ensete I find it interesting that there are definite camps in iPhone land. There are those who could tolerate anything up to the iPhone 4s and iPad 2... and find the iPad 3 and iPhone 5 to be uncomfortable and the iPad 4 and iPhone 6 to be downright excruciating... that's the group I fall into. But there are others such as yourself for whom even the iPad 2 (and presumably iPhone 4/4s because it's the same display tech) were problematic.

My suspicion? I'm not actually sensitive to Retina displays in particular but in SOMETHING they started doing with CERTAIN retina displays. The fact that I can use my GF's iPhone 7+ for brief periods with NO brightness modulation and NO blue-light reduction and NO matte protector, and that I can use my buddy's iPhone 7+ with a matte protector for long enough to fiddle with an app, take a picture... means that these displays are all very different.

    20 days later

    me again.
    ipad air 2 - poor screen 🙁
    reactiviated my ipad air 1 again. tried some other tablets from lenovo but still get problems.

    I've had mild eye strain with all of them I've owned.

    1, 3, Air 2, Pro 9.7 and 12.9. (I returned both of the Pros due to eye strain). The Air 2 has been the best of the bunch, but certainly not perfect.

    Initial tests with the 10.5 suggest it's no good either.

    5 days later

    iPad air (1st generation) with iOS 10.3.3

    Night shift is always on

    This is the best screen I have ever used. I can look at it for as long as I want.
    I read whole books on it, black text on white background, very comfortably.

    13 days later
    5 months later

    Any updates/recommendations on this? I have a 1st gen 12.9 iPad Pro and an iPhone 6s. One would think a bigger screen is much easier on the eyes but my experience shows otherwise. The 6s is quite tolerable however the 12.9 pro gives me bloodshot and dry eyes quite easily.

    4 days later

    My experience has been:
    iPad 3 - plenty of eye strain
    iPad Air 2 - not too bad but some strain after 20 minutes
    iPad Pros (9.7 and 12.9) - both pretty bad causing sustained but low level symptoms

    iPhone 4S - fairly useable
    iPhone 5S - similar
    iPhone 6S - best so far (or I've grown used to it)
    Spot tests with iPhone 7, 8 and X suggest more eye strain - mirroring my experiences with recent iPads.

    I'm going to do some more testing with the iPhone 8 and X over the next few days.

    It’s strange how the best iOS devices seem like being the worst when it comes to eye strain. iPad pros and now the iPhone X with its pwm factory oled screen .

    Waiting for your update but I bet the X will be the worst of all.

      ChromseSmokeBBQ please remember that the devices don't have identical screens - many manufacturers, not just lg or samsung. One 4s can be great, other unusable. Mine 4s is fine.

      • JTL likes this.

        Just recently bought iphone 8 and it is extremely unusable. It gives me blurry vision and migraines 1-2 minutes after using. The next day I had a terrible headaches and during the day - nausea. iPhone 6 or 6s was OK (mother's and sister's), but I am afraid to buy them now as I am not sure if it will work out and if it is still ok. And just a remined - macbook pro retina 2015 early gave me the same headaches. Currently I have HP probook g4, it is much better, but still gets me blurry vision, but no headaches.

          a month later

          Peter Yes, it is. I have the one with Matte non-touch screen, i5 processor, integrated graphics, 256 GB SSD. 8GB RAM. But I rarelly use it without external monitor because I hate blurry vision, even without eye strain...

              Peter Yes, of course Win 10 PRO, 1709 edition.

              By the way, I just received the Lenovo X1 carbon 3rd generation with a very bad 1600x900 TN screen. It does not give me any eye strain, but still I receive some blurry vision after 30-40 mins. But it seems to be temporary and my eyes "resurrect" after a good night sleep. It is also somewhat usable, but still not perfect as my other older laptops or CCFL external screen. The laptop is fast and reliable even nowadays, I think when it was new, it cost like 1700 EUR. Might be worth a try. 🙂

                a month later

                I was looking at the iPads at Costco this week just for fun. I played with all the sizes and bezel colours present. So this ensemble was the mini, the pro (2 sizes), regular and the new cheap regular.

