My main question first: Is my setup incorrect or are the dimming zone based monitors really annoying in day-to-day productivity? For one, the brightness of elements on the screen change too much. I.e. the task bar and cursor brightness change drastically depending on the background, even on low settings. On the medium/high settings of backlight dimming you can clearly see the square backlight behind the cursor. Is this normal and I’m just sensitive to this?
Also general HDR question: SDR white content like documents and websites are insanely bright. Is this also normal or should I play around more with the settings? But I assume I should switch them back when I actually want to consume HDR content?
Would love to hear from someone with some experience with HDR monitors especially LCD with dimming zones.
Backstory
I’m currently upgrading my two ancient 1080p 60Hz monitors. Nowadays I do mostly productivity stuff with my monitors, especially a full-time work from home job. But I do play games occasionally, so I wanted to get something for that aspect too.
I got myself the AOC G27G3XMN because it was recommended by Monitors Unboxed as a good entry level true HDR monitor. I wouldn’t mind spending more on a monitor, but OLEDs for productivity don’t feel worth it to me.
Have to take into account the number of local dimming zones a screen has. The AOC only has 336 which sounds like a lot at first but if you consider that works out to just 16x21 zones across a 27" screen, it’s easier to imagine all the space between them. As a budget monitor that’s an ok compromise over older tech, but high end local dimming will be well over 1000 zones which keeps the highlights where they need to be a lot better. I have the AOC and it’s solid as a budget gaming monitor where brightness is needed, but the intense whites from documents and web pages can be a strain for sure. If you can I would suggest going to a store and looking at some screens in person to get a feel for the differences with better mini-leds and OLEDs.
My understanding was that with higher end LCDs with enough dimming zones you quickly approach OLED prices, making them not really worth it.
I tried stores first, but they only had a handful and even fewer were actually connected to try out (Saturn in Germany). Shopping online for a monitor definitely sucks.
Do you turn of the HDR on your AOC when you don’t use it? Or do you keep it always active?
Mini-LED could still be attractive if you’re working in a brightly lit environment, but I think between the two most people would opt for OLED because it really does look that much better out of the box (generally speaking). The outstanding contrast, vivid colors, and the deep blacks really make it feel like a more premium product, but OLEDs also have various drawbacks depending on the tech, design, and budget.
I keep my HDR on all the time. I mostly use this for gaming and pretty much all of the software I use outside of gaming has a grey or customizable color scheme, so I don’t have to deal with blinding white screens often. I’m also lazy and haven’t bothered calibrating for when HDR is off and everything looks bad. I did have to disable the VRR on here though, the strobing was really bad and super distracting. Also in case you didn’t know, you can quickly disable/enable HDR with the keyboard shortcut win+alt+B. That may make your monitor usage a little more tolerable if you don’t have to jump through some menus everytime you want to toggle it.
Thanks, that shortcut is great to know! But yeah unfortunately, I also feel like it looks horrible without HDR. I decided to return it as my focus is unfortunately work first :(
But thank you very much for the opinions, it helped me a lot.