5 ms·

Has anyone actually used a decent HDR display? I’m really skeptical of the technology. I really don’t want websites and videos to be able to display blindingly

Has anyone actually used a decent HDR display? I’m really skeptical of the technology. I really don’t want websites and videos to be able to display blindingly bright white and other pure colours on my screen. I like things to be readable and not painful to look at.

FL410 3y ago
Yes. The HDR on a recent Macbook Pro is the real deal, and unmistakable when you see it. Same with modern OLED HDR TVs - they can get so bright it hurts.
- Night_Thastus 3y ago
  What OLEDS have decent brightness? OLEDS really struggle with that because of burn in. They can get temporarily bright, or bright in tiny zones, but in less than ideal conditions they crunch it right down.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - astrange 3y ago
    LEDs have separate backlights, which is good for getting brighter but bad for contrast because they can't get as dark as OLEDs. I think the reason you don't want to drive OLEDs as hard (so there's current limitation/ABL) is more about burn-out than burn-in.
- cwillu 3y ago
  > they can get so bright it hurts. I regret that hn doesn't have HDR support so as to properly emphasize that <em><blink><pain>THIS IS NOT A FEATURE.</pain></blink></em>
  - mort96 3y ago
    It would have been a pretty nice feature though, if it could've been used to uniformly make SDR content brighter, to make the laptops more useful in sunlight and with sunglasses. Too bad that's not a feature (I'm guessing because it wear out the screen or something).
    - chongli 3y ago
      sunlight and with sunglasses No thank you! If I’m outside enjoying the sun with sunglasses on then I have zero interest in using a laptop!
      - mort96 3y ago
        Sure, but there are also times when the desire to do something computery is greater than the desire to be outside. In those situations, it's a choice between being inside with a computer or being outside with a computer.
        cwillu 3y ago
        This is a “I'd like to turn up the brightness higher” feature, which is a different beast from “this advertisement would like to blind you; permit or deny?”
- iteratethis 3y ago
  I'm sure you mean LED TVs. OLED TVs are notorious for having a limited brightness. Only since 2022 are there some newer panels (called OLED.ext) that can do decent HDR.
NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
Do you use an OLED iPhone?
Night_Thastus 3y ago
If you're willing to sacrifice everything else (including money), yes, there are some nice HDR displays. Get something with HDR1000 standard or above. Get something with FALD and a LOT of zones. Make sure to check its color space coverage. Look at independent reviews. Be prepared to spend at least a couple grand. But you'll have to turn HDR on and off depending on the content you're looking at. If you're looking at SDR content, it will look wrong if the display is in HDR mode. That sucks, and I hope some day is properly fixed. OLED is also nice because it has perfect blacks (no local dimming needed), but it struggles with brightness, which is the other half of HDR. We still haven't figured out how to get both.
- astrange 3y ago
  You don't have to turn HDR on and off if the OS does color management correctly. But of course only Apple platforms do this.
  - navjack27 3y ago
    Apple doesn't do this on external monitors that aren't Apple displays BTW
mort96 3y ago
I think my laptop has a decent HDR display? It's a MacBook Pro 14" with "Liquid Retina XDR" as they call it. I think HDR content looks more or less ... as intended. I think it's terrible. The only time I even remember that HDR is a thing is when some embedded video in a web page gets much brighter than the rest of the screen and the rest of the screen looks dim as a result. It's never a "wow that sun looks amazing" style experience, it's always a "wow most of my screen just got really dark" style experience. I think maybe HDR has a place in movies and TV shows and even maybe YouTube style videos (not that I've experienced that), but I think enabling HDR for small video embeds on a web page was a terrible decision.
- Night_Thastus 3y ago
  It's because trying to view SDR content on an HDR display doesn't work. It will look like garbage. You have to turn HDR on and off depending on what content you view.
  - wlesieutre 3y ago
    Have you tried it on a Mac laptop? The OS will transparently boost the backlight brightness while shifting the white point of the non-HDR content down so that everything else on screen is completely unaffected. It's very different from the experience I've had in Windows where if you enable the HDR setting everything looks shitty and washed out.
  - Toutouxc 3y ago
    On Apple displays you don’t have to turn HDR on or off, it’s available all the time. SDR content is displayed as usual (exactly like everything looked 10 years ago) and HDR content can sit directly next to it and use whatever brightness headroom is available for extended dynamic range. It’s totally seamless and transparent, but the experience can make the user think that SDR content is getting darker as their eyes adjust to HDR.
    - Night_Thastus 3y ago
      That must be nice. Hopefully the rest of the world catches up to that.
lexlash 3y ago
For productivity/reading, I want one of the new eInk screens. For gaming and video, the HDR OLED displays I have (LG and Dell) look incredible. Mixed content looks awful, just like mixes of high DPI UIs rendering low DPI websites. Windows HDR support is a very mixed bag, just like their early support for high DPI, and I think that’s probably what leads some reviewers to dismiss it.
- clnq 3y ago
  Windows struggles with HiDPI?
baq 3y ago
Any OLED display since 2015ish. I’ve got a 2017 LG C7 and it’s amazing to this day.
- Night_Thastus 3y ago
  OLEDs have amazing blacks and great contrast, but they truly struggle to get bright. That still isn't solved, at least to my satisfaction. They can get bright briefly or in small areas of the screen, but tend to crunch the brightness a lot otherwise.
  - baq 3y ago
    Yeah I do pull the curtains down to watch tv during the day. Don’t care too much since I rarely have time when the sun’s up. At night it’s absolutely stunning when the content's right.
sgt 3y ago
Any new or recent iPhone. When I first got my 14 Pro and displayed a photo with HDR I was blown away.
janandonly 3y ago
My new iPhone has an "HDR" display, and it's really noticeably. For example, when taking photo's or video's of bright sunlight, the results "pop out" of the screen beautifully.

