What is HDR and why does it matter for displays?

HDR (High Dynamic Range) allows a display to show a much wider range of brightness levels — from deep blacks to intense highlights — along with a broader color spectrum. This produces more lifelike, vivid images compared to SDR (Standard Dynamic Range). HDR matters because content mastered in HDR (movies, games, photos) can only look as intended when your display supports the format.

My display claims HDR support — why does it look bad?

Many budget displays are marketed as 'HDR-compatible' but only meet the bare minimum DisplayHDR 400 standard, which requires just 400 nits peak brightness and often no local dimming. True HDR requires 600+ nits, deep blacks, and wide color gamut (P3 coverage). A display with washed-out blacks or under 500 nits will produce a disappointing HDR experience even if it technically supports the format.

What is the difference between HDR10, HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and HLG?

HDR10 is the universal baseline standard using static metadata — it sets brightness targets for the entire film. HDR10+ and Dolby Vision both use dynamic metadata, adjusting brightness scene-by-scene or frame-by-frame for superior results. Dolby Vision also supports 12-bit color depth. HLG (Hybrid Log-Gamma) is designed for broadcast TV and is compatible with both HDR and SDR displays. Dolby Vision is generally considered the best format when supported by both the display and content.

Does 8-bit + FRC count as true HDR?

8-bit + FRC (Frame Rate Control) uses dithering to simulate 10-bit color, producing approximately 1.07 billion colors rather than the true 10-bit panel output. While it can pass basic HDR certification requirements at lower tiers, it is not true 10-bit. For the best HDR color accuracy and gradient reproduction, a native 10-bit or 12-bit panel is strongly preferred.

My desktop looks grey or washed out after enabling Windows HDR — what's wrong?

This is a common Windows HDR issue caused by the operating system applying HDR tone-mapping to SDR desktop content. Go to Settings → System → Display → HDR and adjust the 'SDR content brightness' slider. You can also enable 'Auto HDR' only for supported games and leave HDR off for general desktop use. Some displays require calibration profiles to look correct in HDR mode.

Which panel type is best for HDR content?

OLED panels offer near-perfect blacks (virtually infinite contrast ratio) and excellent color accuracy, making them ideal for HDR. Mini-LED QLED panels can achieve very high peak brightness (1000–2000+ nits) with good local dimming, making them excellent for bright-room HDR. IPS panels are good for color but struggle with black levels. VA panels offer better contrast than IPS but lower brightness. TN panels are generally the weakest for HDR performance.

Should I turn off HDR when watching SDR content?

On most monitors, yes — SDR content can look washed out or oversaturated when HDR mode is active without proper tone-mapping. Many modern TVs and OLED monitors handle SDR-in-HDR-mode well, but PC monitors often struggle. If your display or OS doesn't handle the SDR-to-HDR conversion well, toggling HDR off for SDR content will produce more accurate colors.

How do I set up HDR for gaming?

First, enable HDR in your OS (Windows: Settings → System → Display → HDR; consoles have their own HDR settings). Then ensure your cable (HDMI 2.0+ or DisplayPort 1.4+) supports HDR bandwidth. In-game, look for an HDR calibration menu where you set peak brightness and black level to match your display's specs. Finally, check that your GPU drivers are set to output HDR color format (10-bit, RGB or YCbCr 4:4:4).

HDR Test

HDR Test displays a bright-highlight-and-deep-shadow pattern next to an SDR comparison so you can judge whether high dynamic range is actually rendering on your screen, not just switched on somewhere in settings. Click Start HDR Test and compare the two fields — real HDR should show more separation between the near-black shadow detail and the bright highlight than the SDR version does; if the two look identical, HDR is likely capable but disabled, so check the HDR Support Checker to confirm what your browser can detect. The run a color banding test runs fullscreen so you can inspect your panel edge-to-edge under real viewing conditions.

