Controls and OSD

The ASRock Phantom Gaming PG34WQ15R3A uses a practical four-way joystick, which also works as a button for OSD navigation and monitor setup. It's located behind the panel on the right side of the monitor. The same joystick is used to access the speaker volume and input selection quick menus, which is done by pulling it to the left and right. The quick menu functions cannot be changed, nor can any of them be assigned to the remaining two "directions" (up and down). There are three buttons below the joystick, used to quickly access the picture profiles and panel brightness, as well as to turn the monitor on and off.

The overall experience of using the OSD is decent. The 4-way joystick is my favorite way of maneuvering through the OSD. The menu structure is somewhat confusing, with some options being in menus where you wouldn't expect them, but ASRock's monitor offers a fairly limited number of options, which simplifies things. Some of the options you might find missing are virtual crosshairs, timers, and framerate counters, but you don't even get more important stuff, such as gamma or black level control.

The OSD is split into five sections: Luminance, Image Setup, Color Temp., OSD Setup, and Extra.


The Luminance menu is where you can adjust the brightness and contrast, swap between several factory picture presets (Standard, Text, Internet, Game, Movie, Sports), and toggle the dynamic contrast and, oddly, MPRT (Moving Picture Response Time) on and off.


The Image Setup menu is where you can toggle the Overdrive, FreeSync Premium adaptive synchronization, and HDR on and off. The MPRT toggle should be here and not in the Luminance menu, but ASRock seems to think otherwise.


The Color Temp. menu is where you can control color temperature, adjust the individual RGB channels, and activate the blue light filtering.


The OSD Setup menu lets you adjust the OSD position, timeout, and language.


The Extra menu is used to select the active input (if for some reason you don't do it through the quick menu), reset the monitor, toggle the DDC/CI interface, and get some basic information about the monitor, such as the currently selected resolution and refresh rate.