MSI QD-OLED Monitors 2024

Sycraft said:
To be fair, while I'm a high brightness MiniLED guy, 400 nit HDR isn't terrible. No it doesn't have the impact you really want and get with higher values, but it isn't nothing. No Mans Sky has pretty broken HDR settings necessitating using a reshade shader to put tone mapping on it. To get it down to a "not too bright average level" I end up having it at about 400nit peak. It doesn't have the great impact that games with proper support do (like Hogwarts Legacy, which looks great with the 1600nit highlights the monitor can handle) but it looks noticeably better than the game does in SDR.

So while you are right there are better options if impactful HDR is what you want, I wouldn't write the HDR features of these monitors off entirely. TB400 is still likely to look noticeably better than SDR.
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It's better sure but for me at least it just doesn't move the needle enough. It's like going from 60Hz to 75Hz, sure it's better and it's certainly noticeable but I don't consider 75Hz to be a high refresh rate experience like 120Hz+, it's just a little bit better than 60Hz and that's all. HDR TB400 for me is the same thing in that it's just a little bit better than SDR but I don't really consider it a true HDR experience. The bare minimum HDR for me is at least the level an LG CX provides which is why I ditched my QD OLED for an Asus PG32UCDP WOLED.
 
MistaSparkul said:
It's better sure but for me at least it just doesn't move the needle enough. It's like going from 60Hz to 75Hz, sure it's better and it's certainly noticeable but I don't consider 75Hz to be a high refresh rate experience like 120Hz+, it's just a little bit better than 60Hz and that's all. HDR TB400 for me is the same thing in that it's just a little bit better than SDR but I don't really consider it a true HDR experience. The bare minimum HDR for me is at least the level an LG CX provides which is why I ditched my QD OLED for an Asus PG32UCDP WOLED.
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I'll agree in that I would tell people not to judge HDR from the experience you get on one of those displays, if you got one and said "Man HDR doesn't impress me much," I'd say "Well try a display with better HDR and then tell me what you think." However I do think that if you get one, you'll still like HDR on it and it is worth using, and not just leaving it is SDR mode.
 
Seems the 322URX is same as 321URX with a 350$ additional price tag and 2.1 dp. Glad I am ok with 321URX.
 
KickAssCop said:
Seems the 322URX is same as 321URX with a 350$ additional price tag and 2.1 dp. Glad I am ok with 321URX.
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They're exactly the same except for the DP 2.1 output USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, as far as I can tell. Same panel otherwise, perhaps with an updated firmware.
 
Yesterday I connected my MSI MAG 271QPX through HDMI cable and was able to get 343Hz at 10bit
In this case since RTX 4090 has some limitations with Display Port when DSC is used I cannot create custom resolutions, cannot use DSR/DL-DSR or integer scaling.
This can be solved by disabling DSC and in this case maximum resolution I was able to get is 277Hz at 8-bit
Via HDMI 2.1 I am able to get 343Hz at 10-bit
1739629002943.png

It is also possible to create lower refresh rate resolutions but at the same pixel clock by increasing vertical front porch - in this case image will be transferred to the screen at the same rate. This is useful for games with VRR flicker issues as an alternative to frame rate limiter which isn't as reliable as running game v-synced.
 
Anyone using the 321URX with the 0.16 firmware, have you noticed Screen Care running more often? Mine is set to 24hrs, but seems to run after a few hours if the monitor goes to sleep, and again if I power the monitor off a few hours after that. I don't want it running if it doesn't need to. Pretty sure it was more consistent with the last fw.
 
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If you turn off the monitor after 4h, it will run the process. The OSD setting is only to control the forced restart (which sucks).

I don't think it was different with previous fw, seems to be just how MSI does things.

Max delay used to be 16h, which I actually ran into a few times, but now it's 24h which is fine, I'll never experience it.
 
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Anyone got any advice re HDR and colour profiles for the 321URX? I want to make sure I'm getting the best out of it, but the SDR/HDR, tonemapping, colour profiles, ICC/WCS always gets me a bit confused. I primarily run Windows in HDR mode, and while I've some games that are native HDR, some are not and I've applied HDR via the nVidia app. Currently I have a calibrated HDR profile applied (I used the Windows 11 HDR calibrator) as default HDR, and I've used the .icm file from MSI for SDR (I think), if I switch to SDR and try to run the calibrator it says my display is wide-gamut and won't be accurate, do I need to worry about SDR calibration? If I'm in HDR and look at the gamma on lagom.nl, it looks to me as if the gamma is set around 1.4/1.6, which seems very low, and it doesn't change much if I view the page in SDR.