Click Start HDR Test to compare an HDR-style highlight-and-shadow field against an SDR version. Look for extra separation between the near-black shadow detail and the bright highlight in the HDR field — if it looks no different from the SDR field, HDR is likely capable but switched off; the HDR Support Checker can confirm what your browser currently detects.

Ever wondered whether your display is delivering true high dynamic range or just wearing the HDR badge as a marketing sticker? Running an HDR test gives you a definitive, evidence-based answer — revealing your screen's actual peak brightness, contrast depth, and wide color accuracy so you can make confident decisions about content, setup, and equipment upgrades. Whether you're fine-tuning a gaming setup, evaluating a television for home cinema, or assessing an LED wall for live productions, the results you get here tell the real story your spec sheet won't.

What HDR Test Content Reveals About Your Display

The Core Concept: Brightness, Dynamic Range, and Deep Blacks

High dynamic range (HDR) is not a single feature — it is the simultaneous delivery of three capabilities in a single frame: eye-piercingly bright highlights, deep blacks that approach zero luminance, and a wide color accuracy that stretches beyond the familiar sRGB space. Standard dynamic range (SDR) confines usable brightness to roughly 0.1–100 cd/m², whereas expanded imaging grows that window dramatically — a properly mastered scene can push intense sunlight or pinprick streetlights toward 1,000 cd/m² while shadowy areas stay below 0.01 cd/m². That ten-to-one-hundredfold expansion of tonal latitude is what gives enhanced imagery its cinematic impact, rendering a Moroccan lamp against a dark room, flames and sparks in a knife-making sequence, or the sun coming through a forest landscape with stunning detail that baseline SDR simply cannot match. Panel technology, firmware, and the signal chain all influence how close your output device gets to that ideal. The color temperature test online runs fullscreen so you can inspect your panel edge-to-edge under real viewing conditions.

The HDR detection tool above reads your client application's reported color depth, color compatibility, and tonal metadata in real time. However, detection of enhanced imaging depends entirely on OS settings — even if your equipment supports it, elevated output will not register unless it is enabled at the system level. Keep that in mind as you interpret your results.

Wide Gamut, Color Space, and the Fake HDR Problem

Genuine enhanced imaging demands more than brightness — it requires a wide-gamut space that goes well beyond sRGB. HDR10 mandates at least DCI-P3 color compatibility, which is roughly 25% larger than sRGB and unlocks saturated greens, saturated reds, and subtle hues that the sRGB space clips entirely. Dolby Vision recommends full Rec.2020 (BT.2020) coverage, an even wider target that encompasses virtually the entire visible spectrum and delivers natural and realistic tones with a richness impossible in baseline mode. P3 and gamut coverage are therefore key metrics in any serious wide-gamut test.

The troublesome reality is that many budget panels label support for the display standard — meaning they can accept an HDR10 signal — while delivering peak brightness below 400 cd/m² and a contrast ratio no better than 1000:1. These panels produce washed blacks and a washed-out image, generating none of the fidelity that genuine enhanced imaging promises. This is the fake HDR problem. VESA DisplayHDR certification provides the clearest demarcation: DisplayHDR 400 is the entry threshold, DisplayHDR 600 marks usable performance, and DisplayHDR 1000 or above is where imagery genuinely transforms. The True Black series — aimed at OLED technology — adds the requirement that black brightness must remain below 0.0005 cd/m², reflecting infinite contrast rather than just peak output.

