Controls & OSD

The OSD can be accessed by using four cascading buttons placed below the bezel at the bottom, on the right side. The buttons general functions are marked on the bezel itself. There's also a fifth button here, one that's used to power the monitor on and off. As you can imagine, you'll end up pressing it by accident, which drove me crazy. Before you open the OSD, the first button will switch between video inputs, the second will control the volume of the built-in speakers, and the third will activate ULMB (Ultra Low-Motion Blur), assuming you lowered the refresh rate to 120 Hz and turned off G-Sync in the video driver. More on that in the gaming-performance section of this review.

Because of the way the buttons are implemented, the overall user experience isn't the greatest, which is putting it mildly. The OSD itself looks a bit archaic and doesn't offer some of the options one might expect, like factory-made picture profiles and the ability to display the current refresh rate/framerate. It also doesn't display the exact values of various gamma settings, opting instead for "Gamma1", "Gamma2", and "Gamma3", which leaves you to figure out on your own which one you like best, or you can take a look at the manual and find out that the exact gamma values are 2.2, 2.0, and 2.4 respectively.


The Luminance menu is where most of the action happens. Here, we can control the contrast, brightness, gamma (Gamma1 is 2.2, Gamma2 is 2.0, and Gamma3 is 2.4), Overdrive (Off, Weak, Light, Medium, and Strong), and two settings AOC calls Game Color and Shadow Control. Game Color actually adjusts the monitor's color saturation and is best left at the default value of 100. Shadow Control has a scale of 0-3. The higher you go, the brighter the dark tones become. In theory, this could make it easier for you to spot your enemies in dark areas. In practice, it destroys any subtlety and refinement in darker scenes and makes everything look washed out. I'd stick with 0. To see how various Overdrive settings impact pixel response, jump ahead to the gaming performance portion of the review.


The Color Setup menu lets us adjust the color temperature (User, sRGB, Cool, Warm, and Normal). If you want to adjust the RGB channels manually, you'll need to switch this setting to User. That will allow you to adjust the RGB channels in a 0-100 range. At factory settings, the selected color temperature is Warm. I'm pretty sure most users will keep it that way as it offers the punchiest (although not the most accurate) colors. The Bluelight option essentially acts as a blue light filter. It can be adjusted from 0-20. Blue light has the shortest wavelength and highest energy, and your eyes aren't very good at blocking it. It can lead to eye strain, especially during prolonged sessions in front of a monitor, so if that's something you struggle with, you can reduce its amount by increasing this value. Of course, the more blue light you filter, the yellower (warmer) the picture becomes.


The OSD Setup menu is pretty self-explanatory. The Break Reminder option, if turned on, displays an on-screen warning for each hour of continuous monitor use. Or, to quote the user manual: "Break Reminder if the user continuely work for mare than 1 hurs". Come again?


The Extra menu lets us reset the monitor to its factory defaults, overclock the panel from 144 Hz to 165 Hz - a process that's done in seconds and goes through without a single hitch - as well as activate or deactivate Deep Sleep (keep it on) and ULMB (keep it off). The ULMB option will be grayed out until you lower the refresh rate to 120 Hz and turn off G-Sync.