Last verified 2026-09-13 by ReviewGamers Editorial
Televisions ship configured for a showroom floor — bright, saturated, and full of processing designed to look impressive next to a competitor. Almost none of that helps when you are holding a controller.
Four settings do most of the work.
1. Game Mode — turn it on
This is the single most important setting and the one most often left off.
Game Mode disables the bulk of the television’s image processing. That processing is why a picture can look smooth and detailed in a shop and feel disconnected from your controller at home: each processing stage adds delay between the console’s output and the image appearing.
Turning it on will usually make the picture look slightly less processed. That is the point. You are trading post-processing for responsiveness, and for anything interactive that trade is correct.
If you change one thing, change this.
2. ALLM — let it do it for you
Auto Low Latency Mode lets a source device request that the display switch to its low-latency mode automatically.
With ALLM working, the television enters Game Mode when you start the console and returns to its normal picture mode for film and streaming. It removes the need to remember, which in practice is the difference between a setting being used and not.
Check it is enabled on both the television and the console.
3. VRR — if both ends support it
Variable refresh rate lets the display match the frame rate the console is actually producing rather than forcing a fixed cadence.
Console frame rates are frequently not locked, particularly in performance modes that target a range. Without VRR the result is tearing or judder; with it, the variation is much less visible.
Support depends on the display, the console, and sometimes the specific HDMI port. It is worth confirming rather than assuming.
4. The right HDMI port
This surprises people: not every HDMI port on a television is equal. Higher-bandwidth features are frequently supported on only one or two ports, and manufacturers rarely label this clearly on the set itself.
If you are not getting the refresh rate, resolution or VRR you expect, check which port you are using before concluding the console or cable is at fault. It is one of the most common causes of a feature silently not working.
What to turn off
Motion smoothing / interpolation. Invents intermediate frames. Adds latency, produces artefacts, and in games it is working against the frame rate you already have. Off.
Noise reduction. Designed for noisy broadcast sources. On a clean digital signal it removes fine detail. Off.
Dynamic contrast and auto brightness. Constantly adjusting the image based on content, which is distracting and unpredictable in games. Off.
Sharpness at maximum. Adds edge halos rather than detail. Most sets look best at or near the middle.
On HDR
If the display and the console both support HDR, run the console’s own HDR calibration. It exists because the correct settings depend on the specific display, and the console cannot know them otherwise.
If the television’s HDR is weak — an entry-tier implementation without local dimming — HDR may genuinely look worse than standard range. Trying both and preferring the better one is legitimate, not a failure to configure something properly.
The Australian wrinkle
Feature naming varies considerably between manufacturers, and Australian model numbers frequently differ from overseas ones. A guide written for a US model may name settings that do not exist on the AU equivalent, or describe features the local variant does not carry.
Work from your own set’s menus and its Australian support documentation rather than an overseas walkthrough for a similar-sounding model.
What we have not measured
We have not measured input lag, VRR behaviour or processing latency on any television. Input lag measurement requires a photodiode rig and the display in hand.
This page describes what the settings do and which ones matter, drawn from how the features are defined. It does not tell you how many milliseconds any specific set adds, because we have not measured it — and that figure is exactly the one that varies most between models.
