Dell Alienware AW3426DW Best Settings Guide (Patreon)

Review here: https://tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/dell-alienware-aw3426dw

SDR setup

Use these settings if you want to run with the native colour space for a more vivid and colourful image. You can combine with our calibrated ICC profile which will clamp back to sRGB for colour aware applications though.

Preset mode = Custom Color

Game enhance mode = Off

Brightness = 53 for ~120 nits, but set this to whatever you find appropriate

Contrast = 75

RGB levels = 99, 99, 100

Hue = default

Saturation = default

Calibrated ICC profile is attached below

sRGB emulation

If you want to clamp to sRGB all the time for all applications, games etc then you can use the following settings. This is good for SDR content and offers a very good factory calibration along with a slightly different sRGB gamma config, but it will look less vivid compared with the native mode by design.

Preset mode = Creator > sRGB

Brightness = 53 for ~120 nits, but set this to whatever you find appropriate

Contrast = 75

Gamma = 2.2

DCI-P3 emulation

If you want to clamp to target the DCI-P3 Theater standard all the time then you can use the following settings. This is good for a somewhat reduced colour gamut compared with native, or for working with HDR content potentially although note that it is set to a 2.6 gamma (which you can change if you want) and a D63 white point (which you can't change). So it may or may not be relevant to your workflow.

Preset mode = Creator > DCI-P3

Brightness = 53 for ~120 nits, but set this to whatever you find appropriate

Contrast = 75

Gamma = default 2.6 if targeting DCI-P3 Theater, or could switch to 2.2 if you wanted

Gaming settings

Dark stabilizer = move this up to 1 for improved near-black luminance accuracy, but you can move it higher for lots of dark content if you prefer. None of the modes raise the black point which is good news. Experiment with it.

Console mode = On, if connecting any games console to the screen. This will ensure you have virtual 4K input support

Gamma = 2.2

Source tone map = you can enable this here if your console is sending an HDR signal and supports HGiG (not available if Dolby Vision is turned on - see below)

HDR setup

Smart HDR mode = Peak 1300 bright. We expect this will be the preferred option for most users, balancing overall brightness while still being able to reach the max 1300 nits peak.

Dolby Vision = if connected to a PC, turn this off unless you specifically know you've set up a proper DV workflow, which is difficult and rare. Otherwise all HDR signals from a PC tend to be detected as DV, incorrectly. If using an external device or console that supports DV, you can enable this and the screen will intelligently switch in to DV mode when it detects the relevant input signal.

General settings

DSC = leave this on

Sharpness = default

Input source > Auto select = On