HDR Formats Explained: HDR10, Dolby Vision, HLG, and HDR10+

Understanding which image format your output device and content pipeline support is essential before interpreting any hdr test result:

HDR10 — the universal open display standard. Uses static metadata (MaxCLL and MaxFALL values embedded once per stream), 10-bit color depth, and the PQ EOTF (Perceptual Quantizer, standardised as SMPTE ST 2084 / SMPTE ST2084). Encoded in Rec.2020 colour space. Compatible with virtually every enhanced-imaging panel, on-demand platform, and disc format.
HDR10+ — extends HDR10 with dynamic metadata, enabling per-scene brightness mapping that adapts tone mapping frame by frame rather than relying on a single fixed value for the entire programme.
Dolby Vision — dynamic metadata combined with 12-bit internal processing and equipment certification. Requires a dedicated decoding chip in the panel. Delivers the finest highlight detail and shadow detail in mastered content, with dynamic adjustment per scene. Available on Netflix, Apple TV+, and most premium on-demand services.
HLG (Hybrid Log-Gamma) — the transmission-compatible standard. Backward-compatible with baseline dynamic range, making it ideal for live transmission and television production where the same signal reaches both enhanced and standard output devices simultaneously.

Most on-demand services — Netflix, YouTube, and Apple TV+ — offer both HDR10 and Dolby Vision streams where the panel's decoding confirms screen support via HDCP 2.2.

Video and Audio Specification Requirements

For professional LED panel and transmission evaluation, the hdr test content specifications matter as much as the panel itself. Reference-quality footage typically targets UHD output (3840 x 2160), a frame rate of 59.94 fps, and the H265 (HEVC) compression format at Main 10 profile, level 5.1, with 4:2:0 chroma subsampling and 10-bit colour depth. An average bit rate of 23.5Mbps and maximum bit rate of 48.9Mbps are typical for high-quality evaluation clips, with a file size around 228.3MB per clip. Audio is usually AAC stereo at 48kHz and 192kbps — sufficient for evaluation purposes since passthrough requirements (Dolby Atmos, DTS:X) are assessed separately. These figures are reference points used by organisations like Brompton Technology when producing footage for demonstrating LED wall performance under dynamic adjustment — content is king when evaluating any LED installation.

Run the Color-Related Tests and Evaluate Your Screen's HDR Performance

Assess Peak Brightness Output

Peak brightness is the single most important variable in determining your tier. The test area above displays gradients and a high-contrast pattern that push your panel from near-zero to maximum output in the same frame. A genuine enhanced-imaging experience requires 600-nit luminance or higher for highlights to feel convincingly bright; a 400-nit level is the absolute minimum for VESA certification. At 1,000 cd/m², specular highlights become almost physically present — the maximum output of a premium Mini LED or QD-OLED panel approaches what photographers call blown-out in standard imaging but in enhanced mode resolves cleanly because the PQ curve (8-bit FRC and true 10-bit encoding both use this tone curve) captures that luminance range with far greater precision than traditional gamma. If the white test window does not feel eye-piercingly bright, your peak luminance is most likely below the 600-nit threshold. The ABL limit on OLED panels also means fullscreen luminance will be lower than small-window peak figures — factor that in when comparing claims. The run a white balance test is free and runs entirely client-side, so nothing about your display is ever uploaded.

Luminance targets by tier for quick reference:

DisplayHDR 400 — 400-nit peak, entry-level, minimal real-world effect
DisplayHDR 600 — 600-nit peak, usable, noticeable improvement over baseline content
DisplayHDR 1000 — 1000 cd/m², excellent, intense highlights and rich shadow detail
DisplayHDR 1400 / True Black — flagship tier, combines extreme luminance with OLED-class black level

Verify Contrast Ratio and Black Levels

Brightness without contrast is half the story. The dark room evaluation is the most revealing: view the test patterns in a fully darkened room where ambient light cannot mask raised black levels. On an IPS panel without local dimming, dark areas will appear greyish rather than truly black — a black brightness that is orders of magnitude higher than OLED's perfect blacks. A VA panel typically achieves 3,000:1 to 5,000:1 contrast natively, delivering meaningfully deeper blacks than IPS. OLED and QD-OLED achieve infinite contrast — each pixel extinguishes completely, rendering washed blacks impossible and giving low-light content, shadowy areas, and dark cinematic scenes their full intended atmosphere. Mini LED with local dimming zones (commonly 512 zones or more) approaches OLED contrast with the halo effect as its main caveat — a bright object against a black background can cause light bleed into surrounding dimming zones.

