Maxx Yes, I suspect I will end up getting pushed towards a bigger phone whether I like it or not, because the choice for modern IPS display phones is already extremely limited, and if you exclude all of the oversized phones (more than 155mm in height) then there's not a lot left over to choose from.

Well, like I said, my laptop screen is really tremendous and I don't get any strain from it. I have a Clevo P650SE with AU Optronics B156HAN01.2 display panel. It's a matte coated panel and colours are very accurate, great viewing angles, I use it for photo editing on a daily basis. High spec laptop from 2015 with i7-4720HQ and GTX 970M. There's also a slightly newer version with i7-6700HQ. This display panel is also fitted to a few other laptops.

    That Clevo laptop seems to have a TN panel with poor viewing angles. And from 2015, so not an option anymore.

    My point exactly, laptops from years ago did not cause any eye strain if used in backlight setting with no PWM.

    All new laptops seem to have something additional to PWM, that is causing eye strain.

      After 4 days of 3-4 hours of use per day LG G7 gave me bloodshot eyes, I don't think I have a PWN issue, but at that stage I'm not sure, other than that don't know what would cause it. My old laptop Lenovo t450, has PWM, but somehow I can use it without any issues.
      Motorola G5 plus has LTPS, so based on my experience I was a bit reluctant, but sounds like the actual cause of eye strain could be something else.
      Wonder weather Android version has something to do with it as well, because I'm pretty sure IOS does.

      • Maxx replied to this.

        bitslacker LG G7 has PWM at 42% and quite low 1174Hz. For me that would be an immediate source of bloodshot eyes.

        The Lenovo has a TN panel of low brightness. Even if it has PWM, you might use it at 100% brightness, when it does not have PWM, thus it would not irritate your eyes. TN panels don't seem to irritate. Someone commented somewhere that Intel disabled temporal dithering / FRC on 6 bit panels, which I believe the Lenovo is, so that might explain why the temporal dithering is not there to cause eye strain.

        Why LTPS would cause issues as such?

        Anyway, you seem to have exactly the same situation - you get bloodshot eyes from PWM in LG phone, but you are not getting eye strain from Lenovo laptop with a poor screen. Excatly matches my situation.

        But I'm able to use the Motorola phone 24h/7 without ANY eye strain. So maybe it would be worth a shot to try it?

        We really need some quality information on what works and what does not for several people.

        If we keep having this situation "oh, I'm not so sure what is causing the eye strain in case, it could be this or that" then we are not ever going to resolve this.

        But if we can identify a group of people with the same source of eye strain who can avoid it with the same set of devices, then this could be conveyed to manufacturers.

        Like Xiaomi CEO commented in an interview, why they use LDC in their 10t semi flagship, wast that they have complaints from OLED displays causing eye strain. But since we are unable to pinpoint the cause of the eye strain coherently, it leads to the exact situation that is with the 10t, where they use a PWM free display, but do use temporal dithering and then the we are back to square one, the display still causes eye strain.

        I simply refuse to believe that the source of eye strain would be this much an individual problem, so that there is no common denominator. I do believe that there is a rather large group of people who simply get it from flicker only. The sources of flicker are PWM and Temporal Dithering/FRC.

        There could be other scenarios for some other people. But I'm still having doubts that eg. blue light could be the source, as, you know, the sky is blue and with a very high intensity compared to a display and people do not get bloodshot eyes working outside under the blue sky.

          If I may add, maybe repeating myself, is that for the past 25 years, the source of my bloodshot eyes has always been flicker. I have zero problems with my eyes if I don't use displays that flicker.

          E.g. I can go open water fishing for 8 hours on a sunny day without sunglasses. There will be lots of glare, lots of low frequency "flicker" from the waves and ripple, but my my eyes are fine.
          Yet if I go to a restaurant where thy use LED's that flicker with 100Hz, my eyes will get bloodshot. So it does not even require a display, just flickering light on a high frequency.

          Now I'm planning to try Asus UX371 with OLED which has a low frequency PWM at 60%. Maybe that is low enough frequency that it would not irritate my eyes. Also, OLED should not have temporal dithering as the individual pixels are 10bit. Though I have my doubts, I can not use a OLED TV that has been stated to be "flicker free". But I dispute the flicker free, as there is 120Hz flicker where the brightness drops a bit in all OLED tv's. But maybe ASUS has tried to resolve this by implementing half as low flicker frequency.

          Maxx Just to correct you, my laptop (the one I recommended) does not have a TN panel, it is IPS, and like I said in my message, the viewing angles are excellent. I have used TN panels in the past and this is drastically better! The display has no PWM at any brightness level. Clevo laptops like this one are sold by vendors that allow you to customise the laptop upon purchase, often with multiple choices of displays, so if you found a P650SE with a TN panel then it was likely because it was an optional high refresh rate (120Hz or 144Hz) panel for gaming, or a 4K resolution panel intended for photo editing.

