Being affected by PWM, Temporal Dithering and other sources is a new issue that hasn't gained a lot of attention. It's also the point of this entire forum - to help you find others who know what you're going through and how to fix it! So if you're new, feel free to introduce yourself below or in a new discussion tagged with Introduction . To help us know how far wide spread this is and who it affects, feel free to let us know some details about yourself such as: Your location Your occupation Your age How you first identified you were affected Whatever else comes to mind Also, be respectable and play nice 😃

I'm in the USA. I am in Physical Therapy which while doesn't involve computers a lot, made documenting very difficult until I got access to some Non-PWM monitors. Studying was almost entirely useless since no matter what I tried, I simply could not remember what I studied. It was a extremely lucky break and something I've since been recovering from since the start of this year.

Alright - Hi I'm a student/software developer who lives in BC, Canada. Very competent in areas of programming/security, etc. Been learning programming since April 2007 but that's another story. Don't want to say too much but when I was born I had a rare optic nerve disorder - which may be the root cause of all this. Doctor's don't know. 🙁 I can recall how when I was little (back before LCD's were common, had no migraines and life was good) I was able to see "light trails" from certain kinds of lighting most notably in my mind some blue Christmas lights (LED) that had a "bumpy" texture when you held them. They flicker at what appears to be 60Hz power line freq but didn't give me any problems except the light trails back them. I still have them, maybe I should experiment. Unfortunately I get migraines from other sources then just lightning, that I know are not temporal dithering or screen related (maybe) but PWM/flicker is the dominant cause so it's not as simple as removing all flickering light sources in my cause (even though my family has) I got a new 15 inch Macbook Pro (see my thread on that) and it's been a lifesaver PWM wise. According to an engineering contact I have at Apple: No PWM until half brightness at which point it is around 100 Khz, which allows for the super low brightness Apple is known for. In fact I've been extremely light sensitive due to Botox treatments wearing off - been sleeping during the day in the dark due to not having a way of shutting out external sunlight which has been giving me headaches in my computer room/office. I will get curtains which should help 😛 and I see a doctor tomorrow for Botox and general things. (Going to try Win10 on Boot Camp when I have time, been my first Apple product in a while.)

Well. I come from austria (mid europe) and I recently finished my studies in engineering physics at the university of technology in my hometown and before that I finished a higher technical college with focus on mechanical engineering and automation. I'm 27 old have blue eyes and my mother tongue is german. First time I was affected was march 2014. I bought a new Lenovo (High End) notebook without OS. After some time on the new machine I was wondering what was going on with my eyes. So the ordeal started. I've tried many different notebooks, TVs and mobile phones. But on all systems I get the heavy eyestrain, headache, motion sickness, migraines, pain behind the eyes....pretty fast. As a result I'm using my old 70cm CRT TV and my old Asus Notebook 2009. Currently I'm working at the university and I can use my old private notebook which doesn't give me any eyestrain, olthough the display is mirroring pretty much. However I will go on to another company in November, which may get a bit problematic. Since I'm an "expert" in computanional physics and my new job will be very much about computers and simulations. As a consequence I need a solution very fast now. Furthermore I never had big problems with my eyes, thought I know that they are much more sensitive than others. However my eyes are very sensitive if somebody uses a laser pointer. In this case my eyes will hurt at least for some hous. Also old CRT computer monitors give me bad eyepain, but I've never had any problems with LCD, LED,... till march last year. Since I got the symptoms also on my older trusted LG FLatron monitors if I connect an new notebook to them, I guess that my problem has nothing to do with LED or PWM. I think some kind of picture enhancement (temporal dithering, hd smoothing, desktop anti aliasing,...) which my eyes can't focus on is the root of my problems.

Harrison Wait you say that you're using a "old 70cm CRT TV" but old CRT's give you eyepain. Are you saying that the old CRT you are using along with your old laptop gives you eye pain, or that particular CRT does not.

