It always makes the picture look all washed out and desaturated
This is a typical symptom when part of the HDR pipeline is working but not all of it. The HDR image is getting (poorly) converted to SDR before it’s being displayed.
Actual HDR is richer colors than SDR. Note that you basically need an OLED monitor to display it properly. On most LCD monitors that advertise “HDR” support, it won’t look very different.