Hi folks. Ever since I found out I suffer from eye strain, I have been reading/researching about it on the net. To find a solution for our eye strain issue, we need to know the cause of it. Here is what I found so far: For people with normal vision, the cause of eye strain are mainly: A. Looking at screen that is too bright B. Looking at the screen too long without break These are what I call normal cause-and-effect. For majority of people, this is the main cause of their eye strain. But for small minority of the population, like most people here in this forum, in addition to the above, we also suffer eye strain from other factors, such as: Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) flickering Graphics Driver Temporal Dithering Blurry Font/Anti-aliasing Blue light Other? To further complicate matters, people may suffer from multiple causes of eye strain (and may not even realize it). Take me for example. I first discovered that I have eye strain problem 4 years ago when I switched my laptop from a CCFL based display to an LED-based display (which later I found has PWM). On my old CCFL laptop, I can use it for hours without a problem. On my (then) new LED-based laptop, I get eye strain within minutes of using it. Lucky I found a workaround solution that allows me to use a laptop with PWM without giving me eye strain. So for a long time, I thought my only source of eye strain is PWM. Then 2 years later, I upgraded the intel graphics driver, and my laptop which I have been able to use for years, suddenly causes eye strain to me. I switched back to my old graphics driver, then the eye strain gone. So I know for certain that (intel) graphics driver also caused eye strain to me. So for me, I suffer from #1 and #2. I guess I was lucky because each cause of eye strain happened to me one at a time, so I was able to detect and pinpoint the cause each time. So if I were to buy a smartphone or tablet, I would check for PWM first. But even is there are no PWM, there is still a possibility that the graphics driver can cause me eye strain. At least I know what to look out for, and what to avoid. But different people may have different (combinations of) causes of eye strain. For someone who gets eye strain when looking at LED-based display but do not know the exact cause, then hopefully this thread will help to identify and test which of the above 6 factors cause eye strain to them. Let's share what we know about the factors that can cause eye strain to us, things like: What it is? How to detect it? How to solve it? The last part is the most important part - what solution works (or doesn't work for you).

I'll start with what I know: Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) flickering What is it? PWM is a method used to increase and decrease brightness of LED-based display. PWM produces screen flickering which is not detectable with naked eye, but can be detected using smartphone cameras. These flickering can cause eye strain to certain people. How to detect it? PWM can be detected using a smart phone camera, especially older ones. Newer smartphone camera sometimes could not detect the flickering because of the advanced auto-correct shutter speed that it uses. PWM can also be detected by using the Blur Trail test from this site: http://www.testufo.com/#test=blurtrail How to solve it? Most LED display that uses PWM, the flickering can be eliminated by setting the brightness to 100%. The downside is that the screen becomes too bright and need third party display program to reduce the brightness / contrast artificially. However, for some display, there are still flickering even when increasing the brightness to 100%, especially on certain Samsung display. Additional info: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1677617 http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/pulse_width_modulation.htm http://www.eizoglobal.com/library/basics/eyestrain/ Graphics Driver What is it? Certain graphics driver, especially newer Intel graphics driver can cause eye strain. Certain updates in operating system (e.g. android, blackberry, IOS) can also cause eye strain. How to detect it? As far as I know, there is no known way to detect it, except you feel eye strain when looking at the screen. The challenge is to determine if the eye strain that you are feeling is because of graphics driver, or because of other factors. How to solve it? Use older version (if available), or use Standard VGA (Win 7) or Microsoft Basic Display (Win 8) driver. Standard VGA has its drawback, such as graphics will be slower and cant use projector, but at least you wont get eye strain. I read that on Windows 10, even Standard VGA driver can now cause eye strain. So need to be wary of that. Several of us has highlighted this issue at the Intel forum, and Intel graphics team are investigating this to find a solution. You can follow the discussion here: https://communities.intel.com/thread/53309

