Question Battle of the Curves - To HDR or not to HDR ?

[FlamingPC]

Hey guys, debating between MSI Optix and GIGABYTE G27QC. Links for your reference,
https://www.newegg.com/black-msi-optix-g27cq4-27/p/N82E16824475114?Description=MSI curved monitor&cm_re=MSI_curved monitor--24-475-114--Product&quicklink=true

GIGABYTE 27" 165Hz 1440P Curved Gaming Monitor, 2560 x 1440 VA 1500R Display, 1ms (MPRT) Response Time, 88% DCI-P3, HDR Ready, FreeSync Premium, 1x Display Port 1.2, 2x HDMI 2.0, 2x USB 3.0, G27QC A - Newegg.com

Buy GIGABYTE 27" 165Hz 1440P Curved Gaming Monitor, 2560 x 1440 VA 1500R Display, 1ms (MPRT) Response Time, 88% DCI-P3, HDR Ready, FreeSync Premium, 1x Display Port 1.2, 2x HDMI 2.0, 2x USB 3.0, G27QC A with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

Goal being a 27inch screen with curve for gaming. Ideally at the 2k sweet spot. Now my question would be, do I put a lot of focus into HDR capable or nay? I know some games support it and I'm sure it looks wonderful with it enabled. Gigabyte monitor has this but I've been a fan of MSI since I've owned a 1070 graphic card of theirs.

Any thoughts on these two? Any other deciding factors you would go with?

 

[hotaru.hino]

If it's HDR400 certified, don't bother. The whole point of HDR is to improve the brightness, contrast, and color detail of the image. HDR400's minimum requirements touch none of those.

 

[punkncat]

The TV in my living room, which I use for gaming, is HDR. Enabling it makes all the colors well too saturated and actually change to other colors. Reds turn orange, for instance. IMO is highly distracting and just looks off. The one single advantage I see is that when the sun comes over our house there is a couple of hours in the afternoon that the room is very bright. If I try to play certain games at that time, things that aren't well lit are impossible to see. Turning on HDR at that point helps to some degree.

I have found that for certain situations such as viewing movies from Netflix or the like that the TV itself will adjust HDR on or off to create a "better picture" of by what measure I am not sure.

 

[Eximo]

I sometimes find the automatic HDR to be distracting on TVs. Coupled with local dimming you get really weird effects like certain white objects looking gray next to the same white object on a different part of the screen. Because the background next to it is darker so the dimming zone kicks in. Can get distracting when I run a Windows desktop in HDR as well.

I think my next TV is going to have either 1:1 or 2:1 backlight to pixels or be OLED.

 

[punkncat]

I sometimes find the automatic HDR to be distracting on TVs. Coupled with local dimming you get really weird effects like certain white objects looking gray next to the same white object on a different part of the screen. Because the background next to it is darker so the dimming zone kicks in. Can get distracting when I run a Windows desktop in HDR as well.

I think my next TV is going to have either 1:1 or 2:1 backlight to pixels or be OLED.

Our current TV is a Samsung of a model I can't recall. When we got it the picture had this really weird effect almost like it was trying to be 3D. It had a look much like live stream with strange lighting has. I went to R-Tings and read the review and test they had up for the specific model we got and followed their guide to adjust this and it improved our perception of it positively. Our son pointed out that it looked fine before, and we made it look strange. Go figure.

 

[Eximo]

My old 4K Visio blew up, I replaced the capacitors and it worked for all of two weeks before dying again. So I went and bought a newer version from the same line-up after looking at some reviews. Little did I know they had been doing cost reductions and yet feature improvements at the same time.

Inferior remote control (old one had a keyboard on the back), they moved the display inputs to the opposite side of the screen (still don't get that one, you would think they would keep it consistent in a product line, something to watch out for if you have wall mounted with cable management) Voice features advertised but not enabled (which explains the simpler remote), I'm pretty sure that just got enabled in the last update AFTER ALMOST 2 YEARS! I am glad of the new update though, it finally fixed one of my pet peeves. The display input selection would appear across the center of the screen, but the selection was on the left. So counter intuitively you had all the options front and center, but the highlighted one was to the side. New version has the menu vertically on the left side of the screen like a sane person would do it.

Also have a Samsung 32" QLED screen. Pretty good colors, but the OS is a nightmare. Not intuitive at all and I have seen many complaints on this. How is yours?

Not sure if I should try LG or Sony at this point.

This weekend's project is swap my GT1030 for an Intel A380 and see how that goes running my living room TV. Target system is 4th gen, so this could go very poorly.

 

[punkncat]

Once we had ours set up there has been very little reason to go into the menus. On the occasions that I do I cannot say it is the most intuitive thing ever. The couple of things that bother me the most have to do with device setup. For instance, if I take the cable box out to blow the dust out (its fan gets really loud) when I connect it back, I have to go through this laborious setup process to get it working correctly again.

The other aspect that is a complete PITA and disadvantage to me has to do with certain display/menu elements. For instance, if the internet connection drops this small display will come up upper right telling you that the internet disconnected, and same on reconnection. That menu will NOT go away until you use the actual TV remote to 'confirm'. Same situation if you disconnect and reconnect certain input without moving to a different one. For instance (you think you want Netflix but change your mind and stay on current) that menu will not go away without the TV remote. I have one of those 'learnable' cable box remotes that do some functions but almost without fail have to go get the TV remote for some reason or another.

Otherwise, very happy with the adjusted picture and (most) feature. In particular one of the most weighed parts of my decision was that it is 1080/120 capable.

 

[FlamingPC]

How about HDR specifically in games that have an HDR setting? I believe, Mortal Kombat 11 has one. Diablo remaster. Hmmm, I think I saw it in Horizon New Dawn. I'm sure I'm missing some others I saw it. How did those look with it enabled?

 

[PsychoPsyops]

imo, hdr is only worth it on oled displays.

 

[FlamingPC]

Well, I mean, the good thing is, if you guys are learning towards, not really worth it, it gives me more options to choose from or at least with regards to the two I was narrowing it down with, I could greater opt to go with the non-hdr screen.

Thanks everyone 🆒