The high-contrast pattern places bright highlights and deep blacks in the same frame, which is precisely where the gap between genuine and fake enhanced imaging becomes visible. Tone mapping quality is also exposed here: good tone mapping preserves highlight detail and shadow detail simultaneously; poor tone mapping causes either a blown-out image in the highlights or crushed detail in the shadows.

Check System Settings Before You Take the Test

Before interpreting any result from the HDR detection tool, verify that your operating system, cables, and client application are actually passing an enhanced signal:

Windows HDR — navigate to Settings → System → Display → Use HDR. Enable this toggle; without it the application reports standard dynamic range even on a capable panel. Windows 11 22H2 and later improves the SDR-in-HDR tone mapping significantly, reducing the grey, washed-out desktop appearance that afflicts earlier versions.
macOS HDR — enhanced imaging is auto-enabled on supported Apple panels; no manual toggle is required, but screen support depends on panel capability and the connected cable.
Cables — HDMI 2.0 is the minimum for enhanced imaging at 4K; HDMI 2.1 is preferred for 4K at high frame rates. DisplayPort 1.4 supports 4K natively. USB-C must confirm HBR3 support. Legacy HDMI 1.4 connections cannot carry a valid 4K enhanced signal at all.
Client application support — the wide-gamut test and AVIF HDR image format need an updated application. A Chromium-based application at a recent version is recommended; older versions may fail to render the enhanced and standard image comparisons correctly, or show a drag-handle comparison that renders in baseline mode only.
Gaming setup — for enhanced gaming, enable the feature at the OS level first, then activate the in-game mode separately. Set paper white brightness to 200–250 cd/m² so UI elements are not over-bright; set peak luminance to match your panel's rated maximum. Auto HDR (Windows 11) can upconvert standard games but results vary — native in-game implementations on a gaming setup deliver a far more controlled brightness range and colour reproduction.

HDR Results by Wide-Gamut Test: Display Panel Technology Compared

OLED and QD-OLED: The Contrast Benchmark for HDR Images

OLED and QD-OLED panels are the reference standard for enhanced-imaging performance because each pixel is self-emissive — it generates its own light and can switch off entirely, producing perfect blacks and infinite contrast without any local dimming zones or halo effect. Peak luminance for a small highlight window reaches 800–2,000 cd/m² depending on model, making intense points of light, hot coals, and bright highlights appear physically real. QD-OLED adds a quantum dot conversion layer over the organic emitter, extending the colour reproduction closer to full wide-gamut coverage and lifting peak luminance further while retaining OLED's contrast advantage. The VESA True Black series was created specifically to capture this panel type's unique capability, requiring black brightness below 0.0005 cd/m². For home cinema, content creation, and photography work where color accuracy and shadow detail are critical, OLED remains the benchmark. The ABL limit means sustained fullscreen luminance is lower than small-window peaks, but for cinematic content with highlights occupying a fraction of the frame, this is rarely a practical concern.

Mini LED Backlight: Brightness with Local Dimming Caveats

Mini LED panels pair high peak luminance — typically 1,000–2,000 cd/m² — with a large number of local dimming zones (commonly 512 zones, rising to 2,000+ on flagship models) to deliver performance that approaches OLED contrast in many scenarios. The brightness range makes these panels excellent for 4K on-demand content in rooms with ambient light, and for enhanced gaming where highlights in explosions, sun glare, and fire benefit from maximum content light level (MaxCLL) values that only high-output panels can honour. The primary drawback is the halo effect: when a bright object sits against a black background, the dimming zone surrounding it cannot fully extinguish, causing light bleed visible in dark room conditions. Overdrive settings and local dimming level (High/Medium/Low) allow you to tune the tradeoff — High for maximum contrast during cinematic content, Medium for mixed desktop and multimedia use. Panel adjustment with software such as Calman or DisplayCAL, combined with a colorimeter, can tighten the luminance mapping and improve uniformity.

