You've found the right resolution and refresh rate, but that HDR badge keeps popping up. What is High Dynamic Range, how does it work, and is it worth it? Let's break it down.
What is HDR? High Dynamic Range, Explained
- Thread starter neeyik
- Start date
Stingy McDuck
Posts: 322 +305
Auto-HDR isn't such a good option for old games, where in some cases even the bald head of a man can be as bright as a light source. I remember some games even adding bloom to those shiny heads.
Benchsalyst
Posts: 42 +9
HDR, the thing that added not natural halos around illuminated objects in old games. Since that, I don't like HDR, classified that as a suxing marketing.
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I have really mixed feelings with HDR. I've essentially passed on it with the opinion, "I'd rather have a stand display that makes everything look good than an HDR display where only some things look good"
I noticed this when watching Blu-rays, a well mastered movie doesn't need HDR. HDR, in my experience, has mostly been used as a short cut to make games look better. Very few of the HDR shows or movies I've watched have taken full advantage of what HDR is made to do. I've even found myself turning off HDR on my display in dark movies. Now, I'll admit it isn't an OLED, it's a samsung QLED with full array local dimming. Something that they don't tell you is that with HDR off, the most a single zone is down to 20% brightness. However, with HDR it lowers it to 3% brightness in a zone but with a limit. When it is displaying HDR content at 3% the brightest something on the screen can be is 25% of max brightness. Now, it's more complicated than just that, Samsung's neural processor adjusts brightness all over the screen so if that max brightness goes higher it makes the rest of the image darker to create the illusion of brightness. This isn't as big of a problem in a dark room as I'm making it sound, but if you have so much as a light on in another room with the door open, dark content can easily become unwatchable.
That said, I absolutely love my Samsung TV but this is something to keep in mind if your TV costs as much as a down payment on a new car.
But going back to HDR, it allows people to be lazy. Instead of making something look good with SDR they add an HDR feature and it looks as if someone made good SDR content. If they put the work into HDR that people use to have to put into SDR then we'd have some really winners. And while Vesa has tried to standardize HDR every display that is "HDR" processes it differently. An HDR OLED has to send brightness data to the pixel where insomething like a MiniLED QLED the processor has to compensate to prevent Blooming around a dimming zone. The output data to each pixel is fundamentally different to whatever panel tech is being use
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Only on LCD dated tech. You need high-end LCD or high-end OLED to take advantage of HDR. Most TVs and monitors claim HDR but can't show it properly.
LCD needs FALD/Mini LED backlight with 1000+ zones
OLED needs 1000 nits peak brightness
LimyG
Posts: 583 +252
Good article. There is so much confusion about this topic.
My monitor is IPS with quantum dot. 10bit HDR400.
It looks great and colors pop, but NOT in HDR. SDR is far better.
I think that HDR400 is in fact not HDR at all. Should be removed as an "HDR" certification.
My monitor is IPS with quantum dot. 10bit HDR400.
It looks great and colors pop, but NOT in HDR. SDR is far better.
I think that HDR400 is in fact not HDR at all. Should be removed as an "HDR" certification.
Trapped Nowhere
Posts: 278 +326
Has 1080p 60fps been mastered yet
I have yet to see an image on screen where I could tell if HDR was enabled or not. The feature is no longer a consideration when I am buying a display.
brucek
Posts: 2,342 +3,758
I like HDR now. I didn't for a long time. I think the difference is my monitor is much better, windows and driver issues got fixed, RTX HDR makes it more useful more often for more of my video watching, and content creators are largely past the initial over-enthusiastic demo stage of "let's blow the viewers eyes out with this random torch in the background" and are now using it effectively just to make a better overall picture.
You can still get a great picture out of SDR and HDR is not a top purchase factor for me. But realistically if you're buying a good OLED gaming monitor you're probably getting HDR too so you might as well get used to using it where you enjoy it.
You can still get a great picture out of SDR and HDR is not a top purchase factor for me. But realistically if you're buying a good OLED gaming monitor you're probably getting HDR too so you might as well get used to using it where you enjoy it.
Comparing the jump from SDR to HDR with the jump from DVD to BluRay is just silly.
HDR has the potential to be fantastic if it can ever escape the jaws of marketing. Currently I class it as a fun novelty. I usually have to be told I'm watching HDR content to notice a significant difference beyond the 4K resolution. That being said, I get HDR content when possible because more data is better than less data - which is the actual selling point - and my gear can tonemap.
HDR has the potential to be fantastic if it can ever escape the jaws of marketing. Currently I class it as a fun novelty. I usually have to be told I'm watching HDR content to notice a significant difference beyond the 4K resolution. That being said, I get HDR content when possible because more data is better than less data - which is the actual selling point - and my gear can tonemap.
