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A quick press of the joystick turns the monitor on.
Pulling the joystick down calls up the Picture Modes. These include Standard, FPS, RTS, RPG, Racing, Cinema, Professional, and Night.
Pushing the joystick left enables contrast controls.
Pushing the joystick right lets you manually select the video input, if you have more than one computer attached.
Pulling the joystick up lets you adjust brightness.
Push the joystick in and you get to the Main Menu, with the Image subsection open by default. This gives you combined access to the Picture Modes, Brightness, Contrast, and Sharpness. Color Temperature options include Cool, Normal, Warm and Custom, which lets you choose Red, Green and Blue values separately. Gamma levels include 2.0, 2.2 (the default), 2.4 and (strangely) Off. If you scroll further down, and you can alter Saturation, Response Time (Normal, Fast, Fastest), Refresh Rate display in the upper left or right corner, and turn MPRT on or off. The latter improves the perception of motion clarity when gaming. You can also vary the level of Low BlueLight and Black Equalizer, as well as force aspect ratio to 4:3 or 16:9.
With most of the functions in the Image section, the OSD Setting section merely lets you choose the menu Language, Transparency level, and the Time Out duration after which the menu disappears.
The Other Setting section lets you toggle the FreeSync Premium adaptive system, turn the LED on the front off or on, and control whether the video source is detected automatically or set manually. You can mute the audio and change the volume of attached headphones, as well as resetting everything to default.
There's a section for changing the video source in the main menu, which seems a bit superfluous when there is no option to remove it from quick direct access via the joystick.
The final section simply presents Information about the current video signal input and monitor firmware.
With your PC connected to the monitor via USB as well, you can install NZXT's CAM software to enable control over the screen's settings from your Windows desktop. Not every option is included, but all the most important ones are, making this a genuinely useful ease-of-use capability.
Overall, while there's a decent level of control in the OSD, we would have liked to have seen a few more games-specific features considering the price and how this is the main function of the Canvas 25F. You will get along without them, but some high-end gaming screens add bonus capabilities such as hardware crosshairs. Otherwise, this is a competent OSD with a reasonably intuitive layout, and CAM makes adjusting settings very easy.
