 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 a good experience? So behind me I've got an 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 Nusync X250FG0165 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 display HDR 1000 down to display HDR 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 Origin PC get up and running fast with origin PC's new evo 16s ready to ship streamer bundle This laptop ships within one to two business days and comes with multiple streaming accessories learn more at the link in the video description 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 I was 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 Opened up your wall. This one's really heavy This is really exciting. This is as far as I'm aware the first monitor with support for HDR 10 Dolby vision HLG 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 You 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 you look at that the stand doesn't even cost a thousand dollars 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 that wasn't from like 2002 HDR on Not necessarily convinced that that kicked in 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 shot 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 focus 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 And 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 a thousand 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 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 1000 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 Hey No, sweetie All right some honest feedback for the Plex team you guys got to fix your 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 and shadow of the Tomb Raider so once again the highlights like the Sun Reflecting off of this branch here are are bright enough that it makes sense to me that the detail in them is kind of clipped but all of this darkness here in the foliage it looks less like darkness, and it looks more like Like a boosted gamma filter over it. You know like a black equalizer gaming feature or something like that with a 1080p 144 Hertz IPS panel The VG 271 PBM IIPX great product naming 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 that 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 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 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 an 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 144 Hertz refresh rate the bad news is popping open the Nvidia control panel you can see we can't enable G-Sync on this free sync 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 DisplayHDR 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 you 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 DisplayHDR 600 monitor So they still got kind of that gray haziness is 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 a 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 looking better in HDR even HDR 400 then 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 low lights 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 new sync X 250 FG 0165 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 a hundred and fifty bucks fifty dollars cheaper There's already some compromises compared to the Acer unit this stand is about as wimpy of one as I've seen in the last little bit 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 two new syncs credit the inclusion of a display port rather than an HDMI cable Seems to suggest that it's got a display port 1.4 connector But we will find out very shortly if that's the case Look at that. It does there's my 165 Hertz refresh rate. Hey, it's got a joystick type menu Oh, it's backwards you go this way to confirm Well, that's curious HDR is clearly enabled, but it looks like absolute bud Yeah, that's working. Wow, even in this scene though You can really see that clipping in the ferns here this rock the sun coming over here 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. Let's move on to gaming. Yep 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 can lose that whole tree in the sun shining behind it. That is that is truly Remarkable right there and our shadows barely even look like shadows It just looks like the whole scene is shot in like a like a camera cinematic mode In fact, we could probably use that camera up there to show what all the details are We could use that camera up there to show what ungraded cinematic footage looks like versus once you've applied a grade to it There you go. That's definitely worse than just playing the game in SDR on that subject. Why don't you 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 I HDR not a gimmick But if you're looking to spend more than a couple hundred dollars You're probably going to 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 gamut and other important specs like that So new sync monitor Maybe not a terrible budget gaming display if you need a 165 hertz 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 that I'd recommend our sponsor for today's video Manscaped Does Manscaped do neck beards too? 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