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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.
The Spectrum Glossy is in the middle tier of HDR monitors that have edge backlights with selective dimming. 16 zones mean better contrast for HDR content.
HDR Brightness and Contrast
The Spectrum Glossy easily beats its benchmark of 600 nits for the DisplayHDR 600 certification. It isn’t quite at the level of its Matte counterpart, but again, you’ll have a hard time discerning a difference of 27 nits. There is more than enough headroom for the bright highlights that make HDR better than SDR.
The zone dimming edge backlight delivers excellent black levels for a final contrast result of 17,672.3:1. While the Sony wins this contest, both Dough displays are among the better HDR monitors I’ve tested. There is a lot of contrast and dimension available for all HDR content, games and movies alike. You’ll have to spend a lot more money for a FALD or Mini LED panel to do better than this.
Grayscale, EOTF and Color
The Spectrum Glossy’s HDR grayscale/EOTF tracking is at reference level. The grayscale lacks visual errors at every brightness step. The EOTF starts out a little dark, then gets to the transition point about 5% too early. In practice, this means deeper shadows and brighter highlights. I never saw any detail clipping in the content I viewed, so these luminance errors have no visible impact.
In the HDR color gamut tests, the Spectrum Glossy is generally over-saturated in red and blue and on-target for green, which is typical performance. Nearly all wide gamut monitors push the envelope to make a greater difference between SDR and HDR content. In practice, it works well without obscuring any detail.
I also measured the Spectrum Glossy against the Rec.2020 standard and found much the same performance. Here, I’d prefer to see the points on target until the display’s color runs out. You can see that the 80% and 100% points are very close. This makes some highlight detail harder to see. Ideally, the points should be linear from the center of the triangle to the perimeter. I’ll concede that this is a minor point. Nearly all wide gamut monitors respond the same way. The Dough Spectrum Glossy delivers colorful and accurate HDR images.
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