This is very important. We have to be able to tell the manufactures the exact reason in order for them to believe this. Otherwise it will just sound like a problem of our eyes which has nothing to do with their products. But unfortunately, after many years of suffering from computer, smart phone, TV screens, I still cannot pinpoint the reason for my screen-induced headaches mostly because I have zero-tolerance to investigate that. I only do what I have to do on computers to keep my job. I started to get headaches from computers around 2009, before that, I had no problems at all. I am a long time follower of that apple forum thread. At some point, I thought projectors solved my problem, but it turns out that is not the case. One of the difficulties for me to identify the source of headaches was that I had multiple screen exposures (computer, smart phone, TV, etc) in my daily life. For a while, I kept using smart phones because I thought it is just the computer screens causing the problem. Recently, after reading posts from this forum, I find out the evil is actually the smart phone and my computer screen (an external monitor) is not that bad. When severeness of the symptom passes a certain threshold, I can easily get headaches from any screen exposure , even from reading a black white paper.

To detect the cause, I think the first important thing is stay away from all screens (or take some medicine if necessary) to make sure you are symptom free before testing any device. And then carefully select some products for testing, for example, those that have been suggested in this forum. That is what I am going to do in the next few weeks.

Jerry, yes. The thing about eye strain is that it is quite a complex issue, with multiple sources of eye strain, and that a person may actually suffer from multiple causes of eye strain, which makes it harder to isolate and identify each one. You have the right idea already, I know it is hard and time consuming, but you must take the time to isolate and identify the causes of your eye strain. If you dont do it, nobody is going to do it, and the problem may never be solved. Perhaps you can try something like, every weekend (when you are not working), every saturday or sunday, limit yourself to just one display devices e.g. first saturday, phone only. Dont view any other display devices like tablets, TVs etc on that day. It is going to be hard, but it has to be done. Then see if you get eye strain or not from your phone. If your phone causes you eye strain, then you may need to find another phone. There is not much we can do if a phone causes eye strain. Same for tablet. I cannot use LG tablets at all, I get very severe eye strain within 2 minutes of using. Some tablets are not so bad i..e mild eye strain. I have my 4-year old ipad mini which i get zero eye strain, and that is the one and only tablet that I am still using until today. I do not even dare to upgrade the OS, for fear the new OS might cause eye strain. If it aint broke, dont fix it. At least I have one tablet model that I can use with zero eye strain. There might be one that you can use with zero eye strain as well, but the search for it will take time and lots of testing/trial and error. Good luck.

Kray Thanks for your suggestions. I think now I have a good idea how to start the diagnosis process. When I first had the problem around 2009, I just did not realize or could not believe computer screen can cause headaches. It was not instant headaches to me though. I used to watching TV and movies a lot on computers, but I did not feel headaches when I was watching (maybe because I was too focused on the movie). The headaches hit me hard afterward and bothered my sleep and stay almost constantly. However, if I watch movies again, I would not feel the headaches, so watching movie gave a break but made things worse at the same time. I saw headache clinic doctors, they never ever mentioned computer screens could cause headaches. They scanned my head with MRI, but the results look normal. I never thought about computer screen being the cause until I read that eye strain thread in the apple forum. I will try one device at a time for the diagnosis. I am pretty sure smart phones give me headaches, so I wont try them for now. I ordered a BQ2760HS and a Dell desktop with nVidia GeForce® GT 730 graphics card. We'll see how it goes. I will report back. By the way, currently I have old Dell ST2310 LCD monitor, I can use it for checking emails, offices, some internet surfing. It is not perfect, but I can live with it.

So glad to see this list get puled together. I thought I was crazy with the results of some of my experiments, but graphics driver trigger would explain all of them. Multiple times I have been triggered by a screen that does not normally trigger me when changing the video source. this would be explained by a difference in graphic driver. Thank you for putting a name to this!

