AW2721D, brightness adjustment does not work

Question

I just received a new Alienware 27 Gaming Monitor AW2721D monitor to use with my Alienware Aurora Ryzen R10,  AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 8GB GDDR6.  The issue I have is with the AW2721D monitor.  I am unable to manually adjust the brightness using the On Screen Display joystick.  When selecting the menu option Brightness/Contrast the Brightness option is greyed out and using the joystick it jumps to contrast and I am unable to toggle the joystick up or down to select the Brightness option.  All other menu selections work using the OSD except for the Brightness control.  As a work around option to adjusting the monitors brightness level I have been using the Brightness control in the Nvidia Control Panel since I am unable to adjust it using the OSD Joystick.  Just wondering if this is a defect in this particular monitor and if anyone else has had the same issue.

palmprince · Accepted Answer

Thanks for your response but I just figured it out. When HDR is turned on in Windows 10 the monitors OCD shows the Brightness adjustment greyed out and the Ambient light sensor greyed out. When I turn HDR off in Windows 10 the monitors OCD will allow me to adjust the brightness and the Ambient light sensor can now be turned off or on.

Vanadiel · Answer

The online manual for this monitor will explain the below options in more detail: Monitor manual

Can you press the shortcut key to directly access the Brightness/Contrast sliders?

Can you try a different preset mode?

Can you make sure the ambient light sensor is in the off mode

If all of the above fails, can you perform a Factory reset

As a last option, can you run the monitors built-in diagnostics?

r72019 · Answer

The brightness control might get greyed out if you have the monitor set to automatically adjust brightness.  To disable that feature, go to the OSD Menu, down to 'others', then under ambient light sensor, put it toff.

palmprince · Answer

Thanks for your response. I went to the OSD menu and toggled down to 'OTHERS' and I noticed that the ambient light sensor is greyed out and shows to be set to 'off'  I am unable to select the ambient light sensor to turn it 'on' or 'off' as it also is greyed out like the brightness control.  I had not noticed that before as I had not planned on using that feature.  Thanks for your help

palmprince · Answer

Can you press the shortcut key to directly access the Brightness/Contrast sliders? Yes the shortcut key works but the brightness selection is greyed out. I can adjust contrast only.

Can you try a different preset mode? Yes I can select each of the different preset mode but in all of them the brightness selection is greyed out.

Can you make sure the ambient light sensor is in the off mode. The ambient light sensor shows to be in the OFF mode but interestingly the ambient light sensor selection is greyed out like the brightness selection and I am unable to select it to turn it off or on.

If all of the above fails, can you perform a Factory reset. Yes I have lost count now on how many time I have tried doing the Factory reset.

As a last option, can you run the monitors built-in diagnostics? Yes I ran the diagnostics successfully without encountering any issues.

Vanadiel · Answer

Can you try a different video cable, and a different port? (DP, HDMI) It's strange things are greyed out.

Vanadiel · Answer

Glad you got it solved. Will keep that in mind in case someone else runs into that issue. I did not directly see this mentioned in the manual, but I might have overlooked it.

Elijah Rausch · Answer

@palmprince​  thank you

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