets more red in HDR mode, that is because the monitor is using the full colour bandwidth that HDR provides and will help saturate colour in your games. I prefer this look, but some hate it YMMV.

I really think HDR desktop monitors are a bad idea and once they have more data they will conclude it is terrible for your eyes!

I can't play a game in SDR these days... When done right, HDR is a beautiful experience.

 

[Sound_Card]

There is no such thing as HDR on LCD monitors, it's pseudo HDR. You need OLED with a HDR400 tru black certification at the very least to experience real HDR.

But yes... once you experience true HDR, you don't really live without it. It makes a drastic difference in immersion.

 

[bug]

I really think HDR desktop monitors are a bad idea and once they have more data they will conclude it is terrible for your eyes!

All monitors can be bad for your eyes, considering all you need is 120nits for plain white and all monitors can do at least 300nits.
Brighter things for a limited time, your eyes can handle. Looking all the time at a monitor set above 120nits (give or take, depending on ambient light) will hurt you.

 

[MrDweezil]

Looks great on my nice tv and looks awful on my crappy monitors.

 

[Chomiq]

Could you elaborate? When I tested, contrast, brightness were greyed out when enabling HDR. Its super bright for me (I typically keep my room dimly lit), but looks way better than SDR did. I found it easier to see targets in COD BO6 mp too. I look forward to testing it out some more this afternoon.

Because what your VA panel is doing is at best controlling the dimming automatically for the entire panel based on the content displayed. This isn't true HDR because that requires actual dynamic range, ex. being to able to show something very bright and very dark at the same time. To work right it requires one of the three:
- very high amount of dimming zones (individual sections of backlight that can be dimmed accordingly) for VA or IPS panels
- mini led backlight, where number of dimming zones goes into thousands
- OLED panel, where each individual pixel can be switched off to display true black
The only benefit you can see on your display is most likely:
- oversaturation from forcing sRGB content into wide gamut (matter of taste)
- brightness increase in comparison to SDR
The fact that you can see enemies easier in CoD is probably because HDR uses different gamma curve which raises black level.

 

[TommyT]

No, i dont have a monitor that support HDR

 

[Carlyle2020hs]

Sony dumped OLED alltogether.

So what does that tell you about the argument that only OLEDs can display "true" HDR?

Which truly starts at HDR 1500 . HDR 500, true black or not, is not IT.

And i don´t see OLEDs ever getting to 10.000 nits.
Meanwhile 10.000 nits is the industries new goal for the next five years.

OLEDs can do 3.500 - 4,000 nits at most. And they delivered that this year.
It is said that OLEDs can´t really go any higher conerning nits.

So kindly get attuned to the thought that OLED ist not the only King.
It already got reduced by the industry to an expensive (but still brilliant) stop-gap.

 

[Calmmo]

Unless you've a mini-led with a few hundred zones or an oled don't bother.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

Been using "HDR" since 768x1024 resolution.

So yes. Always have used HDR.

 

[phanbuey]

I love HDR but my oled flickers with HDR and GSYNC so it stays off for me. Windows key+ALT+B is the hotkey to toggle it before i start a game, but honestly the flickering is so bad on this dell that i stopped bothering. Also not a massive difference for me between the two modes, HDR is a bit more lifelike and realistic, while SDR has acid trip vivid colors and I tend to favor the latter.

 

[jallenlabs]

Yeah, so I have since turned it off as they are just too bright for my taste. And as many people say, its no true or real HDR. Thanks for all your comments. Super interesting to see everyone's take on it.