VA Panel and IPS: Mid-Range to Entry-Level HDR Reality

VA panels occupy a productive middle ground. Native contrast ratios of 3,000:1 to 5,000:1 produce meaningfully deeper blacks than IPS without requiring local dimming, and peak luminance typically lands in the 400–600 cd/m² range — squarely in the DisplayHDR 400 to DisplayHDR 600 bracket. Add a quantum dot filter and local dimming and a VA panel can approach Mini LED performance. For a Bulgarian dancers performance clip or a Costa Rican rainforest scene, VA handles the interplay of intense sunlight in highlights and shadowy areas in the midground with reasonable fidelity, though it cannot match OLED's absolute black level or a Mini LED's maximum luminance.

IPS panels without local dimming represent the weakest enhanced-imaging scenario. Peak luminance of 300–400 cd/m² just meets the DisplayHDR 400 threshold, and the native 1000:1 contrast ratio means dark areas appear clearly grey in a dark room. Color accuracy and wide-gamut coverage often reaches DCI-P3 at around 95–98%, so skin tones in well-lit scenes can look excellent — but the inability to render deep blacks means the full tonal latitude of the content is lost. For color-related tests and wide-gamut verification, an IPS panel performs well; for genuine quality with proper highlight and shadow contrast, the results will fall into the fake HDR category without local dimming support. Panel adjustment with DisplayCAL can optimise colour accuracy and the tone curve, but cannot overcome the contrast ceiling imposed by the hardware.

Using the HDR Detection Tool: Three Practical Worked Examples

SDR Blacks on an Entry-Level IPS Monitor

Consider a user running the test page on an IPS panel marketed as HDR400. The HDR detection tool confirms the enhanced mode is active, bit depth reads as 10-bit, and output size shows 1920×1080 at scale factor 1x. But when the high-contrast pattern loads, the dark portions look flat and greyish rather than black. The brightness gradient between the shadow regions and the midtones is narrow — the black level is simply too high for shadow detail to emerge. The explanation: at 1000:1 contrast ratio and 380 cd/m² maximum output, this IPS panel meets the bare minimum for the label designation but cannot render images with genuine depth. The fix is not a software setting — it is a fundamental limitation. For this user, disabling the enhanced mode and viewing content in standard dynamic range may actually produce a more consistent, accurate picture because baseline tone mapping is better optimised for panels in this luminance range. An evaluation on a panel with local dimming or a higher contrast ratio would yield a materially different result. Depth and output performance are ultimately determined by the physical components, and this tool makes that clear immediately.

Grey Desktop After Enabling Windows HDR

A gamer enabling enhanced imaging in Windows for the first time finds that the desktop and standard apps look washed-out and grey. This is a well-documented OS behaviour: when the enhanced mode is active, the operating system applies tone mapping to all standard content to convert it into the elevated signal, and the default balance is calibrated for a panel with higher paper white brightness than many gaming setups ship with. The fix: open Windows Settings → System → Display → HDR → adjust the HDR/SDR brightness balance slider downward until standard content looks natural. On Windows 11 22H2 and later, this process is smoother and the rating for standard-in-enhanced mode has improved. Additionally, confirm that in-game enhancement is enabled separately — Auto HDR attempts to upconvert standard games, but native implementation within the game's own settings delivers more controlled results. The client application detection on this test page also depends on the Use HDR setting being active, so run the evaluation again after adjusting to confirm the signal is still passing correctly through your HDMI 2.1 or DisplayPort 1.4 connection.

