HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. It's a display technology that shows a greater span of brightness levels and colours than standard displays, creating images that look closer to what the human eye naturally perceives.
Traditional displays struggle with either very bright or very dark areas in a single image. Bright skies blow out to white, or dark shadows collapse into black because the screen cannot show fine detail in both at once. HDR captures and displays more information across the full tonal range, so a sunset sky retains colour and texture while the foreground stays detailed and visible.
HDR content includes metadata that tells your display how bright individual pixels should be and which colour space to use. Common HDR formats include HDR10, Dolby Vision, and HLG. Your device needs three things to display HDR properly: a screen capable of high peak brightness (usually 400 nits or more), support for the HDR standard, and content encoded in that format.
Real-world example: an HDR film scene showing a character walking from a dark room into sunlight. A non-HDR screen will either wash out the outdoor scene in glare or render the indoor shadows as murky black. An HDR display reveals detail in both, with natural colour gradation throughout.
When buying a display (monitor, TV, or tablet), check if it supports HDR10 at minimum. Look for peak brightness specifications; better HDR performance requires brighter screens. If you regularly watch films, play games, or edit photos, HDR can make a noticeable difference in image quality, though it depends on having HDR content available.