Hogwarts Legacy: which display mode to choose on PS5 and Xbox Series X?

Hogwarts Legacy: Hogwarts Legacy is an ultra-ambitious video game. It allows us to walk around freely in Hogwarts and its surroundings (Hogsmeade, Forbidden Forest, etc.). Visually, it is a very demanding open world, which requires a lot of skill to offer a nice rendering.

Like most recent video games, Hogwarts Legacy: Hogwarts Legacy offers several display modes. There are up to five, depending on his equipment. It can therefore be complicated to navigate when playing on PS5 or Xbox Series X.

Not sure which display mode to choose to play this ambitious adaptation of the Harry Potter universe? We guide you. Our test protocol was as follows: we connected our PS5 to a recent television (HDMI 2.1) then to an older television (4K UHD, in both cases).

All view modes available in Hogwarts Legacy: Hogwarts Legacy

I have a TV with an HDMI 2.1 port, compatible with gaming technologies (VRR)

Have you invested in an HDR-compatible 4K UHD TV with HDMI ports offering you the latest display technologies (example: an LG OLED model)? Congratulations, but good luck navigating through all that Hogwarts Legacy: Hogwarts Legacy there is so much choice. Thus, there are no less than five different options:

• Fidelity (resolution and graphic quality);
• Fidelity with ray tracing (ray tracing in the menus);
• Performance (fluidity);
• Balance ;
• HFR (maximum efficiency).

Let’s immediately dismiss the mode with ray tracing, badly named, which brings only few notable differences (even taking out the magnifying glass). This technology, supposed to improve, in particular, lighting and reflections, is very resource intensive. You are likely to encounter more drops of frame rate — slowdowns — for so little benefit.

We can just as well rule out the HFR mode, which maximizes performance. This is a somewhat extreme mode for those who swear by fluidity. The artistic direction of Hogwarts Legacy still deserves a minimum of consideration for visual fidelity. Especially since its gameplay is far from nervous.

In this configuration, everything is played between the trio Loyalty, Performance and Balanced. Numerama plays with the Balanced mode, quite simply because it presents the best compromises. It is not drastically less attractive than the Loyalty mode, but still allows you to gain in comfort thanks to increased fluidity. Note that the Performance option gets away with the honors: the game is still very pretty when you focus on the framerate – which proves that the optimization is excellent (we still lose some details on the vegetation, less dense and detailed). We would tend not to recommend Loyalty mode when we have access to Balanced mode – unless we prefer a less fluid image (therefore more cinematic).

In addition to the display mode, Hogwarts Legacy: Hogwarts Legacy offers the possibility to adjust the HDR (if your television is compatible), to deactivate the limit in the maximum frame rate and to vary various parameters (motion blur, depth of field, chromatic aberration and film grain). In short, there is material to best personalize the visual experience.

I have a TV with a normal HDMI port

If I have an older television that is incompatible with the latest gaming technologies, then I only have three options:

• Fidelity (resolution and graphic quality);
• Fidelity with ray tracing (ray tracing in the menus);
• Performance (fluidity).

In this case, the choice will be either Loyalty mode or Performance mode. Our preference goes largely to the second option, for reasons of comfort for the eyes. There are cases where Loyalty mode is preferred (example: Horizon Forbidden West, before a patch that changed everything). This will not be the case here, since the developers have managed well.

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