Changed my TV for HDR when i bought the Ps4 pro. When it's well done i also prefer HDR over 4K.

I don't think those are mutually exclusive. 4K is resolution and HDR is just an added effect, right?

What do you mean by poorly supported?

Windows 10 has native HDR support which runs pretty good by now. You can watch HDR on Youtube if that video supports it.

And most big games being released nowadays come with full HDR support.

There are some games that had slight issues in the beginning like Doom Eternal where they forgot to add the navigation map for HDR so it appeared nearly black and Ori 2 also got it patched later into the game where the result is pretty good.

Games like Divison 2, Forza Horizon 4 and Bordersland 3 look amazing in HDR.

Playing native 4k games with hdr is a beaut. A wonderful addition to gaming

I don’t even know.

Probably not. Doesn’t matter though, I’m not going to care enough to notice the difference. I also don’t see the difference on my phone between photos taken with or without HDR.

IMO HDR makes a bigger impact than 4K, of course if you have both the better.

Games like Resident Evil 7, GOW, The Last of us remastered, Horizon, the last of us part II and RDR2 look just beautiful.

I have a 65" Bravia that does both 4K and HDR and, as a result, a PS4 Pro. I have to say that I absolutely love HDR in my PS4 games. It definitely makes particle effects really pop. My first exposure was RE7, and I was floored by how beautiful/believable fire in the game was. I'm not going to say I could actually feel the flames, but I think it was as close to feeling them as any visual representation is likely to get me (excepting, perhaps, VR, but I have not braved that new world as of yet). Of course, this all held true for the RE2 & RE3 Remakes as well. It definitely seems to me, going from those three games to FF7 Remake, Spider-Man, Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War, and Days Gone, that non-HDR PS4 games just look a little less alive, a little less believable/cohesive, a little more...flat (these are all probably nonsensical descriptors, but I stand by my nonsense).

At any rate, while they are not mutually exclusive, I have to agree with others who've said they'd take HDR over 4K or feel it makes a bigger impact (though, on the Pro, this would be an easy choice since at least some of the games listed above don't actually hit native 4K but all do full HDR).

All of that HDR gushing gushed, the PS4 is, unfortunately, my only frame of reference for HDR gaming. I haven't played any PC games that support HDR apparently (https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_that_support_high_dynamic_range_display_(HDR)), but I can say that I find Windows 10 itself a bit more difficult to navigate when HDR is enabled (as opposed to the PS4's ...triple-decker XMB? which only looks slightly different to me under HDR). Regardless of which profile I select on my TV (HDR10, HLG, BT.2020, etc., etc.) Windows 10's desktop just seems to suffer from a sort of "black crush" that's not present on the console. Of course, there could be some hidden option (or likely a blatantly obvious one!) I'm missing, but I usually just have to leave the settings window open and toggle HDR on just prior to starting a video (at which point, the video looks fine).

When you enabled HDR in Windows 10 you can configure it in the Windows HD color settings, so SDR content won't look strange in HDR mode. 

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-enable-hdr-settings-windows-10

Most games require HDR to be enabled in Win10, so the option can appear in the game in the first place. A few do not require it and you can turn it on ingame while it is turned off in win10. Division 2 for example does that. And I suppose all of Ubisoft games (without checking it).

In the beginning I would often switch between on and off. Nowadays I stay on HDR enabled. There is one slight issue left, and that is volume control via keyboard. Windows show the volume bar on the top left screen. So... in some games, when I play in HDR and adjust my volume, the screen goes back to SDR while the volume bar is shown and switches back to HDR when it is gone. That's something that has not been addressed, at all. 

You also have to be careful when buying a HDR monitor since there are plenty of fake ones. You'll notice those when the panel is not native 10 bit and the peak brightness cannot reach 1000 nits. There are also ofher specifications that has to be met.

You're right ! I just answered the question in OP if you had to choose between the two.

If done wrong, like in RDR2, yes it's just an added effect.

However if done right it expands the rendering 'depth' of the scene so much that screenshots converted to LDR suffer black crush and white outs or look overall washed out.

LDR or normal dynamic range is 8 bits or 256 'steps' from black to white with white calibrated to about 180 nits.
HDR is 10 bits or 1024 'steps' from black to white with white calibrated up to 10,000 nits (on a logarithmic scale)

Most HDR displays don't go over 1,200 nits for peak brightness, yet still a huge step up from 180 nits.
10 bit color also provides up to 4x as much detail in darker areas without color banding becoming an issue.

Most modern games are already rendered in FP16 (16 bit color) then down converted to 8 bit LDR or 10 bit HDR. Of course assets also need to support 10 bit color as well as the entire rendering pipeline. (That's where RDR2 fails)

You can render at any resolution and still have HDR. However only 4K tvs support HDR, but upscaling 720p to 4K is no issue.


What you get in the end is more detail in shadow areas, and more detail in highlights and high contrast scenes. Instead of the sky just looking white when looking outside from a darker room, it can now show what the outside looks like next to the darker interior without compromising either.

For example, in GT Sport, in LDR, spray from rain and dust is literally blinding in night races. Not because of the brightness, but because it all whites out on the display. You can't read the distance markers since they 'max out' in brightness and become unreadable. With HDR, the display can correctly display the brightness and you can see through the spray/dust and there's still contrast left to read the text on reflective road signs. It's also much easier to see the road in the dark. For normal day races, it's mostly the sky that gets more depth. Instead of looking simply whitish bright, you now see all the clouds in full detail.