- High dynamic range or HDR.
Everyone's telling you "you need to get it."
"It's an amazing thing."
But what they don't tell you is
what kind of hardware do you actually need
to have good experience?
So behind me I've got and assortment of monitors today.
Everything from ASUS's ProArt PA32UCX,
this is a $4,000 HDR monitor intended for content creators,
all the way down to this.
I'm actually really excited about this one!
This is the NEWSYNC X250FG Zero 165,
used to be something else they got a sticker on there, HDR.
So we're gonna go all the way from the highest level
of VESA certification, DisplayHDR 1,000,
down to DisplayHDR 600, down to 400,
and down to something that says HDR on the box,
but doesn't feature any certification whatsoever,
and see if it really does make a difference.
And we're also gonna see
if I can find a graceful segue to our sponsor.
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(Upbeat music)
- I just really have to know what's under this sticker.
It's gotta be 144.
My original intention was to start with
the cheapest monitor, and then work my way up.
Determining if the additional performance,
was worth the additional cost.
But, what I realized was that without the context
of the god-tier monitor, I would actually have to go back
and revisit those cheaper ones, because I might
not have realized, while looking at them,
what I was missing out on.
So I'm gonna get my desk torn apart here,
and get this thing which I'm actually
gonna be seeing in person for the first time.
(grunts)
Opened up here - whoa this one's really heavy!
This is really exciting.
This is, as far as I'm aware, the first monitor
with support for HDR10, Dolby Vision, HLG,
and I think there might even be one other
HDR standard that it's compliant with.
And yes it costs four grand, but there's a lot
of tech that goes into making a monitor
that delivers a really great HDR experience.
So it features over a thousand zones of local dimming,
it's got a quantum dot layer to enable its
otherwise, ya know, pedestrian IPS panel
to achieve better contrast and better color reproduction,
and, of course, it is meticulously
calibrated before it leaves the factory;
hence the calibration report.
Would ya look at that?
The stand doesn't even cost $1,000.
- Courage.
- Holy crap, the move to OLED cannot
happen soon enough for professional displays.
I don't remember the last time
I saw a monitor this thick, but wasn't from like 2002.
Turning HDR on.
I'm not necessarily convinced that that kicked in.
(beep)
- Got it sorted, it didn't look good
because the room was under bright studio lighting,
so I've dimmed the room a little bit now,
and this is a spectacular scene to use
as an example of what a good HDR display will do for you.
We can see all the dimly lit details
exactly as they would look to our eyes
inside the weapon shop here.
But when we switch back to this shop,
where we can see people walking
around in the bright sunlight,
the look of our indoor characters doesn't change,
while these guys you can actually
pick them out shockingly well on this monitor.
Obviously, this isn't a gaming focused display.
But in games that support HDR,
you can see a very similar difference
in the environmental lighting.
Where shadows are dark and gloomy but still detailed,
and then bright points, like the
sun shining through the foliage, are kind of
blinding to your eyes as you're slinking about, you know,
looking for a jaguar to fight,
or whatever the case may be.
Man, this is a pretty game in HDR.
The headline difference between HDR-1000 and HDR-600,
is, obviously, the difference in peak brightness.
It goes from 1,000 Nits, down to just 600 Nits.
But, one slightly less obvious difference,
is that on an HDR-600 monitor,
the manufacturer is only required to hit,
for a sustained period, 350 Nits,
compared to 600 in HDR-1000.
Wow, that's a heavy one.
(grunts)
- Digging around in the menus, as you can see
just like our display HDR-1000 model,
our 600 model also supports local dimming.
When they created the specifications,
the VESA organization said they didn't think,
that with modern technology, 600 or 1,000 levels
would be achievable without local dimming,
so I guess that has stood up pretty well so far.
HDR might have turned off when I was-
(scratching noise)
- Hey!
No sweetie.
Alright, some honest feedback for the Plex team.
You guys gotta fix your zoom options here.
You should never have black bars on all sides of a video!
Immediately, you can tell that the darkness
inside the weapon shop is not as dark.
Now, to some people's eyes, this is
probably gonna look a lot better.
But, the difference between the darkest
representations of our scene and
the brightest ones outside, is clearly not as wide.
As for whether I would look at this and go,
"Yeah I really need to spend hundreds, if not thousands,
of dollars more on a monitor!"
Probably not at this stage in the game.
Interestingly, we see the exact same
behavior, at least to my eyes,
gaming in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
So, once again, the highlights,
like the sun reflecting off of this branch here,
are bright enough that it makes sense to me
that the detail in the mist kinda clipped.
But all of this darkness here in the foliage...
It looks less like darkness, and it looks
more like a boosted gamma filter over it.
Ya know, like a black, equalizer,
gaming feature, or something like that.
With a 1080p, 144Hz IPS panel-
(Object clanging on desk)
The VG271 Pbmiipx, great product name
and scheme you guys have got over there Acer,
seems, on paper, like it ticks
a lot of the most important boxes.
And at just over $200 on promo at the time of filming this,
especially when you consider it includes HDR certification,
it seems like basically the way to go.
Of course for it to end up with a recommendation,
it's gonna have to live up to what
it says on the outside of the box.
And I've discovered something fascinating almost right away.
