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

Hello

I purchased the AW3225QF a while ago and while it has mostly been a joy to use, there is one issue with it which I would consider pretty significant. It is related to the brightness of the monitor inside the HDR Peak 1000 mode. 

One of the first things I did after getting it was experimenting with HDR Peak 1000 and DisplayHDR True Black 400 as I had heard differing opinions when it comes to these. While the HDR Peak 1000 mode obviously produced much brighter highlights in low APL scenarios, I also noticed that in higher APL scenarios it was significantly dimmer than the True Black mode. This is the case even when there is no apparent reason for it, i.e. no bright highlights on the screen. And since most reviewers simply said that Peak 1000 was preferable in most scenarios due to its higher brightness, I simply dealt with it and assumed that was how it was supposed to look. 

However, recently TFTCentral looked into this issue and their findings suggest that there is a problem with the Peak 1000 mode. I will note that their testing was not done specifically with the AW3225QF, but the same behaviour is very much happening on this monitor as well (and likely all other Gen 3 QD-OLEDs, as mentioned in the article). The issue is that the PQ EOTF tracking is honestly not good at all when it comes higher APL scenes (around 10% and above), specifically for midtones. This results in the overall screen brightness being significantly lower in a lot of scenes on the Peak 1000 mode when it really shouldn't be. At times, the luminance can be almost 50% lower. While some roll off is fine, this is way too drastic.

To me, this is a big issue which I think needs attention. The result of this problem is that there is no HDR mode which is preferable in all scenarios. In brighter scenes with generally higher APL, DisplayHDR True Black 400 will often look much better than Peak 1000. However, in darker scenes where you really want those bright highlights Peak 1000 will be the better choice. So unless you're fine with dim e.g. outdoor scenes, you'll have to sacrifice the punchy highlights. I hope this is something which is being looked into. 

More details can be found in the article written by TFTCentral: https://tftcentral.co.uk/articles/testing-hdr400-true-black-and-peak-1000-mode-brightness-on-new-oled-monitors#Key-update-Heres-why-TB400-can-sometimes-look-brighter-than-P1000