It's probably the gamma that's bothering me most, as I used to have it around 2.2 before I had an OLED.
 
The display should have a sRGB user mode for SDR usage.

Without that yeah, it will be totally inaccurate because of wide gamut.

In HDR you don't have to calibrate anything, though.
 
kalston said:
The display should have a sRGB user mode for SDR usage.

Without that yeah, it will be totally inaccurate because of wide gamut.

In HDR you don't have to calibrate anything, though.
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I have it set to sRGB for non-HDR and user in HDR. Is there any difference between Pro and Gaming modes? As I said HDR games look right (I think, anyway), it's just the gamma seems off in SDR games, but I guess that's down to different colour-spaces or something. If I switch to non-HDR in Windows and look at certain web-pages, they're glaringly white, in fact some of them open in black background in HDR mode but white in SDR, which seems odd.
 
Not sure, but my MSI did use to have issues not remembering the sRGB profile, so I had to toggle it on and off till it worked sometimes, latest firmwares seem to have fixed that.

I have game mode > user
Then professional > sRGB
Image enhancement > off

...for SDR, and that looks correct, identical to my other calibrated SDR screens. I can see all the shades of black on LAGOM although the darkest require fullscreen mode and a pitch black room (but that's how it should be).

For HDR I use "TrueBlack 400" since it has a more consistent image, with less dimming than "Peak 1000" mode, but that is mostly personal preference.
 
kalston said:
Not sure, but my MSI did use to have issues not remembering the sRGB profile, so I had to toggle it on and off till it worked sometimes, latest firmwares seem to have fixed that.

I have game mode > user
Then professional > sRGB
Image enhancement > off

...for SDR, and that looks correct, identical to my other calibrated SDR screens. I can see all the shades of black on LAGOM although the darkest require fullscreen mode and a pitch black room (but that's how it should be).

For HDR I use "TrueBlack 400" since it has a more consistent image, with less dimming than "Peak 1000" mode, but that is mostly personal preference.
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Something's off with my white balance in SDR mode I think, because on the lagom test I can see the black squares as I'd expect, but the whites is just a big white block. In HDR I can see the white squares.

*edit* That appears to be an Edge issue, if I view the lagom page in SDR in Chrome, I can see the black and white squares fine.
 
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Super weird! Looks fine on Edge and Firefox for me.

And yeah in SDR in HDR mode looks pretty good too with this monitor, doesn't seem to raise the near blacks as badly as on my LG TV.
 
Violator said:
Reset Edge and it's a lot better now, although games still look 'off' if I run them in SDR, even native SDR games.
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It could be if the SDR mode of the monitor does 2.2 power gamma. HDR in Windows does, by default, sRGB gamma which is linear gamma in the dark tones and then like a 2.4 gamma over most of the range, giving an overall 2.2. It makes for more brightness in the shadow tones. If that's what you are seeing, that is normal. You can use Color Control to generate an HDR calibration file that tells it to use 2.2 instead, if you want.
 
Sycraft said:
It could be if the SDR mode of the monitor does 2.2 power gamma. HDR in Windows does, by default, sRGB gamma which is linear gamma in the dark tones and then like a 2.4 gamma over most of the range, giving an overall 2.2. It makes for more brightness in the shadow tones. If that's what you are seeing, that is normal. You can use Color Control to generate an HDR calibration file that tells it to use 2.2 instead, if you want.
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Thanks. The HDR mode seems to be good, native HDR looks stunning, it was more with switching to SDR and playing a native SDR game, always looked either too bright or too dark, with inconsistent gamma i.e. sometimes a game's gamma calibration would look OK, and others (like when you have the 3 symbols) the first symbol (barely visible) you'd have to crank the gamma up to ridiculous levels before it would even appear, Elite Dangerous for example).

Is Lagom still the best for calibration tests? There doesn't seem to be many 'up-to-date' calibration tests.
 
I discovered this, which gives a 2.2 gamma in sRGB, using the 300 nit profile and setting SDR brightness to 50 produced some really nice results in SDR games played in HDR. Also found this which has been helpful, too.
 
Violator said:
Thanks. The HDR mode seems to be good, native HDR looks stunning, it was more with switching to SDR and playing a native SDR game, always looked either too bright or too dark, with inconsistent gamma i.e. sometimes a game's gamma calibration would look OK, and others (like when you have the 3 symbols) the first symbol (barely visible) you'd have to crank the gamma up to ridiculous levels before it would even appear, Elite Dangerous for example).

