Controls and OSD

The OSD is accessed and navigated by using a four-way joystick behind the right side of the monitor. The joystick, or Navi Key as MSI calls it, is intuitive and extremely simple to use. You'll be navigating the menus like a champ from the very moment you explore them. To open the OSD, the Navi Key has to be pressed like a button. The same action is used to confirm your selection. If the Navi Key is pulled in any of four available directions without pressing it first, it will act as a shortcut for various monitor settings, such as input selection, brightness, color profiles, and so on. Those quick settings can be chosen manually, which is yet another great idea and a terrific way to make the Navi Key as useful as it can possibly be. Overall, the controls of the MSI Oculux NXG251R are fantastic. If anyone from the company is reading this, I strongly urge you to continue using this concept with all of your future monitors.


The main menu of the OSD is split into five categories and shows which settings are currently selected—screen resolution, refresh rate, picture profile, G-Sync activity (if it "Normal", G-Sync is off), and active video input.


The Gaming menu gives us access to various factory-tailored picture profiles (Standard, FPS, Racing, RTS, RPG, and two custom ones, Profile 1 and Profile 2). Here, we can also boost the black color (Off, Level 1, Level 2, Level 3) to make the darker parts of the virtual battlefield brighter, which could help you spot your enemies at the expense of picture quality and contrast. Next, we have the Overdrive level selection (Normal, Fast, or Fastest) followed by the ULMB toggle and ULMB pulse-width selection (both options will be grayed out and unavailable until you manually turn off G-Sync and set the refresh rate to a value between 100–144 Hz). The Refresh Rate option works in conjunction with G-Sync and simply shows the current refresh rate of the monitor in a select corner. The Alarm Clock option gives you exactly that—a persistent on-screen notification with a countdown. There are three preset values (15, 30, and 45 minutes) that can manually be edited to anything from 00:00 to 99:59 minutes, and it's possible to select the corner of the screen the timer will be displayed in. The Screen Assistance menu is where you'll find your virtual crosshairs, a grand total of six of them. These can be useful for first person shooters which have weapons with poor or no crosshairs at all. Not once did I feel the need to use these, but hey, they're here if you want them. Finally, Eye Saver is actually a blue light filter—if you turn this option on, the picture will turn yellowish (warmer), and your eyes won't strain as much, especially at night.


The Image menu is fairly barebones. You can only adjust the brightness and contrast, turn Dynamic Contrast on and off (it's best left turned off), and adjust the color temperature. The color temperature menu is accessible only if one of two custom picture profiles (Profile 1 and Profile 2) are selected. There are three color temperature presets to choose from—your standard Cool, Normal, and Warm—but you can also manually adjust the gain of the red, green, and blue channel.


The Input Source menu is where you, wouldn't you know it, switch between HDMI and DisplayPort video input.


The Navi Key menu is where you can assign various quick settings to the Navi Key. In other words, you can decide what will happen when you push the Navi Key in one of four directions without clicking it first. Available options are Brightness, Gaming Mode, Screen Assistance, Alarm Clock, Input Source, and Refresh Rate. Sadly, there's no way to assign the Eye Saver function to the Navi Key.


In the Setting menu, you can change the OSD language, transparency and timeout, activate or deactivate DisplayPort and HDMI Deep Sleep, select if the RGB-backlit LED strip on the rear will be on or off, and reset the picture settings.