Washed out darker colors and blacks in games and movies with XB271HUABMIPRZ

Menno555

Hello all
Did some searching but so far no luck.
Since yesterday I have a XB271HUABMIPRZ (that is the TN version). And either it is acting up or I have to get used of it. Because generally in Windows 10 it looks okay. Black is black, no washed out things, no color banding. And also did look up and tried different monitor settings. And of course all drivers are up to date.
But with running movies or games the colors (especially darker colors and blacks) are looking washed out. With a movie for example: the black bars on top and bottom are real black. But the blacks/darker colors of the movie itself is washed out or noticeable color banding when moving. The same for games: with RDR2 for example (but also GTA V), the black in the menu is black. But when playing, there also it looks washed out. And colorbanding with the opening screens for example. In the NVidia panel it is set to Dynamic Range = Full but somehow it looks like that is not happening. Or the gamma is acting up.
I still do have my old monitor (Iiyama G-Master GB2788HS, also TN, 144 Hz 1920x1080, no G-Sync) and when trying that again, it all looks not washed out, no color banding. It all is "more there".

I did try http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ and http://w4zt.com/screen/ and there the only thing that is really acting up is the gamma. With the monitors default settings and Windows 10 Calibration it is not even close to 2.2 but way lower, somewhere around 1.4. But even with fiddling of the monitor settings, I come nowhere close to 2.2. I don't know if these pages are representative nowadays but still .... 

So, maybe something wrong or is it a normal thing for these kind of monitors?
Just in case, hardware: i9 9900KF, MSI RTX 2080 ti Gaming X trio

r3tr0

Hi @Menno555 I would do a couple of things. 
1. reset the OSD settings that you have done. 
2. make sure that the drivers you have installed are taking effect and the generic pnp driver is not the one listed in device manager under the monitor tab
3. the driver package that you download from acer will have an icc profile. make sure that it is set properly on your monitor under the windows color management tool
4. If the colors are still looking washed out after that, I would personally take to the nvidia control panel
If you go with the ncp, go to change resolution first and select "use nvidia color settings" and make sure output color format is set to RGB and dynamic range is set to full
then go over to the adjust desktop color settings and select use NVIDIA settings. Play around with the calibrations a little i.e brightness, contrast, and gamma (This will get you to 2.2 or higher) then to really fill in the colors, play with the digital vibrance option as well as the saturation settings on the OSD

Hope this helps! if you have any questions reach out.