As someone who picked up an OLED display last year, I would say that HDR is absolutely amazing - but not for the peak brightness figures that everyone salivates over. I play games in HDR 400 True Black, and having actual perfect blacks and deep contrast is such a game changer for image quality.
Everyone is talking about how "real" HDR needs 1,000 or 1,500 or 2,000 nits of brightness or whatever, but I find that level of brightness obnoxious in a darker room. After so many years of LCDs and LEDs, real contrast at a per-pixel level looks like magic.
Hopefully we get seamless transitions in the future instead of having to turn the feature on for certain content manually. It's nuts in 2025 that my fancy GPU and monitor can't figure out when HDR content is on the screen and automatically switch settings.
Nvidia's tool that guesses at HDR in non-HDR titles is hit or miss. I find that it accurately boosts bright objects but that comes at the cost of inky blacks going gray. But this should go away as newer titles support HDR by default. Ideally the user would be engaged to set a rule by source or get asked if they want to enable the feature.
Everyone is talking about how "real" HDR needs 1,000 or 1,500 or 2,000 nits of brightness or whatever, but I find that level of brightness obnoxious in a darker room. After so many years of LCDs and LEDs, real contrast at a per-pixel level looks like magic.
Hopefully we get seamless transitions in the future instead of having to turn the feature on for certain content manually. It's nuts in 2025 that my fancy GPU and monitor can't figure out when HDR content is on the screen and automatically switch settings.
Nvidia's tool that guesses at HDR in non-HDR titles is hit or miss. I find that it accurately boosts bright objects but that comes at the cost of inky blacks going gray. But this should go away as newer titles support HDR by default. Ideally the user would be engaged to set a rule by source or get asked if they want to enable the feature.
LimyG
Posts: 583 +252
I know what you mean.
HDR is great on TVs, and is well implemented. Also pretty easy to use and plenty of content.
Not the same for PC monitors. It' still a bit of a mess. Granted, get it all right it will look fabulous, but for monitors, 4k OLED with high gamut is excellent. Not only OLED.
But as an HDR capable monitor is likely to have very capable hardware it's good to look out for (as a sign of high quality HW), but the implementation, except for a few exceptions is more trouble than it's worth.
High res PC monitors do produce beautiful SDR images out the box.
Getting HdR to work properly is IMHO not worth it now.
Troll: Well, we are often talking MS "protocols," and Nvidia implementation so it's par for the course really. Heh Heh!!
LimyG
Posts: 583 +252
You could be onto something there! I like it, "Highly Deranged Really."
geogan
Posts: 35 +31
Thing that annoys me is manufacturers BLATENT lying on the advertising and spec sheets of their monitors - where the monitor claims "1000 nits" but only half that in reality eg:
Brightness claimed of four high-end monitors:
450, 1000 (HDR) cd/m²
1000 cd/m²
275 (Typical), 1300 (HDR) cd/m²
1500 cd/m²
Actual measured SPECS of same by third party certification (Supported HDR Standards):
DisplayHDR400
Display HDR TrueBlack 500
HDR10
Display HDR TrueBlack 500
Manufacturers love to confuse people by changing nits to cd/m² when it suits them to hide actual limits.
If it only passed certification and got a minimum level DisplayHDR400 then it can only get to 400 nits... not the claimed 1000 nits (cd/m²)!
If it could actually get to 1000 nits it would have proudly displayed DisplayHDR1000 in specs/box!
Similarly the OLEDs only get to maximum 500 nits (cd/m²).
Brightness claimed of four high-end monitors:
450, 1000 (HDR) cd/m²
1000 cd/m²
275 (Typical), 1300 (HDR) cd/m²
1500 cd/m²
Actual measured SPECS of same by third party certification (Supported HDR Standards):
DisplayHDR400
Display HDR TrueBlack 500
HDR10
Display HDR TrueBlack 500
Manufacturers love to confuse people by changing nits to cd/m² when it suits them to hide actual limits.
If it only passed certification and got a minimum level DisplayHDR400 then it can only get to 400 nits... not the claimed 1000 nits (cd/m²)!
If it could actually get to 1000 nits it would have proudly displayed DisplayHDR1000 in specs/box!
Similarly the OLEDs only get to maximum 500 nits (cd/m²).
tipstir
Posts: 2,884 +212
On YouTube started using HDR10+ even though they don't use it I still have encoded. What you get is a pause before the video starts on your OLED screen. The word HDR10. I record in 10-bit you can clearly see a huge difference. When I do 10-bit HDR10+ there is use difference in quality. Let's not forget Dolby Vision 12-bit still these higher formats make the video you are producing standout from the rest. I also shot in 8-bit but when you say 8-bit some hybrid digital cameras for faster processing times along with the H.264 AVC. I started using HEVC H.265 for a while now I've seen a huge improvement over the other. 25GBPs video file instead of 50GBPS file. Huge difference. Now some serious compression.
Namtrooper
Posts: 149 +85
With native rendering.
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