Well I thought that somebody will come up with this fact. Yeah. Using an old CRT Computer monitor gives me eyepain only in the right eye. I don't know why. I just have a light corneal irregularity in this eye which is corrected with the right glasses and contact lenses. (but this eyepain is/was much different than the symptoms I have now, so I don't connect the problems with each other. I only wanted to say that I know that I have sensitive eyes) No I've never used a CRT monitor with my current Asus notebook. I just remember that I changed to LCD monitors really quick and avoided working on CRTs many years ago (about 10years), because CRTs gave me the eyepain in the right eye. But I never cared about it, because CRT was replaced by LCD really fast at that time and so it was not a problem any more. However I never had any problems with CRT TVs (50Hz or 100Hz) even if the TV is flickering very much. You can see the CRT flicker of my current TV really good. But this is amazing me. Cause most people with our problems argue with "unvisible flickering", but if I don't have any problems with this distinct TV flickering why such a more slight "unvisbile flickering" should cause such problems. But if you want to discuss this point more precise we should start another thread.

hello everybody, I am a 23 year old Electrical Engineering student at TU delft, The Netherlands. I am current doing one semester in Barcelona as an exchange student. As everybody here I am also suffering from headaches and migraines caused by computer monitors. My problems started one and a half year ago, one year after buying the 13-inch MBPr (end 2013 model). For the first year I used the computer a lot (5 hours a day) till the problems started. Within 1 week I had two severe migraines attack (with aura). Both days I used the computer for around 6 hours and took a hot shower afterwards, thats where the migraine attacks started, the hot shower somehow triggered the attacks. After this episodes I had a few minor ones, but now with enough rest, lowest brightness and not looking to the retina screen to much (1 hour a day) I have the migraines under control. Now headaches arise after 0,5 - 1 hour of usage, thats the signal for me to stop.

So the problem might be at Temporal Dithering on Intel Graphics Chip. If someone could disable Temporal Dithering on OS X, it would be solved. If anybody has a result causing eye strain, please tell me or email vinkenbog@gmail.com A lot of Thanks.

Some parts of the forum are loading intermittently for me since two days ago... http://i.imgur.com/dt8fLlS.png

Forums are starting to work again and I am currently not seeing the bad gateway errors in Chrome dev console.

Welcome to LED Strain!

si_edgey

APC75 Thanks APC75. I'm currently running CCFL LCD monitors for all 3 setups - these were actually purchased prior to realising that LED backlighting itself wasn't necessarily to blame in my case so I haven't tested with LED monitors yet - I'm going with 'if it isn't broke, don't fix it' for now.

The monitors I'm currently using are EDIT: Viewsonic 2855 and Benq v2400w, both of which cause no problems with the Windows / Nvidia setup but will cause big problems if used as an external monitor with my Macbook since temporal dithering is applied for external monitors as well as a Macbook's internal screen.

I recently installed LED room lighting in a studio with no noticable negative effects, although I had to find warm, yellow tinted bulbs as I find most LED lighting to be very harsh and blue. My eyes have always been sensitive to blue light as well - this combination of temporal dithering, PWM and blue light makes it very hard to narrow down what's causing the main problem but in my case it's definitely TD.

JTL

si_edgey It's interesting to see that people have sensitivity to different things. For example I have a 2015 Macbook Pro with Intel/AMD switchable graphics and can use it just fine for >10 hours per day. First time I've been able to use a computer that long in years. But give me a laptop with PWM and I'll be having a headache in seconds. My father's work laptop (HP Elitebook) has Intel Broadwell integrated graphics with some sort of IPS screen built in (but no PWM) and I am able to use it just fine.

https://i.imgur.com/hnZnDUd.png

JTL

si_edgey

Benq v2400w

Wow. A 1920x1200 monitor. Quite a rarity to find that aspect ratio these days...

APC75

Good news - a new charity called LightAware has just launched. Please visit their crowd funding campaign and watch the brief cartoon here https://chuffed.org/project/lightaware.

Please share and encourage donations.

Please also follow their Facebook page by searching for LightAware Charity on FB. Share this far and wide with as many people as possible in order to help grow this movement towards finding a solution to the lighting problems that we all struggle with.

Current charity website is http://www.lightaware.org/ but far more support is needed to expand on this.

Slacor

APC75 Cool!
~~Start a new thread about it though~~ (edit: which I see you already did 👍) - that will help it gain proper exposure as opposed to being hidden in this thread 😉

Alexmam

Hi all. I also have eyestrain from all LED screens.
I am 32, Male. Working in sales. Have glasses prescription for distance but this is it. My eyes are fine.
This problem is hard to diagnose. I will try to summarize.

I have 3 screens which I can use without any eye discomfort:
1) LCD display Samsung SyncMaster P2350 connected to VGA output of NVIDIA 8300GS or ASUS EAH5450 cards (Windows 7).
2) Dell Inspiron 1420 laptop with LCD screen (Nvidia 8300) – can work whole day without eyestrain (Windows 7).
3) Google Nexus 5 – can watch movies on it for many hours

There is also Acer Aspire One from 2012 with intel 2000 and LED screen but I can use it for 3-4 hours before my eyes are tired (Windows 7). Eyes feel more comfortable using UBUNTU on this laptop. Maybe because of darker color scheme.

