What is HDR, anyway?

I'm not entirely convinced that greedy influencers are to blame for people hating on overly bright content. Instead, I think something is different with how displays produce brightness compared to just the nature outside. Light outside is supposed to reach up to tens of thousands of nits, yet even 1000 nits is searing on a display. Is it that displays output polarized light? Is it the spectral distribution of especially the better displays being three really tight peaks? I cannot tell you, but I'm suspecting something isn't quite right.

All this aside, HDR and high brightness are different things - HDR is just a representational thing. You can go full send on your SDR monitor as well, you'll just see more banding. The majority of the article is just content marketing about how they perform automatic tonemapping anyways.

It's all down to the ambient light. That's why bias lighting is now a thing. Try putting a light behind your screen to massively brighten the wall behind it, the 1000 nit peaks will be far less harsh. And if you bring the device out into sunlight I suspect you will wish for everything about its output to be quite a bit brighter.

> Light outside is supposed to reach up to tens of thousands of nits, yet even 1000 nits is searing on a display.

That’s a consequence of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptation_(eye). If you look at 1000 nits on a display in bright sunlight, with your eyes adapted to the bright surroundings, the display would look rather dim.