AW3225QF (and likely other Gen 3 QD-OLED models) - HDR Peak 1000 bad PQ tracking compared to DisplayHDR True Black

My 2 cents is that 1 is VESA certified profile, while the other is not.

Would be interesting to see if they can correct the issue by reprofiling the display.

@Vanadiel​ Could definitely be related. My hope is just that this isn't an issue that has to be fixed by the panel manufacturer (Samsung), since this issue seems to be affecting all the new Gen 3 QD-OLED monitors. Fingers crossed!

I also own the QF and I haven't been satisfied with the performance of the peak 1000 mode as well. It's interesting because AW3423DWF model which I had before, I recall it having issues with the peak 1000 mode too. But it was remedied by firmware updates though so I hope they fix the QF too. 

This seems to be the main issue with the monitor after the first few firmware updates. I really hope it is fixed soon.

I was surprised to come here and see that this issue is so big on Reddit, but barely flagged on the official forums to actually flag a need for Dell to fix this. Regardless, I'm glad this was flagged, and I hope the Dell Team is able to add it to the list of bugs to be addressed with a future update (or it's maybe already in the backlog). 

It certainly breaks bright scenes in HDR1000, and it's too annoying to switch between HDR1000 and HDR400 (where bright scenes look closer to their expected brightness) in games that say, cycle between night and day during the game. So I use HDR1000 for the brighter nighttime highlights, and certainly get a worse experience during the in-game bright day for it. Because the overall daytime environments are much too dark in HDR1000 compared to how they appear in SDR and HDR400. The daytime highlights are not any brighter than HDR400 since in those high ABL scenes they would be typically capped to less than 400 nits, yet the rest of the scene is unnecessarily darker / "grayer".

This can make something like bright blue sky during the day look like cold gray, at worst making it feel like a cloudy day when it's supposed to be a sunny day. I suspected this was done semi-intentionally to keep the perceived ratio between highlights (which are now less bright due to ABL) and the other things like sky (which has to be brought down to create an opening for brighter highlights to still pop). But this is highly undesirable, since at a high ABL of your average daytime scene those highlights would be capped to a far lower max brightness, and adjusting the brightness of the entire environment relative to the already lower brightness of daytime highlights is a significant bug. 

Max HDR1000 brightness in high ABL scenes does not exceed what HDR400 is capable of reaching, yet this issue does not manifest there to the same degree, and the latter shows much more desirable behaviour, showing that this is not implemented correctly in the HDR1000 mode. And that high ABL content should more closely resemble the HDR400 PQ tracking than it currently does. Low ABL behaviour (such as during night scenes) is excellent in the HDR1000 mode, so it shouldn't be changed. But PQ tracking should be adjusted for high ABL scenes, where environments shouldn't be getting anywhere as dim as they currently are. 

This also extends to the way Windows desktop looks with HDR1000 enabled, where bright content is significantly dimmer than in SDR/HDR400 for no good reason, with nothing on the screen exceeding 300 nits, and bright greys dimmed to as low as sub-100 nits.

I hope Dell is able to address this with a firmware update pushing some tuning to the HDR1000 profile, or a new cloned profile with a fix eliminating excessive dimming of bright scenes.

The below graph by TFT Central illustrates the incorrect HDR1000 ABL/PQ tracking behaviour in bright scenes relative to significantly more desirable behaviour of the HR400 mode. Again, HDR1000 works perfectly in dark scenes. But in any higher APL content, such as bright scenes and desktop windows, any bright greys or bright colors will be significantly excessively dimmed/muted, relative to SDR, and the HDR400 mode.

Despite "whites" in high APL scenes being capped to similar brightness levels in both HR400 and HDR1000 modes at best, the HDR1000 mode excessively dims everything else:

@simon247​ yes this seems fixable by a patch. Come on Dell the support so far has been great

To add, the desired behaviour would be for Peak 1000 mode to operate the way it does when highlights can reach more than 400-500-ish nits (low APL content/dark scenes), and it to start behaving more like the HDR400 mode with high APL content/bright scenes where peak brightness can't reach those high levels anymore, without excessively dimming everything else.

We know this is possible, because SDR and HDR400 modes already behave this way in high APL content. Peak 1000 gets significantly dimmer overall for no good reason except to maintain a ratio between peak highlights and everything else (which doesn't make sense once those highlights can't get bright due to ABL).

Those monitors are already clearly capable of doing both - you'd just need to manually switch the preset between HDR1000 and HDR400 when the on-screen environment changes, which would be very annoying.

If there are *any* good reasons for the Peak 1000 preset to remain as is, the best way for Dell to address this, would be by giving us a new tweaked HDR1000 preset with a smooth curve transitioning between low APL optimized behavior resembling the current HDR1000 preset, and gradually transitioning into high APL optimized behavior that resembles the HDR400 preset.

Same here. HDR 1000 is disappointing on the AW3225QF. Hopefully they can improve with a firmware update

I also have this problem. A fix in a firmware update would be great :O

Love to see some more attention regarding this problem! Hopefully it is at least on Dell's radar at this point. Some great comments in this thread highlighting the issue better than I did in the original post.

Yeah, I've got this problem too. Seems like everyone's monitor behaves like this... Dell, pls fix?  :) 

My aw2725df is noticeably bad too, I thought it was just me because no one else was posting about it. Dell needs to fix.

I have this problem also. This issue being fixed would make this monitor a much better and complete product.

As an avid Alienware/Dell fan, and an owner of this monitor, I'd love to see them lead the pack with a fix on this, seeing as it's effecting all of the Gen 3 QD-OLED displays, but none of the other manufacturers have the scale or influence that Dell/AW does. The AW3225QF being the first/only to fix this will make it a standout product.