When it’s time to replace my monitor, I cannot rest until I’ve tweaked it to my liking. It’s either too bright, has too warm of a color temp, and is overlaid with one too many post-processes—so don’t start working or gaming until you’ve made these tweaks.
7Adjust Image Settings
Before I do anything, I always adjust my monitors' brightness, contrast, gamma, and sharpness. These settings usually aren’t to my liking right out of the box. For starters, I work in an office with mood lightning, so I leave brightness at around 60 to 70%. With gamma and contrast, I like to balance the two to keep shadows dark and moody but not pitch black.
Personally, I like keeping sharpness around 30 to 40. This way, details are brought into focus without leaving behind artifacts. Additionally, I set anti-aliasing in my games to very low, as I tend not to like the blurriness it causes.
6Turn Off the Blue Light Mode
I have nothing against blue light mode (it can be quite handy for productivity). I previously used it for writing, but I’ve since adopted dark mode. For one, I never cared for the orange tint it cast over everything. It felt like I was constantly looking at my screen through sunglasses.
In addition, you may have to disable blue-light mode in the monitor’s on-screen display (OSD), though this varies by monitor.
I game on the same machine, and blue light mode tanks the visuals. Rather than constantly switch between profiles or disable blue light mode in my settings, I just axed it all together and stuck with dark mode. It’s way more convenient.
5Change the Color Temp
I obsess over color temperatures long after I’ve unboxed my new monitor. Since I play plenty of PC games, my goal is to find the right color temperature that works for as many games as possible. I prefer a cooler color temperature, around 5000K and above, as I typically play a lot of open-world games and RPGs. This temperature adds a nice shade of blue to the sky, making it look more natural.
For example, I’m not a fan of Horizon Forbidden West’s yellowish-red tone. With the help of a mod and a cooler color temp, lightning at night looks beautiful against the bluer skies. It doesn’t look so gray, either!
4Set Your Monitor Refresh Rate
A snazzy new monitor with a refresh rate beyond 60Hz will default to 60Hz until you go out of your way to change it. Your monitor’s refresh rate setting depends on your hardware. Got anIntel Core i9 14900Kand anRTX Nvidia 4070 Super, for example? Running games past 60 FPS is totally doable, so adjust your monitor’s refresh to a higher rate.
You canchange your display settings on Linux, but your experience will vary depending on your Linux distro.
3Change Energy Saving Settings
I’m all for saving energy, but I don’t like a monitor that automatically adjusts my brightness. Again, my brightness is set to a value that is just fine even when I draw the blinds and let natural light in. I don’t need my monitor over-correcting.
I also don’t care about energy-saving modes that reduce blue light, like LG’s Smart Energy Saving Function. What I do enable are sleep timers. I’m forgettable, and sometimes, I forget to turn off my monitor when I’m done for the night. Having a timer automatically shut it off after a couple of minutes of inactivity has greatly expanded the lifespan of my monitors. It’s also my way of saving energy, rather than relying on features like automatic brightness.
2Adjust Resolution and Arrangement
Depending on what you’re using your monitor for, you may want to double-check the resolution.Most monitors default to the highest resolution they can output, but that’s not always the best option and cancause resolution issues.If you’re a writer, setting the resolution to 4K doesn’t add anything worthwhile. However, for gaming, it sure does, provided you have the hardware to handle the extra pixels.
Make sure your resolution settings work with your hardware and are also suitable for your monitor configuration.
1Enable Game Mode
Since I play a myriad of genres, competitive and otherwise, enabling Game Mode to reduce input lag is paramount. If you’re big on first-person shooters, less input lag means your actions will play out sooner. My Vizio smart TV will automatically detect when a console is turned on and immediately switch over to Game Mode.
This also helps with motion blur. It’s already downright annoying in games, and monitors can compound the effect with post-processing. Game Mode will eliminate that, but you should also consider disabling (or reducing) motion blur in-game.
That’s it—once I’ve changed all these settings on a new monitor, I know it’s ready for a crash course in everything I do. It’s still touch-and-go for a week or two, but these settings, in particular, carry over from one monitor to another.
