Comment by Sohcahtoa82
2 days ago
I think an OLED is basically an absolute necessity for HDR content.
My current monitor is an OLED and HDR in games looks absolutely amazing. My previous was an IPS that supported HDR, but turning it on caused the backlight to crank to the max, destroying black levels and basically defeating the entire purpose of HDR. Local dimming only goes so far.
Modern mini-led monitors are very good. The “local” dimming is so local that there isn’t much light bleed even in the worst-case situations (cursor over black background makes it particularly apparent).
The advantage of LEDs is they’re brighter. For example, compare two modern Asus ProArt displays: their mini-LED (PA32UCXR) at 1600 nits and their OLED (PA32DC) at 300ish nits. The OLED is 20% more expensive. These two monitors have otherwise comparable specs. Brightness matters a lot for HDR because if you’re in a bright room, the monitor’s peak brightness needs to overpower the room.
Plus for color managed work, I think LED monitors are supposed to retain their calibration well. OLEDs have to be frequently recalibrated.
And so-called micro-LEDs are coming soon, which promise to make “local” so small that it’s imperceptible. I think the near-term future of displays is really good LEDs.
> My previous was an IPS that supported HDR, but turning it on caused the backlight to crank to the max, destroying black levels and basically defeating the entire purpose of HDR
Yeah, that's kind of what I meant when I said that most monitors that advertise HDR shouldn't.
The AOC monitor is the third or fourth one I've owned that advertised HDR, but the first one that doesn't look like garbage when it's enabled.
I haven't gone oled yet because of both the cost and the risk of burn-in in my use case (lots of coding and other productivity work, occasional gaming).