I was fumbling about and dropped my controller last night and ended up hitting the keyboard shortcut for HDR and it looks good? No washed out SDR content, colors popping in games but not feeling oversaturated. I remember when I first got this monitor it looked atrocious.

Windows HDR seems very mature these days

It was never broken.

I just use hdr when there's hdr content. No calibration of mine ever got sdr working when hdr mode was on. It's much, much easier to just press win alt b

Ok so I see people saying this but I’ve tried the windows hdr configuration, I’ve adjusted my tv, it still always looks washed out and it works fine on my PlayStation. What am I missing?

You know those people that say they cant tell the difference between 60fps and 120fps? They exist in color gradients too.

If you're expecting SDR content to look not washed out then you'll be dissapointed, you need to toggle HDR on with HDR content and turn it off for SDR content.

I understand that for the most part but often hdr content also looks wrong/grey filmed in movies and games etc where hdr is on in windows the game and the tv says it’s on. I have largely given up.

Try enabling "override to reference mode" in Nvidia panel in the color section and see if that fixes the washed out look.

Thanks, advice I haven’t heard yet so thats promising. I’ll give it a shot. Thank you.

Isn’t the gamma in HDR broken or something?

Microsoft uses sRGB gamma curve for sdr in hdr container (because it's their own choice) instead of 2.2 but it doesn't affect actual hdr content.

Playstation uses 2.2 gamma.

Microslop W11 is a mess where settings are lost and functionality breaks.

That being said, HDR is pretty well done, but that is where it stops.