VA Panel vs OLED: Comparing HDR10 Content Side by Side

A content creation professional uses the image showcase — which uses a drag handle to switch between a standard dynamic range image and an enhanced version — to compare their VA panel against an OLED television they are evaluating. On the VA panel, the enhanced image shows noticeably richer tones and improved highlights compared to the standard version: the room scene's window glow expands visibly, foreground detail in shadowy areas improves, and skin tones gain warmth. On the OLED, the same transition is dramatically more pronounced — the window becomes a genuinely glowing source of light, the shadow side of faces drops into near-black with fine detail preserved, and the bright highlights feel three-dimensional. The difference is not subtle. This comparison, driven by AVIF format content decoded by a Chromium-based application, demonstrates that the VA panel's 4,000:1 contrast and 550 cd/m² peak output (DisplayHDR 600 tier) delivers real but limited enhancement — while the OLED's infinite contrast and 1,200 cd/m² small-window luminance places it firmly in the DisplayHDR True Black tier. For transmission monitoring, mastering, and grading work where colour science and absolute uniformity matter, the OLED result demonstrates why panel adjustment with a hardware colorimeter and software like MadVR or Calman is the professional standard, with the VLC 4.0 or MPC-BE player pipeline handling decoding for MKV and player support during evaluation.

HDR Specification Reference: Image Format, Encoding, and Streaming Compatibility

AVIF Format, Image SDR, and Browser Support

This test page's color-related tests and image sections use the AVIF format — a modern hdr image format based on the AV1 codec — to deliver enhanced images directly in the client application without requiring a standalone player or desktop download. The AVIF HDR image carries full 10-bit or 12-bit colour depth, wide-gamut colour space metadata, and PQ tone curve information that a compatible application can pass directly to the panel. This makes it an ideal choice for a browser-based wide-gamut test and color compatibility check. Support for this format is currently strongest in Chromium-based applications (Chrome 94+, Edge 94+); older versions or Firefox may render the image in standard mode or show a blank area. If the tool reports that your setup supports enhanced imaging but images still appear flat, the likely cause is format compatibility — specifically that the application is not yet decoding the content to the panel pipeline correctly. Switching to an updated Chromium-based application resolves this in most cases and restores the full tonal latitude and wide range of colors the test is designed to reveal.

The standard image section provides a parallel showcase: it places sRGB images alongside wide-gamut equivalents so that users with standard-mode panels can still assess whether their device is rendering hues accurately within the standard dynamic range. A panel with excellent color accuracy in sRGB may still clip saturated tones that fall outside its range when viewing wide-gamut content — the test makes that in-gamut vs out-of-gamut boundary visible. For photography, imaging, and motion-picture production workflows where colour targets matter, this comparison is a practical quality check before committing to a panel adjustment or equipment upgrade.

Encoding Space, Bit Depth, and Colour Science for Professional LED Display

For professionals evaluating enhanced imaging on an LED installation — whether an indoor LED wall for live productions or a transmission-grade LED panel — the technical specification of the source content is as important as the panel's physical capability. Reference evaluation content for LED panel installations from companies like Brompton Technology specifies: UHD (3840 x 2160) output size, 59.94 fps frame rate, H265 (HEVC) Main 10 high profile level 5.1 compression, 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, 10-bit colour depth, BT.2020 colour space, PQ EOTF per SMPTE ST2084, with MaxCLL (maximum content light level) and MaxFALL (maximum frame average light level) metadata embedded. The average bit rate of 23.5Mbps and maximum bit rate of 48.9Mbps ensure glitch-free clip delivery, while the output-size-independent architecture of modern LED processors means the content can scale to any LED wall pixel pitch without compromising the encoding space. Audio accompaniment is typically AAC stereo, 48kHz, 192kbps — sufficient for evaluation contexts. These specifications ensure that when demonstrating, testing, or evaluating LED installations with scenes such as a Costa Rican rainforest, a motorcycling scene, an Uzbek mosque interior, or a Bulgarian dancers performance, the wide tonal latitude, intense highlights, saturated tones, and shadowy areas are rendered faithfully — limited only by the LED installation's dynamic adjustment, luminance ceiling, and gamut verification results.

