LG forum: LG Flattron IPS 236

Hi, I've had this monitor for some time now, but have never been sure of how to calibrate it properly. One problem is that the "Generic PnP' driver Windows tries to install gives everything a very light, unsaturated look. At first everything looks horrible, even when turning brightness down, but the monitor still has gamma settings you can control (1.8, 2.0, 2.2, 2.4, and 2.6). I have it on 2.6 because that's the darkest but everything still looks washed out.

Normally I used LG's driver anyway (I think the one on their site is the same on the CD that's included for installation). The thing is, everything looks perhaps a little too dark, even at 2.2 gamma, a little over-saturated. It's hard to say and I thought perhaps I just wasn't adjusting the settings properly, but surely by now after playing with it so much I would have gotten it right.

Can anyone offer any advice here? I tend to prefer their mode settings (text or photo), which is another problem, perhaps the biggest, as that does add more contast and darkness to the overall image -- but it looks way too blue or foggy no matter how I tweak it in the User mode or RGB (if you know this monitor you know that it inexplicably doesn't allow you to get the same contrast levels as its movie, text and photo modes while in user mode).

The reason I don't necessarily want to stick with LG's driver is because that added lightness in the generic one actually makes some things look good. Pictures often look "OK" on them (not over-saturated, but kind of dull), but older games and movies often look better (I noticed this when playing Doom 1 that I didn't need to press F11 to affect the game's built in gamma settings). But you do get deeper blacks and stronger colors when using LG's driver, so not sure about what is better overall. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.