To report back, I got the desktop (Dell XPS 8910) with a nVidia GeForce GT 730 graphics card and an integrated intel graphics card, and the BQ2760HS monitor (the box says BQ2760S, but on the back of the monitor it says BQ2760HS). Have been using it for a few days with the intel card disabled. I try to limit myself to this screen exposure only during the test period. The monitor is very bright, I have to reduce the brightness and contrast all to zero and still wear a sun glass clip-on. In terms of symptoms, it is definitely better than the Dell ST2310 I was using. We will see how it progresses. Meanwhile, I am also trying to set up a linux system to see if it can be better.

ensete In general, when you plug in one device and it hurts your eyes on an otherwise ok display, it is almost assuredly because of Temporal Dithering. Unknown graphics driver issues are rare but DO exist, as in: When IOS7 was introduced, it was much harder to look at on identical devices than IOS6 was. For no apparent reason. PWM was still not observable. It's difficult to rule out temporal dithering in this case, but I didn't see any under a normal magnifying glass. Windows 8 introduced software compositing for the output, except when in Direct3D gaming modes. It led to a lot of people not liking Windows 8 much. I could tolerate it on the right hardware. Windows 10 Anniversary Edition (2016) has made a big change to the software compositing resulting in INSTANT eyestrain for a number of people including myself. I use Windows 10 8 hours a day on this machine with a Quadro K420 and never have problems... I upgrade to AE and it immediately hurt. Same drivers (nVidia's latest Quadro drivers), same monitors. Rolled it back immediately and it was fine to look at again. Also, detecting PWM can be pretty simple, the "wave your finger up and down in front of it and see if it blurs or leaves ghosts" test is relatively accurate in my experience although ineffective at detecting high-frequency PWM.

Jerry I can't find this model. Do you mean the GW2760HS?

Gurm Do you run Windows 7 on any of your computers? I was thinking of dual-booting it with my WIndows 10 AE machine (which is a pain with UEFI, but anyway) to see if it makes a difference. Despite my prior statement that the AE made no difference I want to compare directly. Are all of the updates safe to install? I read, here I think, that some of the newer ones may have made changes that are detrimental to some of us. If it's the case that the newer updates ruin Windows 7 I will run un-updated SP1 without an internet connection and just compare it from there.

Causes of eye strain, how to detect and "solve" them.

ensete

KM I had stumbled across the PET film polarization before. I can't say it's NOT helping, but I have tried several other PET screen protectors that have not helped with eye strain at all.

Also, the Skinomi is not a PET screen, it's a kinda of rubbery material.

hansennn

ensete ensete what is your phone type that use skinomi that doesnt make eyestrain ?do you feel headache or migraine after eyestrain if you don't use skinomi ? i have follow your posts for a while and your sympthomp and cause of headache are almost same with me except i don't have any eyestrain,no tired eyes,no teary eyes and no red eyes but only headache and if i using device too long i got migraine at behind my left side head for a day.what is your brightness setting on your phone with skinomi or is any brigthness level doesnt matter ?and are you disable dithering on your phone with skinomi ?if yes,how to disable dithering ?i have search skinomi on my local shops but all of them dont sell it and fortunately i found skinomi in my local online shop but they just sell skinomi for s7 edge,and i have asus zenphone 2 but i dont care,i still order it and must wait 1-2 day for the skinomi arrive.can you tell me,If there are some setting on your phone with skinomi that make you can use it 100% ?,i think this my last resort for try to using smartphone if this is fail too i will give up and just using stupidphone

ensete

hansennn Replied to other thread, but I got the Skinomi for both my Moto G and the Blu R1 HD. Both were cut to fit and for sale on Amazon. There was no setting on the phone I had to change, I just apply the screen protector and never got eye strain from the device again

