What Your Monitor Settings Really Mean (and How to Change Them)
Most of us will probably accept most computer settings as they are, not deviating too much from the default configuration that comes out of the box, but sometimes a little research can help you get more out of your hardware. This is certainly true when it comes to monitor settings: it depends on your monitor, of course, but you may have more room to experiment than you thought. If you’re going to be spending a lot of time looking at a screen, it’s important to set it up to work best for you.
Whether you’re looking to get the most out of the display you have or are simply confused by some of the options you’re faced with, we’ll walk you through the key monitor settings you need to know about, both those you’ll find in Windows and macOS, as well as those which are available on your real monitor.
Windows and MacOS
You can find your monitor settings in Windows by going to Settings in the Start menu, then selecting System and Display . Here you’ll get the basics: First of all, screen resolution , which is simply the number of pixels displayed. Look for the Recommended option in the drop-down list, as this will be the native resolution for your monitor—the one at which text and graphics look sharpest.
If you’re using a high-quality, high-resolution monitor, using the native resolution can make Windows text and menus appear tiny, which is where scaling comes in. Use it to scale elements on your screen without affecting the resolution. If your monitor supports this feature, you can also choose between Landscape and Portrait screen orientation , allowing you to use your monitor vertically if necessary.
Most monitors now support High Dynamic Range, or HDR, mode, which can be enabled by clicking Use HDR . HDR can do wonders in terms of contrast and color range – essentially meaning that detail in very dark and very light areas of the screen remains visible and isn’t lost. Imagine a person standing behind you in bright sunlight: HDR will mean that this person will not be just a black shadow.
Go to the Extended Display screen and you’ll be able to set the refresh rate if your monitor supports multiple refresh rates: This is a key monitor characteristic, measured in Hertz (Hz), that tells you how often per second the display refreshes. myself. A higher refresh rate usually means smoother games and movies because you see more frames per second.
On macOS, you can get to your monitor settings by going to the Apple menu and choosing System Preferences , then Displays. As with Windows, you’ll see a selection of resolutions represented in pixels – the monitor’s native resolution will be labeled as “Default” and this should give you the best experience.
Then there’s Color Profile , which essentially controls how the monitor handles colors and contrast (thank you, you might think there are more ways to do this). This setting is most useful to creative professionals who need full color accuracy in their work – most of the rest of us won’t need to change this setting, but you can certainly experiment with what’s available.
The rest of the settings here correspond to those we previously reviewed for Windows. You can specify the refresh rate (how quickly the screen refreshes every second) and enable HDR (for better control of extreme colors and contrast). Finally, the Rotate feature allows you to rotate your monitor to portrait or landscape orientation, if your monitor supports it.
Built-in settings
These are Windows and macOS settings, but you can also find many options available on your monitor. Obviously this will vary from monitor to monitor, so you may need to check online to see exactly what your model is capable of and how you access the settings (usually this is done using buttons on the monitor itself).
In addition to the basic brightness and contrast settings, you’ll often see presets that will have different names, such as Movie or Game . These presets let you adjust settings like contrast, color saturation, and sharpness to work best in certain scenarios. . The script should be clear from the name of the preset, but you can always find it if necessary.
By the way, there is nothing wrong with the standard setting being enabled by default – it will work well for most use cases. However, if you are doing something specific, you may get better results using a preset. If necessary, you can always further customize the presets by adjusting individual color and contrast parameters yourself.
One of the custom settings you’ll see on some monitors is Gamma , which controls the smoothness of the black to white transition and affects the balance between the lightest and darkest areas of the frame. There may also be a Color Temperature setting, which affects how “warm” or “cool” colors appear on the screen.
Gaming monitors often have something called an Overdrive feature (although it may have a different name). This enhances the monitor’s ability to transition between colors and can reduce ghosting (or color trailing) in fast-paced games with a lot of movement. However, this can also cause other noticeable artifacts, so it’s best to tweak this on a game-by-game basis, depending on your personal preferences.
You may also see mention of Nvidia G-Sync or AMD FreeSync, features that synchronize your monitor’s refresh rate with the number of frames your graphics card is outputting each second: with this option enabled, you should see less stuttering and screen tearing (where two halves of a frame don’t match up). Depending on the monitor, it has a variety of other names, so look for anything that mentions “sync” or “variable refresh rate.”
Finally, don’t neglect the settings of your applications and especially games. Most games will have a set of settings that you can adjust to control your monitor’s resolution, refresh rate, latency (the delay between your input and the screen’s response) and frame sync settings – these will vary depending on the game and monitor, but they should be labeled as such so that they are easy to understand.