                The one that was the most comfortable (enough that I paid attention to it on separate days) to me on that table was the 64G iPad Pro 10.5 with the white bezel and gold back. Item 2408901, I believe the iOS version on it was 10.3.2 (maybe 10.3.3 I forget). The difference is subtle, but I'm pretty sure the black model next to it had a different screen or driver. There is no way to tell what is in the box. Just saying that this one particular one that I was holding, I think some of you would have found it serviceable. The rest of them, no.

                3 months later

                I recently measured a rapid brightness change of in between 1% to 5% on my iPad 4 (which for extended periods of time I can only use at the lowest brightness level). This russian site confirms the iPad 4 flickers at low amplitude:
                https://www.ixbt.com/td/ipad-4-test.shtml
                Paste the link into translate.google.com to view it in a language of your choice.
                Looks like the brightness fluctuates at 3% to 4%. They measured roughly 16 kHz frequency.

                Does this mean even low amplitude fluctuation is related to eye strain? Maybe.

                3 months later

                i´ve tested the new 11" ipad pro today. motion blur is a bit better then the last year model (10.5). its coming close to my old ipad air 1.

                but bad news for me. i got headache and eyestrain after some minutes of use 🙁
                it´s disgusting!

                whats wrong with me?! i still have to use my old air 1 for playing and watching videos.

                btw.: my old samsung b7 lcd 40" screen is using pwm and i didn´t got any issues. whats so special about my air 1, any ideas?

                  hector Does your iPad Air 1 still use iOS 10? If so I would think that the problem might be a new dithering algrorithm used in iOS 12.
                  My wife has an iPhone 6S which was great on iOS10 but gives my instant strain on iOS12...

                  • hpst replied to this.

                      deepflame Yeah I am more and more convinced the primary root cause is software, and the reason some older hardware is more commonly ok for us is because it just isn't capable of implementing the dithering/whatever motion or visual trickery instructions. There is not ANY modern SW/HW combo I can use without trouble and I believe this is because the SW is asking for more and the HW is capable of giving it...whereas in some older combos either they aren't trying to do as much, or cannot, or both. I don't have enough modern hardware to set up a lab and test old SW on new HW to make comparisions but that would validate this. I don't WANT this to be true because it means the future is bleak since things will just get more "fancy" SW and HW wise and we will be like people trying to avoid using electricity when the rest of the world has moved on...but I believe this is the base problem.

                      But once again until someone can ID and shut off dithering we are just spinning our wheels. If it's not that then it's something else we haven't discovered yet...and I would bet everything there IS a primary root cause that most people are affected by, and all the other stuff like LED/CCFL, PWM, Fonts etc are just red herrings or things that make the root problem more noticable when you are already fatigued because of said root cause.

                      I have proposed paying someone for this a few times but nobody seems interested. JTL is the best "in house" hope but its clear he cannot dedicate enough time to this and without it being someone's primary focus it's going to get dragged at for years more. I'd be interested in hearing ideas of WHO to approach for work on this and the best crowdfunding route etc. I don't know about everyone else but I need a solution now, not in years. I am losing my last chances in life because of this bullshit and there is no way industry is going to solve it for us.

                        I've been actually getting the same conclusions - it must be software, not hardware that's broken. I don't believe every single modern laptop has bad screen - there must be some variation in quality, ie. there would exist LED / IPS screens that are ok, but so far I haven't found one on 2017/2018 notebook. With other components you can find devices with great keyboards, touchpads, and I bet the screens that have vivid colors, great contrast, etc. are good on their own, but the source material they are fed with makes them behave bad. Of course there might be screens that do dither on their own, etc., but I don' think that it's done on every device unless it's a technology limitation.

                        Funny thing is - the screen on my Macbook Pro that used to be unbearable doesn't seem to cause the same issues to me now, it's near 100% fine although I can see it's flaws, they just don't affect me anymore. However I get minor (mild harshness) or major (head pressure, nausea) with every other LED/IPS screen I check for 5-10 minutes.

                        This whole topic is a complete maze, and I wouldn't be surprised if one day it will get solved all of a sudden when one of OS/graphic drivers manufacturers makes a silent change in their code without informing anyone.

                        • hpst replied to this.
                          dev