OSD Setup And Calibration
OSD Tour
Pressing the joystick brings up the main menu, and it is fairly comprehensive but missing a couple of things too.
First up is the Overclock control. The PG348Q runs at 75Hz natively but can be bumped up to 100Hz in 5Hz increments. A reboot is necessary after any change to refresh rate. We had no issues running our sample at 100Hz in all tests.
Game Visual includes six picture modes. Racing is the default and probably the best bet for users who don’t choose to calibrate. sRGB provides similar accuracy but locks out all adjustments and fixes brightness at 170cd/m2.
The Blue Light Filter has four levels of operation plus off. It will warm the color temperature to prevent eye fatigue along with reducing brightness a bit. We feel the same thing can be accomplished with proper image adjustments during calibration.
The Color menu controls brightness and contrast along with color saturation in some modes. You also get three fixed color temperature presets plus a user setting with RGB sliders. There is no gamma control, but if you adjust contrast properly, it isn’t needed. See our calibration notes below for full details.
The Image menu contains only the PG348Q’s overdrive control. The options are Off, Normal or Extreme. Normal provides good reduction of motion blur without visible ghosting. Extreme is more aggressive, but we could see white trails behind most moving objects.
The Input Select menu does just what is indicated. It is also the only way to change sources. Obviously for G-Sync operation and high refresh rates, you’ll need to use DisplayPort. HDMI supports native 3440x1440 signals up to 50Hz.
The OSD is available in 21 languages, can be positioned anywhere on the screen, and has a max timeout of two minutes. You can also adjust its transparency. Key Lock will turn off the bezel keys to protect your settings. Light In Motion refers to the pattern that comes from the PG348Q’s base. It has three brightness levels, or you can turn it off. You can view signal information here as well, although everything you need to know is always displayed in the upper-right corner of the OSD menu.
If you want to return the monitor to its factory settings, choose All Reset. Enabling Deep Sleep will reduce power consumption in standby mode.
GamePlus
Like all Asus gaming monitors, the PG348Q includes GamePlus features. You get four different aiming reticules, a countdown timer and an fps indicator. You can only use a single option at a time. The fps counter doesn’t have a black box around it like we saw in the two MG-series monitors reviewed here recently. You can move it around the screen with the joystick. The reticules and timers are also moveable.
Calibration
Many Asus gaming monitors require no calibration in the Racing mode, but we found a gamma anomaly in the PG348Q that needed some attention. Adjusting the white balance produced excellent grayscale tracking but did not address the gamma problem. Our solution was to lower the Contrast slider. That took care of the issue, and overall dynamic range was not significantly affected. It’s important to make this change, because it also influences color saturation tracking and color luminance. You’ll see how it all works on page four. Please try our recommended settings below to optimize your PG348Q.
| Asus ROG Swift PG348Q Calibration Settings | |
|---|---|
| Game Visual | Racing |
| Brightness 200cd/m2 | 60 |
| Brightness 120cd/m2 | 32 |
| Brightness 100cd/m2 | 25 |
| Brightness 80cd/m2 | 18 |
| Brightness 50cd/m2 | 8 |
| Contrast | 43 |
| Color Temp User | Red 97, Green 100, Blue 100 |