No HDR enable button.
And if we go into the monitor settings,
you can see that it's actually the same situation.
It's grayed out.
Well, as it turns out, some of these
more budget HDR displays actually are equipped with
DisplayPort 1.2 rather than DisplayPort 1.4 ports.
That means there's a reason Acer
included a HDMI cable in the box.
In order to run HDR, you're gonna
have to hook up to your graphics card over HDMI.
It looks awful.
That's okay, because we should
be able to enable HDR in the menu now.
There we go.
The good news is these are HDMI 2.0 ports,
so we get to take advantage of
that smooth 144Hz refresh rate.
The bad news is, popping open the NVIDIA control panel,
you can see we can't enable G-SYNC
on this FreeSync display because
we're not hooked up via DisplayPort.
So you're gonna have to pick one or the other.
In the scene in the weapon shop,
the shaded areas look quite similar
to our display HDR 600 monitor,
but where we really see the difference,
and this is interesting,
is actually in those characters in the background.
This is where the lack of Full Array Local Dimming
is going to hurt this display.
So, see this?
Instead of brightness in the hair and off the,
ya know, shoulder armor of these
vikings walking around back here,
we just see clipped white.
So you're losing detail in the image there.
Our gaming test shows this really well again.
While the shadows don't really look that different to me
than the display HDR 600 monitor,
they still got kinda that gray haziness,
it's here in the highlights where we run into real problems.
So instead of seeing the sun shining through the foliage,
we've just got a completely clipped zone
where you can't even see the trunk of the tree here.
Like you're losing a lot of the image
because it simply can't represent it.
Coming into this brightly lit, colorful clearing though,
we see a good example of the game
better in HDR, even in HDR 400
than it would in standard dynamic range.
The problem though, is that the
whole game doesn't look like this
on a display that just can't handle HDR well.
And, if your lowlights are awful,
then you're not giving your highlights
a chance to shine through.
And yes, that was a completely intentional double entendre.
Can you just die please?
Whoops, that was a bad shot.
Now for the NewSync X250FG Zero 165 HDR.
This one is very interesting to me because you might think,
"Gee Linus, you're already only spending
$200 on a brand name monitor to get that one from Acer.
How much lower do you really need to go?"
Well this puppy was purchased for
just around $150, that's $50 cheaper.
There's already some compromises compared to the Acer unit.
This stand is about as wimpy as one
as I've seen in the last little bit.
(clanging)
But it is made of metal to its credit.
And the power supply, rather than being
integrated into the monitor, is actually
just a power brick with a super janky adapter on it.
To NewSync's credit, the inclusion of a DisplayPort,
rather than an HDMI cable, seem to suggest
that its got a DisplayPort 1.4 connector.
But we will find out very shortly if that's the case.
Look at that, it does!
There's my 165Hz refresh rate.
Hey, it's got a joystick type menu.
Oh, it's backwards.
You go this way to confirm.
Now that's curious, HDR is clearly enabled,
but it looks like absolute butt.
Yup, that's working.
Wow, even in this scene though.
You can really see that clipping in the ferns here.
This raw sun coming over here.
(mumbles) Oops, I didn't actually screw that in.
I'd say the main issue for me so far though
is actually the green cast - oh wow!
Okay, I lied.
The main issue is the dynamic range.
Compared to our last one, you know with
display HDR 400 certification, rather than just the
ability to accept an HDR signal on the like
processor level, is night and day.
There's almost nothing left of
our background characters here.
Look at this, you can barely see his pecs.
Okay, I've got very low expectations
for the rest of this, lets move on to gaming.
Yup, it's even worse.
The clipping extends all the way down to here.
We're losing detail not just in like a tree trunk.
Like I bet I could lose that whole tree
in the sun shining behind it.
That is truly remarkable right there.
And our shadows barely even look like shadows.
It just looks like the whole scene
was shot in like a camera cinematic mode.
In fact, we could probably use that camera up there
to show what ungraded cinematic footage looks like
versus once you've applied a grade to it.
There ya go.
That's definitely worse than just playing the game in SDR.
On that subject, why don't we just try that.
Look at that, look at that, so much better!
It's still got a green cast to it,
still not a great display, but this is it.
SDR, game looks way better.
So, in conclusion then-
(metal bangs on table)
HDR: not a gimmick, but if you're looking to spend
more than a couple hundred dollars
you're probably gonna have to wait a little bit
before you can have the HDR experience
that everyone is talking about and saying is so great.
With that said, if I was looking
for an entry level HDR display,
I would definitely go for one with
VESA's display HDR certification
versus one that wasn't able to get it,
because it actually encompasses far more
than just the darkest darks and
brightest brights on the display.
It also specifies that it needs
to be able to cover a certain color gamma
and other important specs like that.
So NewSync monitor, maybe not a terrible
budget gaming display if you need a 165Hz 1080p display,
and you're willing to tweak the
color profile a little bit to get rid of this
green cast, but for HDR I wouldn't recommend it.
Not the way I would recommend our sponsor for today's video.
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We're gonna have that linked below.
If you guys enjoyed this video,
maybe check out our recent other budget monitor
roundup where we took a look at some
low-priced, high refresh rate gaming displays.
It's definitely worth the watch.