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>

              Try this again

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

              • KM likes this.

              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/)

                  KM All the "CAD" or "Photo Editing" "Professional" etc. marketed models seem to use FRC to get to 10-bit colour.

                    KM But wow, $459 for the 27" model is very expensive

                    Probably because it's from discontinued stock

                        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.

                            degen

                            Too bright even when you have influx on? I have another app on my mac called the brightness slighter which I think can bring the brightness down even more. Have you tried it already?

                                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.

                                    Regarding auto-brightness: I think it can be very good and worth a try. I actually had an iMac for 5 years and didn't really have a problem with it (unless I manually turned up the brightness then the white parts become very unpleasant to look at) until I bought a mac pro and kept using it connected to each other which then disabled the auto-brightness on there. My iPhone 7 is also a huge problem for me but after I turned the white points down and set it to night shift and brightness = 0 I am not doing so bad again. I can actually stare at it up to 10 min as opposed to 30 seconds before I changed the settings. So after the mac pro/imac, I switched to a cheap Samsung monitor and my eyes got way worse from there on even with brightness set to 0. I'm on asusMX279h now and it's not so bad until I start playing blizzard games where the parts of the map that aren't explored yet are completely dark and hard to see.

                                    So should I get the BenQ with auto brightness adjustments just to try it out for all your sakes? or no? lol should I just go with the one you guys say works?

                                    • KM replied to this.

                                      degen

                                      I agree but I think it helps in a way that it's better than not having those programs on. Just by a bit.

                                        ctsai89 Auto brightness is a nice feature, but probably nothing more. If you have a monitor that you set up manually the way you like but can't look at it, what would auto brightness change? I'm not saying you shouldn't buy and try that monitor, but you probably shouldn't do it just because of auto brightness.

                                            KM

                                            Well with auto brightness: it's more likely I could avoid having to cover my window all the way up just because I want my monitors to be completely dim. Using the sunlight during the day sure is better for my eyes vs LED lightings in the room during the day. And I don't like my room completely dark, that hurts my eyes as well. I like it ambient.

                                              13 days later

                                              I just today realized how reliant I am on the EW2440L for office use, which is not good as I've tried to find another as back-up and I can't. I had the brightness turned up to 5 as I was using the monitor briefly in another room with higher ambient brightness. When I brought it back to the office I noticed that images seemed sharper and edgier to the eye and I couldn't figure out what had changed. After a couple of days I have developed bad eyestrain where my eyes are half closed and the muscles around them are very tight. Remembered that the brightness was turned up a bit and urned it back to 0 tonight and hoping for relief. (Brightness of 5 on the EW2440L is still way dimmer than 0 on almost every other monitor).

                                                degen

                                                I always keep phones/monitors at lowest possible. I also use an app called dark reader whenever I browse sites like this when I have to read long posts, I rather not see a white screen but my eyes do better when the screen turns dark.

                                                But how dim should screen monitors really be? the best I've experimented with is lowest possible right before you almost can't see what you're trying to see on the screen. Anything higher than that will dry my eyes up.

                                                  dev