[sblantipodi]

Hi,
I noticed that on every HDR monitor I have HDR dampens colors on most games.

When I activate HDR on both monitor and games, the colors are more dull, dampened…

Why? Is there a reason for this?

[PCM2]

There is – and we explore this reason in the HDR section of reviews. But to summarise, it’s because you’re going from seeing an oversaturated representation under SDR on a wide gamut monitor, where the developers target sRGB but the gamut of the monitor is in some cases significantly wider than that. To a more appropriate representation under HDR, where the developers are able to target wider colour spaces such as DCI-P3 and Rec. 2020. That means that instead of universal oversaturation, you get more selective strong saturation where the developers want it and a more appropriately muted look elsewhere.

This is what happens in an ideal world, at least. It can be confounded by the HDR implementation itself, with some content making better use of HDR than others. And the fact some monitors don’t put the gamut of the monitor to full use plus there is often luminance imprecision and tone mapping issues which can sap some depth to various shades under HDR. The Acer X32 FP you’re familiar with has a few issues there. For titles (and there are quite a few) that mainly stick to colours within the sRGB colour space under HDR, monitors may choose to restrict their saturation levels appropriately which would give a rather muted look. But often they’ll actually oversaturate a bit, but still much less so and more selectively than using their full native gamut for SDR content.

[sblantipodi]

Ok, thanks for the explanation.
I see this behaviour on every monitors I had.

I have seen your x32 but I don’t remember that you mentioned some specific issue with HDR and X32 if not for the dark bias…
Are there other problems on this monitor that affects colours?

[PCM2]

The X32 FP doesn’t have major issues in my view. Though the dark biasing is certainly an issue in some scenes, there were some additional issues noted. It’s explored a bit in the video review and mentioned in the written review:

“saturation levels for some shades seemed slightly more subdued than we’d expect from such a gamut. Some of the lush greens of vegetation, for example, didn’t look as lush and saturated as we’ve seen on some models with a similar gamut (including the PG32UQX). They still appeared rich and far from washed out, at least in brighter scenes where the dark-biasing which we explore shortly doesn’t dull them down so much.”

[sblantipodi]

I’ll reread the review for a second time. thank you for the answer…

more in general I see this behaviour on every monitors I have and not only on X32, but you explained me why…

thank you again for your great work and for the incredible support you give us on this forum,
your work is amazing!

[PCM2]

I appreciate the kind words and also the great questions you have, so others can also benefit from the answers. 🙂

[Weissrolf]

You need to run Microsoft’s HDR calibration tool and crank the saturation to maximum in its last step, which affects both SDR and HDR saturation while in HDR mode. This improves things a bit. Game developers only targeting the rather small (desaturated) sRGB gamut is a big part of the problem, too. The X32 allows to change its saturation settings via OSD even in HDR mode and the graphic-card driver also offers controls to increase “digital vibrance”.

[PCM2]

Worth trying that, though it’s not selective and causes slight oversaturation of some shades. Red-biased shades, including earthy browns and oranges, are displayed relatively well natively on the X32 FP under HDR and it’s more green-biased shades that are a bit underdone. But as you say it’s a fairly subtle change either way and it doesn’t reach the intensity of oversaturation you’d observe under SDR even. So it isn’t going to suddenly make everything look like some weird garish cartoon or anything. 😉

[sblantipodi]

What triggered this post is a benchmark on Horizon Forbidden West that shows a lot of orange, red rocks/bricks and they seem a bit dumpened…

we are all used to devices that tends to oversaturate things just to make them look better,
sometimes I forget about what is the real interpretation of the things and what is just an oversaturation… 😀

I remember TVs showing soccer camps in a phosphorescent green just to make the image more eye catching,
fortunantly some manufacturer improved on this.

[PCM2]

Oh yes I agree with this. I remember my parents old plasma TV with neon green grass, extreme fiery reds, cartoonish skies and sunburnt skin tones. When I started reviewing monitors I became kind of disgusted by the TV and ‘recalibrated’ it, but they complained that things didn’t stand out enough any more and they wanted their oversaturated colours back. The TV didn’t really have fine enough control to get to a state between those two extremes, which they likely would’ve been happy with. Personally I really like an accurate and varied HDR representation (my AW3423DW is really impressive in that respect) but certainly get why people would want some oversaturation as well.

[sblantipodi]

do you have a monitor for gaming and a monitor for other tasks?

[PCM2]

I mainly use whatever monitor I’m reviewing. I like to get really immersed into using it as a ‘normal user’ as much as possible, for a few weeks at least. At the moment I use the AW3423DW as my main monitor for everything when I’m not reviewing, partly because I’m trying to use it for a fair bit of productivity so I can assess its viability for such uses and any burn-in over time. I certainly appreciate (and prefer) higher resolutions such as 3840 x 2160 for productivity in general and am personally very much looking forward to such options with QD-OLED technology. Though 3440 x 1440 is still decent for productivity and general usage, plus works nicely for video editing as you can get a lot of “timeline” on the screen with things also being nicely spaced out. 🙂

[Author]

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