The full real-time processing capability of modern LED processors — using dynamic adjustment to modify per-scene luminance and colour on the fly — means that even a fixed maximum-output LED wall can deliver a rich play of light, precise colour, and absolute uniformity across the panel surface that a static factory preset cannot achieve. Monitoring the output performance with a colour zebra or brightness zebra overlay tool, and cross-referencing with a brightness slider adjustment in the processor, allows engineers to confirm that colour targets and bright highlights are resolved correctly before a live production or cinema screening. Tools like PureTone and ChromaTune are available in some processor ecosystems for fine-tuning subtle tones and foreground detail in complex scenes. Free download packages of reference evaluation content — subject to terms of use — are provided by some manufacturers to simplify this process.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is HDR and why does it matter for displays?: HDR (High Dynamic Range) allows a display to show a much wider range of brightness levels — from deep blacks to intense highlights — along with a broader color spectrum. This produces more lifelike, vivid images compared to SDR (Standard Dynamic Range). HDR matters because content mastered in HDR (movies, games, photos) can only look as intended when your display supports the format.
My display claims HDR support — why does it look bad?: Many budget displays are marketed as 'HDR-compatible' but only meet the bare minimum DisplayHDR 400 standard, which requires just 400 nits peak brightness and often no local dimming. True HDR requires 600+ nits, deep blacks, and wide color gamut (P3 coverage). A display with washed-out blacks or under 500 nits will produce a disappointing HDR experience even if it technically supports the format.
What is the difference between HDR10, HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and HLG?: HDR10 is the universal baseline standard using static metadata — it sets brightness targets for the entire film. HDR10+ and Dolby Vision both use dynamic metadata, adjusting brightness scene-by-scene or frame-by-frame for superior results. Dolby Vision also supports 12-bit color depth. HLG (Hybrid Log-Gamma) is designed for broadcast TV and is compatible with both HDR and SDR displays. Dolby Vision is generally considered the best format when supported by both the display and content.
Does 8-bit + FRC count as true HDR?: 8-bit + FRC (Frame Rate Control) uses dithering to simulate 10-bit color, producing approximately 1.07 billion colors rather than the true 10-bit panel output. While it can pass basic HDR certification requirements at lower tiers, it is not true 10-bit. For the best HDR color accuracy and gradient reproduction, a native 10-bit or 12-bit panel is strongly preferred.
My desktop looks grey or washed out after enabling Windows HDR — what's wrong?: This is a common Windows HDR issue caused by the operating system applying HDR tone-mapping to SDR desktop content. Go to Settings → System → Display → HDR and adjust the 'SDR content brightness' slider. You can also enable 'Auto HDR' only for supported games and leave HDR off for general desktop use. Some displays require calibration profiles to look correct in HDR mode.
Which panel type is best for HDR content?: OLED panels offer near-perfect blacks (virtually infinite contrast ratio) and excellent color accuracy, making them ideal for HDR. Mini-LED QLED panels can achieve very high peak brightness (1000–2000+ nits) with good local dimming, making them excellent for bright-room HDR. IPS panels are good for color but struggle with black levels. VA panels offer better contrast than IPS but lower brightness. TN panels are generally the weakest for HDR performance.
Should I turn off HDR when watching SDR content?: On most monitors, yes — SDR content can look washed out or oversaturated when HDR mode is active without proper tone-mapping. Many modern TVs and OLED monitors handle SDR-in-HDR-mode well, but PC monitors often struggle. If your display or OS doesn't handle the SDR-to-HDR conversion well, toggling HDR off for SDR content will produce more accurate colors.
How do I set up HDR for gaming?: First, enable HDR in your OS (Windows: Settings → System → Display → HDR; consoles have their own HDR settings). Then ensure your cable (HDMI 2.0+ or DisplayPort 1.4+) supports HDR bandwidth. In-game, look for an HDR calibration menu where you set peak brightness and black level to match your display's specs. Finally, check that your GPU drivers are set to output HDR color format (10-bit, RGB or YCbCr 4:4:4).