The effectiveness of gauges on dashboards is an often debated topic.
The Dial Gauge is completely data driven. Which means not only must your measure (drives the needle) come from a dataset but also the different thresholds ranges must come from your dataset too.
There are no specific Format settings for the Dial Gauge, which does limit you a bit with what you can do with this gauge.
There are certain scenarios in which I think the dial gauge works well. The best scenario is the the same as its analog counterpart: when you are measuring a single continuous variable with a safe range and meaningful range differences. This scenario occurs less often than you might think.