OSD Setup & Calibration
Pressing any key on the XR382CQK’s control panel brings up a small, quick menu. The top two slots are user-programmable. To select a picture mode, press the first key. There are eight presets, but only User allows adjustments to picture parameters. In fact, making any change in any other mode automatically puts the monitor in User. You can save settings to one of three memories if you wish. Press the joystick for the full OSD.
The menu system is fairly comprehensive, but you will notice a couple of omissions. We’ll highlight them as we go. First up is the Picture menu, which offers brightness and contrast sliders along with a five-step low blue-light feature, adaptive contrast, black boost (low-end gamma), and Super Sharpness. The latter has only a subtle effect and can improve detail but should be used sparingly to avoid edge-enhancement. Our preference was to leave it on zero.
The Color menu has three color temp presets plus a user mode that features a two-point white balance adjustment. We only had to tweak the gains on our sample. Note that they start at center-range, which means you won’t give up contrast when calibrating. Any changes to the bias controls were very coarse and didn’t help improve accuracy. You also get gamma presets which, in our tests, rode both sides of the 2.2 line without settling right on the mark. 2.4 is the sweet spot for this display. On the second screen, you’ll find saturation and hue sliders for all six colors. There was no need for these in our case; color is pretty good as is.
The Audio menu has only volume and DTS on/off options. You’ll want the extra depth provided by the DTS tuning, so we suggest leaving it on.
The Gaming menu has an overdrive option, but it only works in normal mode. It is grayed out when FreeSync is active. It didn’t have a negative impact on our particular gaming experience, but those dealing with slower framerates might miss the motion blur reduction it provides. Of course, more FPS is always the better solution. Also here are three aiming reticles, which are handy for first-person novices. The third one reminds us of the head-on view of a Viper fighter from Battlestar Galactica.
The OSD menu has the expected timeout, transparency, and language options, but you’ll find a fourth field here called FPS Num. Yes, it’s a frame counter, and no, we don’t know why it wouldn’t be in the gaming menu. It places a large yellow number in the upper-right corner of the screen.
The final menu, System, has the rest of the XR382CQK’s options, including DisplayPort version, daisy chaining, aspect, PIP/PBP, and the like. You can change the LED glow settings under Ambient Light. And the USB 3.0 ports can be left powered in standby mode for charging purposes. You can also set the video inputs to automatically search for active signals.
To access the signal info and reset functions, press the key next to the “i” icon on the screen. It will indicate FreeSync operation but only when games are running. And if you want to reset your XR382CQK to its factory state, you can do that here.
Calibration
| Acer XR382CQK Calibration Settings | |
|---|---|
| Picture Mode | User |
| Brightness 200cd/m2 | 61 |
| Brightness 120cd/m2 | 30 |
| Brightness 100cd/m2 | 23 |
| Brightness 80cd/m2 | 16 |
| Brightness 50cd/m2 | 5 |
| Contrast | 44 |
| Gamma | 2.4 |
| Color Temp User | Red 53, Green 51, Blue 48 |
The Standard mode provides decent color accuracy, but we found better results after making a few tweaks. First off, you’ll need to lower the contrast slider a bit to see all the highlight detail. The XR382CQK clips by default. None of the gamma presets tracks 2.2 precisely so we opted for 2.4, which offers decent contrast in the mid-tones without making the picture too dark. Finally, we suggest trying our RGB settings to get the white point spot-on.
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