Dull, washed out colour

[duffdan]

I received my Spectre x360 yesterday (16 f2001na) and the colour of the display is a really dull, unsaturated, and washed out - except for on the desktop or when playing videos. I have tried every display setting there is and they don't make much difference at all, and have tried Windows HDR but turning that on makes it even duller. I'm at a total loss of what else to do. I need an as accurate colour screen as possible for work, so if I can't fix it I'll have to return the laptop as it's useless like this 😔 Here are a couple of photos to show the colour of the Spectre compared to my old Dell that I've been using for years.

[duffdan]

Here's another photo as a good example to show what's wrong:

Both icons should be the same colour (have double checked on my old laptop and yep, they are) - the one in the title bar is the right colour, but you can see the lower one in the programme itself is so much duller. This is the weird thing - the title bars, start bar and desktop itself are all fine, but open anything up and all programmes have this washed out colour.
So it can't be the display itself, but some kind of setting somewhere?! It's driving me crazy because I've removed the HP display software in case it was that causing it, but nope. I've tried every single colour profile and none of them make a difference either. I've also downloaded the Intel Graphics command center and tried the settings in that, but still no use 🤯

[duffdan · Accepted solution]

I have finally fixed this myself - so if you've come across this post as you've been having the same issue and getting zero help from HP like me:

It's the HP Display app. As soon as that launches it screws up the colour and it seems whatever you do you can't undo it. I tried uninstalling, deleting all colour profiles, not allowing it to launch on start up. Despite all of that it just wouldn't go away. Even after a factory reset and telling Windows not to launch the HP Display app at start up it still launched itself!

Solution: (another) factory reset. As soon as Windows has been set up again, uninstall the HP Display app. Delete all its files, and make sure it's fully terminated. Then restart and it should be fixed - the colour will no longer be dull and washed out!
Why HP force an app onto you that totally ruins the display I've no idea.