All new LED screens kill my eyes in 20 mins.

Now the interesting part begins.
1) If I connect Samsung SyncMaster P2350 to any Intel graphics using VGA/DVI/HDMI I get bad eyestrain
2) If I connect Samsung SyncMaster P2350 to DVI or HDMI output of NVIDIA 8300GS or ASUS EAH5450 cards I get bad eyestrain
3) If I use any new laptop, PC, Mac with LED screen I get eyestrain, red eyes and even lose sleep
4) If I connect any new LED monitor via VGA to my Dell 1420 or PC with ASUS EAH5450 card, I get same problems
5) My phone Huawei PE-TL10 has LED backlight and gives me pain in the eyes, problem is partially solved with blue-light filter glass protector. I am not watching movies on it anymore.

I think there might be 4 reasons and sometimes they mix:
1) Flicker (PWM in LCD and LED monitors)
2) Blue light
3) Intel drivers
4) Digital output

Nobody around me has these problems and everybody is very happy with their new Macs and PCs.

Btw, I have eyestrain and pain using LED bulbs and lamps. All other light sources are fine.

All my attempts to find reasons have failed. I am forced to use my old heavy Dell 1420 laptop and pray it will work long)

I tried few flicker-free, low blue light monitors like ASUS and Benq last year but no success. After 20 mins, my eyes are red and tired. Ordered Jins PC glasses – same. This is a big mistery to me.

JTL

Alexmam I should mention the Nexus 5 also has an LED backlight so that's an LED thing that works for you.

MagnuM

Thanks for sharing your experience Alexmam. This is a very enigmatic issue for sure. I basically cannot handle any LED monitor either. Anyone in the office that has one, I almost always convince them to come to my desk instead. If I don't, I will have an ocular-like migraine for pretty much the rest of the day. The pain is almost immediate when I look at their monitor too.

I visited an neuro-ophthalmologist this month, and in dilating my pupils and looking in, he said my retina and head of the optic nerve looks OK (that's good at least! Good to know these painful monitors aren't causing any eye damage). He suspects the pain is actually coming from the brain (like the visual processing center). Some of his associates have said that some people have gained some relief from the FL-41 tint. I think a company called Theraspecs in the US makes them.

It's also been suggested that I may have a form of Irlen Syndrome (Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome). I'm a bit skeptical, but it at least makes sense in theory. For now, I'm just sticking with my U2410 LCD monitor on 0% brightness with f.lux enabled. That seems to be the most tolerable thing I have found so far.

I can use an iPhone 6S+ fine for a few minutes each day as well. That doesn't seem to bother me as it does some others on here.

degen

Alexman thanks for posting your experience. It certainly rings a bell with many here. and It deservers its own thread.

Alexmam

Does anyone own laptop based on AMD? Do you also get eyestrain from it?

JTL

Alexmam Well I have 2015 Macbook Pro with AMD graphics chip. I am only sensitive to PWM though.

Works very well.

Alexmam

JTL CPU is AMD too?

JTL

Alexmam Apple has never used AMD CPU's and I think AMD cpu's are slow.

But I think that would have nothing to do with quality of graphics as I've seen laptops with the same AMD GPU but Intel or AMD CPU.

degen

Alexmam All Macs use Intel processors.

Alexmam

JTL in Intel based laptops CPU integrated graphics is used for office tasks and video card used for 3D. I am wondering how it is done in Apple.

JTL

Alexmam Apple uses a hardware multiplexer chip (like the input select on a TV) to switch between GPU's, as in the display is hooked up to this chip. All external graphics ports are hardwired to the AMD graphics chip as well.
image https://i.imgur.com/e8RdMng.png

Alexmam

I am trying to understand if buying AMD based laptop will solve my problem. Intel drivers definitely give me eyestrain.

JTL

Alexmam Although I don't have the same problem I can sympathize.

Alexmam

degen I have eyestrain from all Macs

Alexmam

I have changed Intel driver on my Acer Aspire One from 2012 with intel 2000 and LED screen to Standard VGA Adapter driver and stopped having eye strain from this laptop at all. Now it is clear, that driver is the problem for sure.

JTL

Alexmam Glad to hear you have a workaround. Unfortunately generic Windows drivers don't allow for 2D/3D acceleration (which probably isn't the case of the issue and dithering is separate)

Alexmam

JTL I use only office and Internet on my PC, barely watch movies so I am fine with it.

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