Jerry

After three months of testing the dell xps8910 desktop with nvidia geforce gt 730 graphics card and BenQ GW2760HS monitor. Now I think I can safely report that this setting works for me. It is still not perfect, but MUCH MUCH better than my yoga pro laptop with Dell ST2310 lcd monitor. It is not easy to reach this conclusion because many factors had to be controlled and ruled out. I think the discrete nvidia graphics card is a game changer for me. The monitor is directly connected to the graphics card, not the motherboard. The integrated graphics card is disabled. I have a similar set up at home with nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti card and BenQ EW2440L monitor. It works fine too. OS is windows 8.1 at work and windows 7 at home. Tried linux on the computer at home for a few days, but did not feel any noticeable improvement over windows. I may go back to test linux for a longer period of time. I also tried my old Dell ST2310 lcd monitor at 100% brightness, not as good as the BenQ monitors, so I guess I am sensitive to dithering since the dell monitor use FRC.

ensete

Jerry Awesome news

As a point if data gathering, can you check what (if any ICC profile you have installed?

Jerry

ensete I think I am using the manufacture color profile. Below is what I have for my office computer. I will double check it for my home computer later tonight.

image iccoffice-png Loading Image

Jerry

ensete Here is the ICC profile for my home computer. It is from BenQ too.

image icchome-png Loading Image

ensete

That is the correct ICC profile. Mind doing a test for me? Remove the ICC profile and see if your symptoms return. You can easily add it back

Jerry

ensete Sure. Will do it later today.

Jerry

ensete Test it for about an hour, there is definitely a noticeable difference. After removing the ICC profile, my head does not feel good.

Jerry

ensete Would you please let me know how to add the correct ICC profile back? Thanks.

Jerry

ensete got it back. done.

ensete

Jerry Sorry, yes it is not simple. You can't add it back using the "Add" button, that would make too much sense, once added it will appear in the list you can pick from in the All Profiles tab. Sorry about that. But informative you found a difference

Kray

So using the manufacturer's icc profile helps to reduce eye strain. This is god to know. But it does not get rid 100% of the eye strain, right? That means there must be something else that is (still) causing us eye strain.

Can u try one more thing? For Monitor driver, try using Generic PnP driver instead of the manufacturer's one. See if that helps. Here's how to do it:

Control Panel -> Device Manager -> Monitor -> select monitor and right click -> Update Driver Software -> Browse my computer for driver software -> Let me pick from a list of device drivers from my computer -> Generic PnP Monitor -> click Next.

When I use the Generic PnP monitor driver on my laptop, I do noticed a very noticeable relief in eye strain. It's like the eye strain is significantly reduced. When I switch the monitor driver back to the Lenovo's driver, I definitely feel the eye strain more. When I switch back to the Generic PnP monitor driver, noticeably less eye strain. Can you give it a try and see if it has any effect on your eye strain or not?

Jerry

Kray This is interesting. I am going to try it out. It seems that driver and color profile are two independent things. I just switched the driver to generic pnp, but the color profile remains to be the one from manufacture.

Jerry

Kray hmmm... tested the generic pnp driver for about an hour. It did not improve anything. It actually seemed to make things worse. Probably need to test it for a longer period of time. It may be that the generic pnp driver is good for laptop, but not for desktop?

Kray

Jerry

Hmm...that's interesting. Yeah, maybe it works for laptop better, i dont know. Can you share the specs of your desktop? The laptop that i use to test the generic PnP driver is a lenovo T440p laptop, Windows 7, integrated intel graphics.

On my desktop computer, (which thankfully i get no eye strain) i am also using generic pnp monitor driver for my benq flicker-free monitor. My desktop is on windows 7, nvidia GTX 760.

Jerry

Kray The desktop I used for the test is Dell xps8910 with windows 7 pro and nvidia 750TI graphics card. The integrated intel graphics card is disabled. I think I may need to test it for a longer period to make a definitive conclusion.

Jerry

ensete I used the disk that came together with the monitor to get the manufacture icc profile back. Yep, it is very interesting that the color profile make a noticeable difference. I may test it more on different settings.

ensete

Jerry I am examining more GPU's on devices that cause me issues, and comparing their color rendering to GPU's that do not, and there IS a noticeable difference. And an ICC profile would change the color rendering. This points to color rendering being a big culprit

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