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Isn't this just amazing. My Lenovo x280 has been problem free. My old HP 27 inch display died, so I quickly replaced it with some old Samsung 24 inch. This is not producing eye strain, after testing 2 weeks full workdays.

Now I decided I wanted a bigger display. I have been thinging that older displays with worse tech would be better, and anyway cheaper displays. I got a 32 inch ThinkVision which costs some 300€. It does not have PWM, but it produces immediate eye strain, with the same Laptop that has not produced eyestrain with 2 other displays.

So what is it?

Does anyone know what can be the reason why this cheap 32 inch does produce eye strain whereas one 27inch and 24 inch do not?

I assume it cannot be temporal dithering as all of those are 8bit + FRC, but the other did not cause strain.

It is not PWM.

What is it?

    Nausea can come from ultra high refresh rates but also types of motion you aren't used to. I had nausea for a couple weeks when I first got my 360Hz monitor but I adjusted to it. I also had it the first time I bought a 144Hz monitor but it seems at least for me I got used to this. I don't really have trouble adjusting to any sort of motion but I will say that VA ghosting is still annoying and makes zero sense that this technology is half the monitor market.

    Despite all of the LTT videos about new $10K ultra-wide OLED monitors, budget monitor tech is still bad and it shouldn't be this bad at this point. It should not be possible for someone to buy something like the LG 24" UltraGear TN and get the absolute dog water primary colors (TN does not inherently have a bad color space! It's a design choice!) and blue black level LED color temperature it has (and overall be an objectively worse TN panel than a 2009 Syncmaster TN other than refresh rate), or a VA with 2-inch long color trails in 2022. It's ridiculous. None of those displays should even be on the market. Where is micro LED. Where are small budget OLED monitors. Where is the focus testing to minimize eye strain at default settings? What are monitor manufacturers doing???

    WHERE IS MICRO LED????

      My assumption is that it is not the LEDs, since I don't have any problems with blue light. Only flicker is a problem.

      Of course I could be wrong and there is a completely new source of eye strain in the form of light spectrum. But I've tried all kinds of blue blocking and even polarizing sunglasses and none of those help.

      I still suspect that the problematic panel is creating some form or temproal dithering or PWM type flicker that irriates my eyes, since it is exactly the same type of irritation.

      It feels like the white parts of my eyes would be tingling and like some wind would be blowing, cooling and drying the white parts. But it cannot be dryness, since the feeling starts immediately when watching the display. For dryness to be the reason, it would take some time for it to kick in and moisturizing eye drops would mitigate this, but they do not.

      My theory remais that some muscles in the eyes start to overwork due to the flicker (some kind of flicker) and the muscles start to need more blood supply, thus the blood vessels start get pumped, thus the eyes get red and irritated.

        Maxx yep, exactly same feelings here. I said it numeours times, my benq monitor with pc is fine, but when connected to MBA M1 causes eye strain, diziness, nausea …

        TrantaLocked Well, I am not sure I agree that cheap lousy monitors equate with low eystrain though. MY experience suggests that there is very little correlation between price and impact on eyes. I have a terrible old Acer laptop from 2012 with a very cheap washed out TN panel which cause zero eyestrain, cheap low grade 22" LG IPS (22MK430) which cause little strain and also tried mayn medium and high end displays, with excellent parametres and they killed my eyes. Also seen an horrible/amazing noname Chinese 144 Hz gaming QHD which caused no apparent strain (at least within 2 minutes I tested it).

        @hayder1983 I think Benq uses terrible, way too grainy and glittering antiglare films and this is the reason for nausea (I own one IPS benq , hopefully I'll get rid of it soon, and I figured it is the reason for my nausea too). Did you try other VA's? I never owned one, but I heard in general VA's are easier on eyes.

          EyeDiscomfortCertificate i tried an iiyama va Panel but it was horrible. The black smear! I also tried the s2721hgf. It was nice but after a week i was sure i could see flicker with my naked eye. But no nausea.

          TrantaLocked yes yes yes. Monitors are really stange now. Even the new ultrasharps are really not better than the 12 yr older dell u2410. Not sure why there is nothing high quality available. Even the cheap LG i had was a very good monitor, but i tried 20 different screens in the last 6 months. I cant see a big plus for the current screens.

          If the 27 inch LG Oled becomes a big success we might perhaps see more budgetfriendly options in the next years. If not...

            hayder1983 I think something hapenned somewhere around 2017-2018, monitors older than that mostly feel okay to me, newer ones not so much. Probably phasing out CCFL played some role.

              hayder1983 OTOH there notable exceptions too. HP Elitebook 840 (2019) has absolutely best screen I ever used (no strain whatsoever) , and also I owned for awhile in 2013-14 a Glossy Dell IPS Full HD but it was bad, replaced with super cheap HP TN, with horrible viewing angles and no strain. Still the rule holds. Most old screens are fine. Most new are not.

