Materials look very dark in Material Editor preview

Strange. Did you change any other option for the material? What if you try with a brand new material and leave it to default? Do you still get the issue?

UE4’s PBR workflow uses Albedo + Metallic + Roughness. Specular is something related to the old way of defining materials (Specular/Glossness workflow) and typically doesn’t need to be touched in a PBR workflow. Check here: