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OSD Setup & Calibration
Pressing the joystick brings up the full OSD. Additional keys provide direct access to GameVisual (picture modes) and GamePlus. A cancel button will remove not only the menu but any reticles, timers, FPS counters, or the alignment guide if you have them up.
GameVisual has the same six picture modes we’ve seen on other Asus gaming monitors. Racing is the default, and it isn’t too bad in terms of accuracy, but our measurements showed sRGB to be the better choice. That mode is locked at around 195cd/m2 and can’t be adjusted, but it has the lowest grayscale, gamma, and color errors of all the presets.
The VG245H has a Blue Light Filter like most modern screens. Setting zero means it’s off and each level, 1-4, increases the amount of compensation. It works well at reducing fatigue when working in apps that have white backgrounds like a word processor or spreadsheet. You’ll want to turn it off for games and video though.
The Color menu has a decent set of calibration controls, though they’re not all available in all modes. Racing offers everything except Saturation, which is fine for our purposes. sRGB grays out all image options including brightness.
The Color Temp sub-menu has three presets plus a user mode, which works with good precision. We were able to reduce grayscale errors to a very low level. There is no gamma control so we had to fix a few issues using the contrast control, which is set too high by default. We’ll explain this in more detail on page four.
The Image menu offers a few picture tweaks like Trace Free (overdrive) and VividPixel, which adds some edge enhancement. Trace Free has five levels of operation of which 80 (out of 100) represents the sweet spot between blur reduction and ghosting. You’ll need to scroll down to the second portion of this menu to find the FreeSync control, which is turned off by default. You won’t get any other indication of its status either by an OSD message or the color of the power LED. Turn it on here, reboot the monitor, then enable it in AMD Catalyst to complete the process. It works over a range of 40-75Hz.
Remaining system options cover things like OSD language and timeout, DDC/CI, power LED, and factory reset. Signal info is limited to resolution and refresh rate. You also get the current picture mode and input in every screen. It would be really helpful to know when FreeSync is enabled and that info is missing.
Finally, the VG245H offers four settings memory slots. This is a feature that should be on every computer monitor regardless of price or purpose. We’re glad to see it included on this value-oriented display.
Calibration
Racing mode provides a good starting point for calibration. However, if you don’t plan to make adjustments, choose the sRGB mode instead. It locks out all image controls and fixes output at 195cd/m2 but it is fairly accurate. For our tests, we calibrated the Racing mode and achieved good results after reducing the contrast slider and tweaking the RGB controls. Here are the settings we used for our review.
| Asus VG245H Calibration Settings | |
|---|---|
| GameVisual | Racing |
| Brightness 200cd/m2 | 67 |
| Brightness 120cd/m2 | 32 |
| Brightness 100cd/m2 | 23 |
| Brightness 80cd/m2 | 15 |
| Brightness 50cd/m2 | 3 |
| Contrast | 69 |
| Color Temp User | Red 93, Green 100, Blue 81 |
GamePlus
The VG245H includes the same GamePlus features we saw on the PG248Q. You get a selection of reticles, four countdown timers, an FPS counter and an alignment guide. None of the features can be used together. You have to choose one. Once activated, the different elements can be moved around with the joystick. To cancel, just press the key below the stick. The FPS counter is always a small black box with white text, so you’ll probably want to relegate it to a corner. The alignment guide is helpful for both horizontal and vertical multi-screen installations.
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