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Our HDR benchmarking uses Portrait Displays’ Calman software. To learn about our HDR testing, see our breakdown of how we test PC monitors.
HDR is the one place where the 32QHD165 disappoints. It’s not that it looks bad, but with so much color available, some extra contrast would put the image over the top. With no dynamic feature though, HDR content looks about the same as SDR.
HDR Brightness and Contrast
The 32QHD165 meets its DisplayHDR 400 spec with just over 425 nits peak. But, black levels are quite high at 0.4738 nit. This value is too high, and you’ll see that error in the EOTF trace below. While HDR content looks OK, it could be so much better if dynamic contrast were included. This monitor is strong enough in other areas of image quality that it should be updated so the HDR picture reaches its full potential.
Grayscale, EOTF and Color
HDR grayscale and EOTF accuracy are both solid. Grayscale errors are small and barely visible throughout the brightness scale. Luminance tracks close to the reference line except for the darkest steps, 0-10%, which are too light. This is why we recorded such a high black level score. Tweaking that one parameter would make a visual improvement.
The color charts show good hue tracking, but most colors are oversaturated. While this makes for a vivid palette in HDR mode, it sometimes looks a little too colorful. Natural shades are slightly overdone, especially reds. Overall, the HDR picture looks good but as in the contrast tests, there is room for improvement.
