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What is HDR, anyway?

(www.lux.camera)
790 points _kush | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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the__alchemist ◴[] No.43984458[source]
So, HN, are HDR monitors worth it? I remember ~10 years ago delaying my monitor purchase for the HDR one that was right around the corner, but never (in my purchasing scope) became available. Time for another look?

The utility of HDR (as described in the article) is without question. It's amazing looking at an outdoors (or indoors with windows) scene with your Mk-1 eyeballs, then taking a photo and looking at it on a phone or PC screen. The pic fails to capture what your eyes see for lighting range.

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nfriedly ◴[] No.43984900[source]
A lot of monitors that advertise HDR support really shouldn't. Many of them can decode the signal but don't have the hardware to accurately reproduce it, so you just end up with a washed out muddy looking mess where you're better off disabling HDR entirely.

As others here have said, OLED monitors are generally excellent at reproducing a HDR signal, especially in a darker space. But they're terrible for productivity work because they'll get burned in for images that don't change a lot. They're fantastic for movies and gaming, though.

There are a few good non-OLED HDR monitors, but not many. I have an AOC Q27G3XMN; its a 27" 1440p 180hz monitor that is good for entry-level HDR, especially in brighter rooms. It has over 1000 nits of brightness, and no major flaws. It only has 336 backlight zones, though, so you might notice some blooming around subtitles or other fine details where there's dark and light content close together. (VA panels are better than IPS at suppressing that, though.) It's also around half the price of a comparable OLED.

Most of the other non-OLED monitors with good HDR support have some other deal-breaking flaws or at least major annoyances, like latency, screwing up SDR content, buggy controls, etc. The Monitors Unboxed channel on YouTube and rtngs.com are both good places to check.

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1. mxfh ◴[] No.43988021[source]
Avoid cranking up the OLED brightness over 70% for static content and absolutely never drive SDR-Reds into the HDR range by using fake HDR-modes when having brightness high.

I have a LG 2018 OLED that has some burnt in Minecraft hearts because of that, not from Minecraft itself, but just a few hours of minecraft Youtube video in those settings from the built in youtube client, but virtually no other detectable issues after excessive years of use with static content.

You only see them with fairly uniform colors as a background where color banding would usually be my bigger complaint.

So burn-ins definitely happen, but they are far from being a deal breaker over the obvious benefits you get vs other types of displays.

And driving everything possible in dark mode (white text on dark bg) on those displays is even the logical thing to do. Then you dont need much max brightness anyway and even save some energy.