Muscles around eyes are still tensing badly. After a couple of hours I can't keep my eyes open as the lid muscles are dysfunctional and squeezing my eye shut. Forcing through this phase causes more problem that only manifest the next day. Heavy pain in the muscles around the eye that takes days to fade. My pupils are huge as well and that seems to correlate well with my symptoms.

I need to go back to the plasma until my eyes heal up because I have been pushing through. Switching to Windows 7 did make a big difference though and for a while I thought I had actually found a fix that would last.

My rankings are now:

Panasonic ST60 (plasma, would be perfect except it has extremely high input lag. no good for multiplayer games at all) -> BenQ EW2440L -> BenQ EW2750ZL (too bright) -> Some Dell CCFL -> BenQ GW2760HS (way too bright) ------------> iPhone 6s (completely useless can trigger bad headaches quickly, I will not look at it for even a few seconds)

    KM No, I didn't buy it yet... Sorry, I'm still using MacBook Pro Retina. By now the Macbook looks bearable (at the brightness of 6/16).

      degen Honestly, I highly doubt it has anything to do with the monitor and a lot more to do with what is driving the monitor. Video card, video driver, OS display settings

          ensete

          Many people have been 100% cured by switching displays. PWM has been gone over to death here but we tend to forget that so many people switched to a PWM-free display, were fine, and never posted again here or in the Apple thread.

          All of those things you mentioned are important for those of us who still have symptoms. After all this time all we basically still know is 'Intel graphics are bad, and use Windows 7, here are some techy theories why that's so'.

          In that case changing display's is one of the only variables we can affect.

              degen If it helps, great, but I suspect changing a monitor simply alters the output of the offering device, which is the video display subsystem itself, and so doesn't actually fix the underlying problem. Who knows

                I purchased GW2760HS and EW2440L based on feedback from this forum. I love them! The EW2440L is more flexible in terms of adjusting the brightness and contrast levels.

                14 days later
                4 days later

                degen I guess I was wrong on this. I am using AMA on "Premium" setting for some days now and it is not causing more eye strain.

                    KM I'm back to using the EW2440L after a break. It's still the best non-plasma display I have and the only display practical for doing office work or input lag sensitive gaming.

                    The ghosting is insane without using AMA so I would probably use it myself anyway even if it did add a bit to the eyestrain.

                    Wish I had something new to add but at least I am functioning, sort of. Now I'm just worrying about getting a back-up GPU.

                    • KM replied to this.
                        8 days later

                        I am so confused at why the muscles around my eye get so tensed. The light doesn't seem offensive in any way and I don't have any pain. Eventually though I can barely keep my left eye (worse side) open as it feels like it is being squeezed very hard. Other muscles in my face and the side of my head will tense up as well, more so on the left side as well.

                        Persists for a long time after too.

                        • JTL replied to this.

                          It is. It's manageable however. I just wish I knew the cause. The only thing that was been suggested that I haven't tried is ICC profile. Even with all my complaining this is my best setup and would highly reccomend it to those who are sensitive to brightness, PWM, dithering, GPU, and OS.

                          @Slacor It could be useful to have the ability to do a short signature to give a quick tldr of posters sensitives and best setup. What do you think?

                            degen The ultimate root cause is a brain issue. Your brain (and my brain, and most people who post here's brains) are receiving an input from our eye down the optical nerve to the visual; processing center of the brain, where it is being misinterpreted. That misinterpretation is causing nuerons to fire, which in your case (and in most of our cases) causing a muscle response in the muscles around our eyes. It's not a well studied phenomenon in the realm of eco lighting or screen displays (there's a LOT of money in pushing CFL and LED lighting in particular). The closest well studied phenomenon that is related is epilepsy.

                            That's why there's no real "cure" for this condition. You just try to find a workaround and stick with it as long as you can

                              degen It could be useful to have the ability to ...

                              I would recommend starting a thread focusing on that tagged with Meta so others could discuss whether it would be worth it or not. Then I'd see if it's possible currently.

                                  24 days later

                                  degen Now I bought the EW2740L. It's at least as good as the EW2440L, if not better because I use them at 0% brightness but 50% contrast and so I have a picture with rich colors. Out of 3 EW2740L monitors I bought I had to send the 3rd one back, because I think it's not as good as the others both in terms of eye strain and also technically (hissing noise when active). The others are good, I have them for 2-3 weeks now. It's really hard to buy them in new untouched condition. All of them were sold as "new", but one could clearly see that 2 of them had been opened and repaired (probably by authorized service stations). I looked into the "service menu" of all devices (hold Power + 2nd button from the right) and they all claimed to have the same panel, same scaler, same firmware, and a reset "Monitor On Time". Manufactured May 2015.
                                  So if there's anyone else who not only suffers from PWM but also from monitors' light intensity, those monitor series, but maybe preferrably the EW2740L, is a clear recommendation. It's a shame BenQ don't build such low brightness monitors anymore.

                                    8 days later

                                    Hey, God bless you all here I am one of you guys as well having the same eye problems with basically almost every single computer monitors/phones I've tried giving me trouble

                                    Just want to ask a few questions...

                                    Is it this one that you guys are talking about that is working well?

                                    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FYKX0DA/ref=twister_B00WO1H93Y?_encoding=UTF8&th=1

                                    another question:

                                    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MS09LQX/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

                                    ^ that is the monitor I've been looking at to buy but I was wondering why no one else has mentioned it here. It has auto-brightness adjustments and it's PWM free as well. Is it no good?

                                    • JTL and KM replied to this.

                                      ctsai89 I've used it (the one that is the title of thread), works fine for me, but sometimes the issue may be moreso related to the video card then the monitor.

                                        ctsai89 I can't see the monitor pictures you posted. Just some Amazon ads. Could you post URLs instead?

                                        • JTL replied to this.

                                            KM

                                            Here they are

                                            https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FYKX0DA https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MS09LQX

                                            Edit: What the f#ck, why is the embed turning them into ads?!

                                              @Slacor

                                              <div data-s9e-mediaembed="amazon" style="display:inline-block;width:100%;max-width:120px"><div style="overflow:hidden;position:relative;padding-bottom:200%"><iframe allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" style="border:0;height:100%;left:0;position:absolute;width:100%" src="//rcm-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&amp;bc1=FFFFFF&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;fc1=000000&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;p=8&amp;l=as1&amp;f=ifr&amp;asins=B00FYKX0DA&amp;o=1&amp;t=_"></iframe></div></div>
                                              dev