FL410 3y ago

Yes. The HDR on a recent Macbook Pro is the real deal, and unmistakable when you see it. Same with modern OLED HDR TVs - they can get so bright it hurts.

Night_Thastus 3y ago
What OLEDS have decent brightness? OLEDS really struggle with that because of burn in. They can get temporarily bright, or bright in tiny zones, but in less than ideal conditions they crunch it right down.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- astrange 3y ago
  LEDs have separate backlights, which is good for getting brighter but bad for contrast because they can't get as dark as OLEDs. I think the reason you don't want to drive OLEDs as hard (so there's current limitation/ABL) is more about burn-out than burn-in.
cwillu 3y ago
> they can get so bright it hurts. I regret that hn doesn't have HDR support so as to properly emphasize that <em><blink><pain>THIS IS NOT A FEATURE.</pain></blink></em>
- mort96 3y ago
  It would have been a pretty nice feature though, if it could've been used to uniformly make SDR content brighter, to make the laptops more useful in sunlight and with sunglasses. Too bad that's not a feature (I'm guessing because it wear out the screen or something).
  - chongli 3y ago
    sunlight and with sunglasses No thank you! If I’m outside enjoying the sun with sunglasses on then I have zero interest in using a laptop!
    - mort96 3y ago
      Sure, but there are also times when the desire to do something computery is greater than the desire to be outside. In those situations, it's a choice between being inside with a computer or being outside with a computer.
      - cwillu 3y ago
        This is a “I'd like to turn up the brightness higher” feature, which is a different beast from “this advertisement would like to blind you; permit or deny?”
iteratethis 3y ago
I'm sure you mean LED TVs. OLED TVs are notorious for having a limited brightness. Only since 2022 are there some newer panels (called OLED.ext) that can do decent HDR.

NovemberWhiskey 3y ago

Do you use an OLED iPhone?

Night_Thastus 3y ago

If you're willing to sacrifice everything else (including money), yes, there are some nice HDR displays. Get something with HDR1000 standard or above. Get something with FALD and a LOT of zones. Make sure to check its color space coverage. Look at independent reviews. Be prepared to spend at least a couple grand. But you'll have to turn HDR on and off depending on the content you're looking at. If you're looking at SDR content, it will look wrong if the display is in HDR mode. That sucks, and I hope some day is properly fixed. OLED is also nice because it has perfect blacks (no local dimming needed), but it struggles with brightness, which is the other half of HDR. We still haven't figured out how to get both.

astrange 3y ago
You don't have to turn HDR on and off if the OS does color management correctly. But of course only Apple platforms do this.
- navjack27 3y ago
  Apple doesn't do this on external monitors that aren't Apple displays BTW

mort96 3y ago

I think my laptop has a decent HDR display? It's a MacBook Pro 14" with "Liquid Retina XDR" as they call it. I think HDR content looks more or less ... as intended. I think it's terrible. The only time I even remember that HDR is a thing is when some embedded video in a web page gets much brighter than the rest of the screen and the rest of the screen looks dim as a result. It's never a "wow that sun looks amazing" style experience, it's always a "wow most of my screen just got really dark" style experience. I think maybe HDR has a place in movies and TV shows and even maybe YouTube style videos (not that I've experienced that), but I think enabling HDR for small video embeds on a web page was a terrible decision.

Night_Thastus 3y ago
It's because trying to view SDR content on an HDR display doesn't work. It will look like garbage. You have to turn HDR on and off depending on what content you view.
- wlesieutre 3y ago
  Have you tried it on a Mac laptop? The OS will transparently boost the backlight brightness while shifting the white point of the non-HDR content down so that everything else on screen is completely unaffected. It's very different from the experience I've had in Windows where if you enable the HDR setting everything looks shitty and washed out.
- Toutouxc 3y ago
  On Apple displays you don’t have to turn HDR on or off, it’s available all the time. SDR content is displayed as usual (exactly like everything looked 10 years ago) and HDR content can sit directly next to it and use whatever brightness headroom is available for extended dynamic range. It’s totally seamless and transparent, but the experience can make the user think that SDR content is getting darker as their eyes adjust to HDR.
  - Night_Thastus 3y ago
    That must be nice. Hopefully the rest of the world catches up to that.

lexlash 3y ago

For productivity/reading, I want one of the new eInk screens. For gaming and video, the HDR OLED displays I have (LG and Dell) look incredible. Mixed content looks awful, just like mixes of high DPI UIs rendering low DPI websites. Windows HDR support is a very mixed bag, just like their early support for high DPI, and I think that’s probably what leads some reviewers to dismiss it.

clnq 3y ago
Windows struggles with HiDPI?

baq 3y ago

Any OLED display since 2015ish. I’ve got a 2017 LG C7 and it’s amazing to this day.

Night_Thastus 3y ago
OLEDs have amazing blacks and great contrast, but they truly struggle to get bright. That still isn't solved, at least to my satisfaction. They can get bright briefly or in small areas of the screen, but tend to crunch the brightness a lot otherwise.
- baq 3y ago
  Yeah I do pull the curtains down to watch tv during the day. Don’t care too much since I rarely have time when the sun’s up. At night it’s absolutely stunning when the content's right.

sgt 3y ago

Any new or recent iPhone. When I first got my 14 Pro and displayed a photo with HDR I was blown away.

janandonly 3y ago

My new iPhone has an "HDR" display, and it's really noticeably. For example, when taking photo's or video's of bright sunlight, the results "pop out" of the screen beautifully.