Controls and OSD

The Gigabyte M34WQ utilizes a four-way joystick, which also works as a button for OSD navigation and monitor setup. Use it to quickly access various settings—factory picture profiles, speaker volume, virtual crosshairs, input selection, black level, and so on—and dive into the main menu to browse through various options broken down into six main categories. As far as onboard monitor controls go, those on the Gigabyte M34WQ are quite good. Using the joystick is exceptionally intuitive, and the OSD layout solid.


After diving into the OSD settings, you'll find yourself in the Gaming section. This is where Gigabyte grouped gaming-related technologies, such as overdrive (speeds up pixel transitions) and Aim Stabilizer Sync (backlighting strobing to achieve a "1 millisecond-like" response time at the expense of picture brightness; this new version of the tech can be combined with adaptive synchronization, which wasn't the case previously), Black Equalizer (boosts dark areas), and AMD FreeSync Premium, which turns adaptive synchronization on and off and works on AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards.


In the Picture submenu, you first have to select a picture profile you want to edit. The factory picture profiles are called Standard, FPS, RTS/RPG, Movie, Reader, and sRGB. Finally, there are three fully customizable profiles (Custom 1, Custom 2, and Custom 3) that let you change every picture quality related setting on offer, including the 6-axis color, which is grayed out and inaccessible in all factory picture quality profiles. Most options found here are what you'd expect from a decent PC monitor: brightness, contrast, color vibrance, sharpness, gamma, and color temperature (Cool, Normal, Warm, and User Define).


The Display submenu offers input selection, RGB range selection (0–255, 16–235, or Auto), and the Overscan feature, which slightly enlarges the image to hide the outermost edges.


In the PIP/PBP menu, we can select the Picture-in-Picture and Picture-by-Picture signal sources, size and location of the secondary PiP window, swap the chosen signal inputs around, and change audio sources if both inputs are outputting sound.


In the System submenu, we can set the built-in speaker volume, adjust the OSD display time, size, and transparency, change the quick settings (options accessible by pulling the joystick in any of the four directions without accessing the main menu), turn off the front-facing LED, and so on.


The OSD also lets us select the interface language and save our settings in three different "slots."