              If anyone wants to test this monitor Benq PD3420Q, I got assurance from Benq that it's good for the eyes when used with Mac devices. They give 30 days timespan to test the device and possibly return it if you're not satisfied, but unfortunately I cannot do this in Bosnia. If you have an option in your country to try this, I think it would be worth, and let us know here…

                mirza this thing is huge! I prefer 24 Inch or smaller. If needed 2 Monitors. I have the benq ew3270u and i really hate it being so big. For gaming i even prefer 22 Inch but there are nearly no 22 Inch screens left on the market.
                BenQ is a mixed bag. All of them are considered eye friendly, but in reality some seem very good and some unusable. They change comoponents a lot, so 2 screens of the same type can be totally different. You have to just try it, if you consider taking one.

                Own BENQ pd2700u. It is certainly less straining than cheapo LG27UL500 (mine has poor Vcom tuning and black crash), but definitely is not very eye friendly.

                Outside the eyestrain issue, Benq are overpriced. They just are not worth the money, quality control is not on par to the price. Higher end Dells are probably better choice.

                4 days later

                TrantaLocked I just hooked up the Syncmaster 2494HM. Will test it over the next days, despite my eye infection(still need some work to do.

                hayder1983 Ok, i still have an mild eye infection, but i can confirm, that i dont get nauseaor brainfog from the S2494hm and i get only a very mild eye strain. I can use it with 100% saturation and all colours look like they should(normally i have to reduce saturation on nearly every screen). I was able to watch some old SDR content(seinfeld, indiana jones) and it looks actually much better than on all new screens with these glowing unnatural colors. No nausea! Colors never look greyish even the dark ones(most new screens seem to be super greyish on low contrast). I can actually watch SDR content and forget for some short minutes that i am looking at a screen!

                I only used PC Game benchmarks, but Borderlands 3, Rise of Tomb Raider and Cyberpunk are totally fine to look at. Will need an infectionfree eye before i can really play some games. Motion handling looks good enough for any casual gaming.

                Yesterday i still had some eye strain in the evening after 10 hours of usage, but today in the morning i think it was gone. Perhaps it was just normal eye strain? I might experiment and try my glasses again.

                But i have to say it again: I love the colours! It is actually fun to watch movies on it. I use it on brightness=0 and contrast=0. I think i can go higher as soon as the eye infection is gone, but even this setting is totally usable.

                If i can get used to this screen and no new symptoms evolve, then i am happy. πŸ™‚

                Thank you very much for the suggestion. πŸ™‚ I really dont understand, why they cant make sth like that anymore...

                EDIT: I can also go up to 200% contrast without pain in my eyes. It looks weird, but no pain. Its the opposite of the BenQ EW3270u which actually is unbearable if i go higher than 85% saturation.

                  hayder1983 The primaries are pretty close to standard, maybe slightly over saturated but overall it's quite good. The good thing is any oversaturation at least allows calibration without compromise. Some of the other panels I tried, especially the LG UltraGear, had worse color accuracy.

                  Do you see a difference in eye strain between reading vs playing games? I get it quickly when playing league of legends. I think my eyes in general have not been great lately but I don't know. I just got the lighter colored curtains and moved my desk out slightly to get more behind monitor distance. I think it's helping somewhat but I'm not sure yet. All I can say is I always feel fine using my TV but part of the issue could be when using a monitor, there is more focus to just look at the monitor instead of looking at other things periodically.

                    TrantaLocked I tried getting more distance, but that didnt help, it made it worse. My monitor is now at arms length, which is much less straining. It depends on your eyes, which distance is less straining i think.

                    League of legends is pretty fast scrolling. Do you have strain with fast shooters too? I actually had strain on movement on the LG, even on SDR movies, it uses a hard strobing effect for overdrive i think. Its gone with the Syncmaster, but i didnt try games yet, might need 2 weeks for that.

                    Yes your eyes may have gotten worse, but only way you can test that is trying another screen. You could try a 360hz panel, if you are able to get 360fps, which my PC cant πŸ˜ƒ

                    How would you describe your eye strain? Is it the same eye strain the other 2 screens gave you? Are you using eye drops? I get sometimes strain or even pain which is gone by using 1-2 eye drops in each eye. Sometimes it is just too bright and the strain is gone when lowering brightness/contrast. But these 2 strains feels different for me.

                    EDIT: I do a lot of reading, only a little bit of watching movies and atm no games. Even if i do play games, it is only after working for 8+ hours. But they strain is not "reading strain". I can read perfectly fine i think. I use darkreader on firefox and changed the font to "system-ui", reading is easy with this font. Its light/brightness/flicker strain, pretty sure. I have to use eye drops now, which i never did 6 months ago and never had any eye pain/strain when i used my normal monitor settings on my old setup. And i am pretty sure i have white LED-strain with newer screens.

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