I mentioned this in another post but wanted to follow up based on more time passed and some other experiments I had done.

I have a HP elitebook laptop with Intel 5500 HD graphics, connected to a Dell P2214H monitor. That monitor is confirmed flicker free in that online database

I would get severe eyestrain after only a few seconds of usage. I tried changing drivers, changing resolutions, changing font size, changing number of colors, changing cords, display settings, you name it, I tried it, all with zero impact.

I started honing in on colors, and checked the ICC profile installed on the machine. The laptop had none set, so I set it to the default Windows profile, same eye strain. I then went to Dell, and downloaded the actual ICC profile for that monitor. I added it to the laptop and set it to default. It's been over two weeks now and the eye strain is pretty much entirely gone. I can stare at the monitor for hours and hours (I do, everyday) and suffer almost zero discomfort.

It seems that the default Windows ICC profile is instructing the monitor to create colors using a particular pixel/sub pixel rendering setting that is triggering my eye strain, some sort of dithering or pixel interpolation. Basically, it is an incorrect color profile so the monitor does not display colors they way it was designed to, so you get sub optimal performance and unwanted display issues. The proper ICC profile tells the video card/monitor how to correctly display the colors, which seems to eliminate the issue

Then, just to validate my finding, I deleted the Dell ICC profile, the eye strain came back instantly. I put the profile back, eye strain was gone again.

If you are suffering from eye strain on a system, please download the correct ICC driver from the manufacturer website, install it, and try it out. I was completely shocked how drastic a change such a simple thing could cause

    ensete I wonder if bad color profiles persist across RDP sessions? I have been having similar issues in RDP windows from affected machines.

        Gurm RDP has always been a culprit of mine. I suspect Remote Desktop and Citrix programs don't just use the display properties of the host machine, they are more like video games in that they have their own display properties independent of the host systems. This can include color profiles.

        For example, I have a home PC which causes me zero problems. If I Citrix into work, the Citrix window causes me eye strain, and you can actually see the differences in color rendering between the Citrix window and the host machine.

          ensete Can you confirm whether the laptop causes eye strain on its own (without the monitor attached)?

              Edward Yes, the laptop screen alone (with the incorrect ICC profile) caused the same eye strain. I have not tried the laptop screen alone with the correct ICC color profile yet, I guess I could give it a shot.

                  Edward I really hope it works for you, I am literally astounded how much better it is. The weird thing is, at least at the visual detection level I have with my eyes, when I look at the screen without and with the correct ICC profile, the screen look identical. But one gives me immediate severe eye strain and the other doesn't.

                    Just curious, if color matters, will it help by making the monitor black and white? In nvidia control panel, you can do that by setting digital vibrance to zero.

                      Jerry I can't say. I don't know what behavior the ICC profile is changing on the monitor. I suspect it won't since I set my monitor to 256 colors when it had the incorrect ICC profile and still got eye strain.

                      Also "Grayscale" is not the same as black and white, there's a LOT of sub pixel shading, gradient shading, and dithering going on with all those grays. A pure black and white duotone display wouldn't be very usable.

                      Based on my visual inspection, the ICC profile doesn't seem to actually change any colors. It looks identical to me. It seems to be telling the monitor to operate differently in order to display those colors. Just a hypothetical here, but if your monitor was capable of producing CMYK colors, and you had an RGB color profile, in order to show yellow, you need to use a software side subtractive coloring process with Red and Green. The correct ICC profile could tell the monitor "Just display yellow. You have the hardware to do that".

                      In both cases you would see yellow, but it is being generated 2 entirely different ways, and maybe we are sensitive to one of those ways. This is all just me hypothesizing, but maybe there's something to it

                          As an aside, just to keep following this theory, I checked the color profile of my Lenovo laptop that gives me zero eye strain. Correct ICC profile installed. I checked my sons Samsung laptop which causes me eye strain. No ICC profile installed. Hmmmm

                            KM

                            Do you think it would be a benefit to download the driver for the EW2440L? I can only find a driver on BenQ's website and not a color profile, and I'm not sure if color profile is included with the driver. Thanks..

                            • KM replied to this.

                                degen The driver download is a ZIP file. I unzipped it and found the file "EW2440L.icm". That is probably the color profile.

                                If you want to try it, I'd have a look at the lagom.nl gray-scale test. It was totally messed up after I installed the color profile Windows Update offers. The update made a pretty smooth scale turn into lines and bands.
                                http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/gradient.php
                                Edit: Might just be a Firefox-specific behavior and not a bad color profile.

                                  ensete Mixing up CMYK and RGB should have been obvious. AFAIK, the default is always RGB.

                                  You could do another test by booting up a livecd / liveUSB of Ubuntu or another linux distro and seeing if that bothers you.

                                    ensete

                                    where can I find those icc profiles on dell website? I haven't found them for DELL U2415

                                    thanks for your help. greets

                                        This had never occurred to me.
                                        I'm going to trial it on my laptop (ThinkPad E550)
                                        It uses a HD 5500 as well - we'll see how it goes.

                                        Unfortunately, I don't know how to find a icc profile for a laptop screen, but Linux Mint Cinnamon seems to have a few of available profiles to trial..?

                                          Slacor Might be possible to extract it from the lenovo drivers.

                                          I'll look later

                                            Slacor Unfortunately, I don't know how to find a icc profile for a laptop screen, but Linux Mint Cinnamon seems to have a few of available profiles to trial..?

                                            Most monitor "drivers" are just zip files with the icc profile in them.

                                              dev