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.

                          Slacor seems like we need a pinned meta thread that summarizes our 'findings so far' i.e.
                          "these are phones/screens that multiple people have found usable" ,
                          "these are the physical problems we are having"
                          "these are our assumptions of the causes"
                          & also a little campaign of pestering actual engineers, psychs & eye docs to find the ones who might be interested in helping

                            6 months later

                            My EW2440L has developed coil whine.

                            • JTL replied to this.

                              degen Unfortunate. Coil whine is annoying

                                2 years later

                                i´ve ordered a new EW2775ZH (270HVN02.3) because my second Benq GW2760S (AUOM270HVN02.0) died a month ago >To open Service Mode: Press Power on + Menu

                                unfortunalty it hasnt the same quality as my old one, getting eyestrain and fogginess after some minutes.
                                I am on win10 and i can see some flashing on the screen on static images like the windows desktop or the chrome browser. focusing is very difficult. this is very visible after opening a new window. it took me a while to focus the new content.

                                next i will order a newer benq model from 2018 (BenQ EW277HDR).
                                it has a newer panel revision AUOM270HVN02.6

                                • KM replied to this.
                                • KM likes this.

                                  hector I can't use my EW2775ZH either. As you describe, strain kicks in after some minutes, and even headaches later on. This is independent of the OS or connected device. I haven't seen any flashing though.

                                    good to know that i am not the only one.
                                    what about the newer revision with "hdr" EW277HDR?
                                    it uses a newer panel. have you tried this one too?

                                    • KM replied to this.

                                      hector No, I still have the old version.

                                        a year later

                                        KM

                                        Now I bought an EW2775ZH. It has a good picture with much better uniformity of light, but it's still too bright for me at brightness 0, contrast 0, and on top of that in "dark room mode".
                                        It turned out the newer "Blue Light Plus" modes didn't help at all. The OSD's white doesn't change when selecting such a mode, which tells me the modes don't change the backlight diodes, like some reviews suggested.

                                        Did you try adjusting down the RGB channels? The defaults in my HP have all the channels at 255. Taking those down will drastically lower the minimum brightness.

                                        • KM replied to this.

                                            K-Moss I think so. Plus I think the pre-set modes do exactly that, just in a pre-configured way.

                                                4 days later

                                                degen Have you tried a low haze or glossy IPS display?

                                                  degen "I can't find the EW2740L (measured at 11 cd/m² at 0% brightness)"

                                                  Do you also take down the RGB channels from the default 255,255,255, and reduce the contrast level? That will allow you to get a much darker screen at 0 brightness, probably too dark even on units known for being too bright.

                                                  I just read this: "and I kept the OSD contrast at 10."

                                                  So you've done that already, but what about taking down the RGB channels? That will make a big difference.

                                                    dev