Is Lagom still the best for calibration tests? There doesn't seem to be many 'up-to-date' calibration tests.
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To be honest, I don't think lagom is quite adequate for OLED and its true blacks, but I don't know any alternative. Because if you think about it, when your black level is 0, the levels just above it are going to be borderline impossible to see on a perfectly calibrated display. You need a pitch black room, fullscreen mode, and might even need to zoom in to remove light pollution from brighter elements. In short, most OLED users won't even see those squares at all.

Since on LCDs the black scale doesn't start at 0, it is of course much easier to see near black squares.

I'm not a calibration expert, and happy to be proven wrong, but that is my take on it. And to be honest, there doesn't seem to be any content where you lose details even when missing a few black squares. After all content has been made with crappy LCDs for like 20+ years, and even when you go to the cinema there are no true blacks with projectors.

I have 2 OLEDs at home (WOLED and QD-OLED) and I have owned a bunch of LCDs of course (I have one LCD monitor in between my OLEDs, though it gets used only very rarely to monitor something).
 
kalston said:
To be honest, I don't think lagom is quite adequate for OLED and its true blacks, but I don't know any alternative. Because if you think about it, when your black level is 0, the levels just above it are going to be borderline impossible to see on a perfectly calibrated display. You need a pitch black room, fullscreen mode, and might even need to zoom in to remove light pollution from brighter elements. In short, most OLED users won't even see those squares at all.

Since on LCDs the black scale doesn't start at 0, it is of course much easier to see near black squares.

I'm not a calibration expert, and happy to be proven wrong, but that is my take on it. And to be honest, there doesn't seem to be any content where you lose details even when missing a few black squares. After all content has been made with crappy LCDs for like 20+ years, and even when you go to the cinema there are no true blacks with projectors.

I have 2 OLEDs at home (WOLED and QD-OLED) and I have owned a bunch of LCDs of course (I have one LCD monitor in between my OLEDs, though it gets used only very rarely to monitor something).
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I've switched to using colorcontrol now. This generates an HDR profile at the gamma setting you want i.e. 2.2/2.4, what I'm trying to figure out is what the SDR max nits should be. 100 seems low
1755601565007.png

and I've seen this conversion chart
1755601611094.png


SDR brigtness slider is currently 45, but again I'm not sure what this should be at without losing the 'natural' look. SDR brightness is 60 on the monitor. Also I found out that hardware acceleration in MS Edge in SDR mode produces the blinding whites, turning it off solves that, but you need HA on to have HDR working in things like YouTube.

Any guidance for the SDR level would be great.
 
SDR max nits is personal preference/environment based. The only rule is your eyes and comfort, though higher value will burn the pixels faster, and draw more power, if that is a concern to you. There is no impact on picture quality, unlike HDR.

100 nits is the standard for a dark room / theatre, and also what HDR series and movies are targeting as an average figure, because they too are aiming for a dark room where our eyes can perceive the full contrast.

If 100 feels too low in your room, crank it up. Bear in mind that the eyes need some time (at least a few minutes, but could be hours) to get used to a new brightness level, so give your new settings a good chance before crying foul.
 
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kalston said:
SDR max nits is personal preference/environment based. The only rule is your eyes and comfort, though higher value will burn the pixels faster, and draw more power, if that is a concern to you. There is no impact on picture quality, unlike HDR.

100 nits is the standard for a dark room / theatre, and also what HDR series and movies are targeting as an average figure, because they too are aiming for a dark room where our eyes can perceive the full contrast.

If 100 feels too low in your room, crank it up. Bear in mind that the eyes need some time (at least a few minutes, but could be hours) to get used to a new brightness level, so give your new settings a good chance before crying foul.
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Thanks. I've adjusted the SDR brightness (monitor control) to 45, and the SDR slider to 34 which I've seen supposedly gives a good visual. Set the max nits in colorcontrol to 200. Room can be a little bright during the day.
 
XoR_ said:
DO NOT RECOMMEND MSI MONITORS!!!!

p.s.
View attachment 675901
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Found review of my monitor describing my issue exactly https://www.xda-developers.com/msi-mag-271qpx-qd-oled-monitor-review/

Anyone knows if people who designed 271QPX were fired from MSI and new people (or AI) know how to make sRGB mode in gaming monitors?
I like how I can disable all dimming nonsense but I just cannot recommend monitor with bad SDR implementation that needs workarounds and therefore for me MSI as a company making displays is completely off limits.
 
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