Well yes, the ABL is obviously in effect at high brightness settings since the brightness drops from 790 nits with a 10% window pattern to 150 nits full-screen.ABL is always in effect in bright scenes. It's a known issue especially for those sensitive to it. Watching a hockey game exposes this greatly. It's why when you professionally calibrate, just like for Plasma, you don't use 100% windows but 20%.
The dropoff in luminosity on rtings even indicates this from which you linked:
The question I have is whether the ABL was still in effect when the display was calibrated to 150 nits or less, rather than when it is set to its maximum brightness.
Because everything I had read online up to this point said that it was not in effect below 150 nits, and you're suggesting that is not the case.
So if it was calibrated to 100 nits (SDR spec) you're saying that it would still dim the picture below that if the image was bright?
If it was still enabled below 150 nits, I'm glad that they're fixing a stupid decision, and disappointed that this is yet another area of performance that OLED owners have been misrepresenting.
Trying to discuss issues with OLED now is like trying to discuss issues about the Kuros back when they were still being sold.
People refused to admit that they were anything less than perfect until something better finally arrived. (better = deeper black level on AV sites, apparently nothing else matters)