HDR Capability Checker
Instantly test whether your monitor, laptop screen, and browser actually support High Dynamic Range (HDR), Display P3, and wide color gamuts — live in your browser with zero downloads.
🖥️Display Capabilities
🎨Advanced Color & Codecs
🌐Browser & Rendering
color() FunctionChecking…⚙️GPU & Acceleration
📊Interactive Visual Test Patterns
Grayscale Gradient — Check for smooth tone transitions without harsh vertical banding lines:
Standard sRGB Reference Plates:
Display P3 Wide-Gamut Swatches — On wide-gamut screens, these will look noticeably more vibrant and saturated than the sRGB swatches above:
Technical Guide
How the HDR Capability Checker Works: Display Physics & Codecs
If you have ever wondered whether your gaming monitor or laptop screen is truly displaying the vibrant colors and deep contrast that streaming services and game developers promise, this diagnostic suite provides clear, objective answers. It queries browser and GPU hardware APIs directly in real time — with zero downloads, no telemetry tracking, and entirely client-side execution.
What HDR Actually Means in Display Engineering
HDR (High Dynamic Range) describes a display system's ability to reproduce a substantially broader contrast ratio and color palette than legacy SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) standards. Traditional SDR panels (sRGB color space and 8-bit color depth) compress luminance between approximately 0.1 nits and 100 nits, clipping bright highlights and crushing shadow details.
An HDR display reproduces specular highlights up to 600, 1,000, or even 1,500 nits while maintaining inky black levels, preserving details in both dark shadows and direct sunlight reflections. Achieving this requires three distinct links in the chain: an HDR-capable physical panel, operating system / GPU driver passthrough, and content encoded with HDR metadata. This tool tests the first two links.
Detailed Breakdown of Each Diagnostic Metric
1. Display Capabilities & Dynamic Range
The HDR Dynamic Range and Hardware Color Gamut diagnostics use modern W3C media query features including (dynamic-range: high) and (color-gamut: p3). These query the underlying operating system compositor directly regarding whether the connected screen is currently operating in high dynamic range mode:
- sRGB Gamut: The standard color palette established in 1996 for HDTV and web media. It represents approximately 35% of visible colors.
- Display P3 Gamut: Developed by the film industry (DCI-P3) and adopted widely across modern MacBooks, iPhones, and high-end gaming monitors. It covers approximately 25% more colors than sRGB, particularly in intense reds and lush greens.
- Rec. 2020 Gamut: The ultra-wide color standard specified for 4K and 8K HDR content, covering over 75% of visible spectrum colors.
Crucial Configuration Note: Many HDR-certified monitors will report "Not Supported" if HDR is disabled in your operating system. On Windows, open Settings > System > Display and enable Use HDR. On macOS, enable HDR in System Settings > Displays.
2. Advanced Color & Video Codecs
This module clarifies the distinction between display hardware capability and video decoding capability:
- Display P3 Canvas: Verifies whether the browser's 2D canvas context can allocate a high-bit-depth buffer and render wide-gamut imagery without down-converting to sRGB.
- HDR10 Codec (HEVC Main 10): Tests decoding for the open, royalty-free HDR10 standard via High Efficiency Video Coding (H.265) 10-bit profile.
- AV1 HDR (Profile 2): Tests playback support for the royalty-free AV1 next-generation codec used by YouTube and Netflix for efficient 10-bit and 12-bit HDR streams.
- Dolby Vision Codec: Checks for the proprietary
dvh1Dolby Vision codec profile, which utilizes dynamic scene-by-scene tone mapping metadata.
3. Browser & Rendering Engine Diagnostics
Modern web standards allow designers to declare colors outside the sRGB boundary using the CSS color(display-p3 r g b) syntax. This test checks whether your browser engine supports CSS Color Module Level 4 and confirms WebGL2 pipeline readiness for shaders and 3D rendering.
4. GPU & Hardware Acceleration
This panel examines your graphics card vendor and active rendering engine via the WebGL debug interface. If your browser displays a generic renderer string (e.g. SwiftShader or Google Generic), it reflects browser privacy protections designed to prevent device fingerprinting rather than a lack of hardware power.
Related Display & Hardware Testing Tools
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
How do I know if my monitor supports HDR?
Run this checker — it queries your browser's (dynamic-range: high) media feature, which directly reflects what your operating system reports about your connected display. If your monitor supports HDR but the tool displays "Not Supported," verify that HDR is toggled on in Windows Display Settings or macOS System Settings, as most monitors default to standard SDR mode.
Why does the checker say "Not Supported" even though my monitor is advertised as HDR?
In addition to toggling HDR on at the OS level, ensure your video cable supports sufficient bandwidth. HDMI 1.4 cables and budget USB-C docks lack the throughput required for HDR10 signaling, forcing your GPU to fall back to SDR. Use an Ultra High Speed HDMI 2.1 or DisplayPort 1.4 cable directly connected to your graphics card.
What is the difference between HDR10 and Dolby Vision?
HDR10 is an open industry standard that uses static metadata (a single brightness ceiling set for the entire video). Dolby Vision is a proprietary format that provides dynamic metadata, adjusting contrast, brightness, and color saturation frame-by-frame for optimal tone mapping on your specific panel.
Does codec support mean my screen will actually display HDR?
No. Codec support only confirms your web browser possesses the decoder algorithms to unpack an HDR video stream. If your screen panel is SDR (Standard Dynamic Range with low nit peak brightness and sRGB color), the browser will tone-map the video down to SDR quality.
Why is my GPU renderer shown as a generic name?
Modern web browsers intentionally mask graphics card model strings (returning generic strings or vendor masks) as a privacy countermeasure against browser fingerprinting. This does not interfere with actual GPU hardware acceleration.