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.
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.
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 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.
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=1another 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?
<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&bc1=FFFFFF&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&p=8&l=as1&f=ifr&asins=B00FYKX0DA&o=1&t=_"></iframe></div></div>Try this again
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FYKX0DA
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MS09LQX
ctsai89 Yeah those are they, EW2440L and EW2740L. But wow, $459 for the 27" model is very expensive. That's not a fair price. It's like $200 too much.
I don't know about the other monitor, but "no PWM" or auto brightness doesn't mean the monitor will automatically be usable for you. I found this which I don't like, but I don't know if the FRC is active all the time: "8-bit colour plus 2-bit FRC dithering" (https://pcmonitors.info/benq/benq-pd3200u-and-pd3200q-uhd-and-wqhd-designer-monitors/)
JTL Yea it's discontinued and the EW2750ZL and now the EW2755ZL are the replacements. They don't go as dim unfortunately.
The GW2760HS is a pretty old model now but is still in production and appears to have undergone more than one panel revision, although it is still advertised as Flicker-free.
Summary from this thread:
If 24" is enough for you the EW2440L is an excellent choice. It is no longer in production but there is still stock around for a reasonable price. It goes super dim which is great for those of us who can't look at bright LEDs.
If you need/want 27" the EW2740L is the best choice for the light sensitive. It goes very dim like the EW2440L. As you saw above it's been out of production for a while and could be hard to get a fresh model. Next up would be the EW2750ZL and the EW2755ZL (newer and slighlty better PQ than the EW2750ZL). They are not as dim as the EW2740L but not as bright as the GW2760HS. Finally the GW2760HS still has most of the things we like in BenQ VA monitors. It has VA panel, native 8-bit, PWM-free, decent PQ (but washes out at low brightness), but it's very bright at even its lowest brightness setting.
ctsai89 Those programs don't change the brightness of the backlight. They change the colours that display is being asked to output.
The problem with that approach is if you put a screen to 0 brightness and then use a program to change the colours it will result in a very washed out picture where it's hard to see any detail at all in darker scenes.
For Windows I found a program that will change the colours in a colour temperature neutral way. The only time I use it is with my plasma where changing the colours the display is being asked to output decreases the brightness of the picture in a uniform way since there is no backlight. I guess that could work with OLED as well.