Question Monitor is really dim when I don't have HDR on

[EridianAngel]

I have an Acer Nitro XV272U and I wanted to try out HDR as I have never had a monitor that had it before. It looks nice but it only goes to 400 nits which people tell me doesn't REALLY qualify for HDR. I have had issues where getting screenshots in game or trying to stream on Discord are all really washed out for everyone else so I decided to turn HDR back off as it wasn't really adding much for me. When I turned it off on the monitor and in Windows 11 my screen is suddenly really dim. It almost looks like the backlights just won't turn up all the way.

I have tried messing around with various settings in Windows, NVIDIA Control Panel, and the monitor settings itself and it just refuses to get any brighter. Changing brightness just results in the picture looking whiter but not brighter. I should also add that when I originally plugged in the monitor it was nice and bright without HDR on so I don't know what changed between then and now. Does anybody know what could be causing this or a possible solution? Basically stuck in HDR mode until I can fix this. Thank you for taking the time to read this in advance.

 

[hotaru.hino]

If your monitor has an option called something like "Dynamic Contrast" and it's on, that may be doing it.

 

[EridianAngel]

If your monitor has an option called something like "Dynamic Contrast" and it's on, that may be doing it.

Nope. Nothing like that in the settings. But thanks for the suggestion! I tried turning the contrast up and down as well and it makes the color pop more but doesn't increase the overall brightness.

 

[Misgar]

Dive into the monitor's menu and select the 'sRGB' colour profile. It may have changed to something else.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRGB

Then check your graphics card settings and see if they match.

 

[EridianAngel]

Dive into the monitor's menu and select the 'sRGB' colour profile. It may have changed to something else.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRGB

Then check your graphics card settings and see if they match.

Just tried this again to see if it would help and unfortunately it did not. I really don't understand how this got messed up to begin with. I am currently reinstalling graphics drivers just to see if it will do anything at all.

 

[EridianAngel]

Just tried this again to see if it would help and unfortunately it did not. I really don't understand how this got messed up to begin with. I am currently reinstalling graphics drivers just to see if it will do anything at all.

Reinstalling did not work. I tried to see if there were monitor drivers I could download as well but there weren't. I did find a widget that lets me change my monitor settings but it's really just an interface that lets me do it from windows instead of using the monitor buttons themselves. Still no help there.

 

[Misgar]

My main 30in Dell monitor has a whole bunch of profiles for different scenarios. For general computer work I set it to sRGB. If I wanted to use the monitor with professional video editing software for colour matching, I'd choose another profile with a different gamut.

If your monitor is more basic, it might only have one profile which should be sRGB.

 

[EridianAngel]

My main 30in Dell monitor has a whole bunch of profiles for different scenarios. For general computer work I set it to sRGB. If I wanted to use the monitor with professional video editing software for colour matching, I'd choose another profile with a different gamut.

If your monitor is more basic, it might only have one profile which should be sRGB.

This one has a few different profiles as well but none of them end up making it brighter in the end. Kind of at a loss at this point. I feel like the issue is more on Windows end than the monitor right now. Through more testing I realized that it gets really dark once I turn off HDR in Windows itself. So even if I don't touch monitor settings Windows dims the monitor. I have been through every single menu option the monitor has to no avail on that end. Maybe if Windows had a brightness slider it would help but it doesn't for desktops for some reason.