          The one in mine is a matte 15.6" AU Optronics B156HAN01.2 IPS 60Hz 1920x1080, you can find reviews of this panel on the NotebookCheck website in multiple different laptops... No eye strain at all from someone who is very sensitive to all of the modern smartphone displays!

            @Maxx I had Huawei P20, which apparently has no PWM (according to notebookcheck) and it gave me crazy eye strain. At the beginning I could use it for a couple of hours, then minutes at the end after looking at it for few seconds I was feeling discomfort, P20 has LTPS screen, hence my previous comment.
            Notebookcheck also provide subpixel arrays for many phones, photos sometimes are blurry and at different angles, but what I noticed is that I can't look at some of them i.e. LTPS one is soo wavy it just hurts my eyes.

            Back in the day I did suffer with CRT monitors, LCD's saved me now they "improved" them and here we are again.

            I think PWM is the problem, but not the only one. I will test my LG with a dimmer app and brightness set above 50% see if that helps, as I did watch some videos at night.

              13 days later

              @Maxx I know you are a big Motorola fan, but looking at this comments makes me think I might have issues with it as well https://ledstrain.org/d/1011-is-this-pwm-on-a-pwm-free-device. It's on my watch list.

              I was also looking at Oppo Find X2 Lite, I like the phone it has AMOLED display, but you can enable DC dimming, not convinced that it will help though as my Mate 20 PRO has "Reduce flicker", which I think is the same and it doesn't do much. Anyone tried that one?

              Another 2 phones, which look interesting to me with IPS displays, :
              Realme X50 5G - it has 120Hz screen, so might be worth a shot
              Nokia 8.3 5G - based on previous comments, perhaps this one is not the best choice

              I've tested during 2 weeks Xiaomi POCO X3 NFC. Mostly in dark mode + warm colors + reading mode (all together).
              In short time perspective it's less aggressive for my eyes than other devices I've wrote about above.
              But in long it give me strong discomfort, light dizziness, headache

              @bitslacker Yes, it has PWM above 65% brightness. But I¨ve used it several months so that I keep it above. Yes it can be bright in the evening, but I use blue blockers in the evening anyway, so does not really bother me.

              Hisense put out another e-ink smartphone, the A7, has 5G (tho I don't care about that). Big device, 6.7". Might be of interest to some. First release is greyscale, and supposedly there'll be another release later with color e-ink.

              Thank you so much to everyone for their contributions!

              I have been lurking for a few months now and it has been quite useful, I find that I share many of the symptoms that you guys reported. I would like to add my small contributions of devices that I tried:

              • Iphone X and successive oled (those are pure hell, the headache lasted even after i sold it for a few days)
              • MacBook air 2020 (bad but not insta death)
              • Ipad Pro 2018 (bad but not insta death)
              • Iphone 11/XR (bad but not insta death)

              I can use the ipad air 3 and the iphone 8plus decently if i dont exagerate, but they still are not completely comfortable.
              I am now trying the iPhone SE 2020, and it is such a bummer, as i have exactly the same symptoms as with the iphone 11. Dizziness, pressure around the eyes and on the nose, dry eyes, etc. Surprisingly, using anti-blue light glasses helps, but i really dont want to wear glasses just to use my phone. I am considering switching to android or downgrading to an iphone 8. However, i love the homepod mini and the apple watch (which is fine even if it has an oled screen, since i don't stare at it for hours.) and it seems like there is not a completely safe device in the android world 🙁

              My laptops are an xps13 9300 and a dell latitude 5300, plus external dell screen. I love them. I can use them all day long without eyestraing if not the normal fatigue of a long work day. It has been a bless working from home and using my xps as a phone for whatsapp, telegram, tinder, instagram, e facebook etc.
              I am quite worried about resuming traveling though. The phone is essential for so many things, and while it's good way reduce the screentime, ruining a day cause you want to navigate with google maps it's not something i look foward to.

              Regarding the causes, has any of you taken the 23andme genetic test? my eysight is currently perfect, however my genetic test reports that I am at risk of developing Macular Degeneration, an eye disease. Many websites report that pwm might be a significant cause of it and I wonder if there is any correlation.

              7 days later

              Bought Motorola Moto G30. Nope, head said 💥...PWM. Returned it and tested Motorola Moto G5g plus. No PWM. But the screen is 1080p...so my head said 💥....The screen have to be 720p and 90hz-> for me. Oneplus Nord N100 is next put to test...

              • Maxx replied to this.

                My migraine activates if the picture is too sharp(good)or 60hz. My cable tv provider box is set to SD 576p no problem with that. TV is Sony x850f(xf8500). No backlight and flicker free. And in Finland picture is 50hz.

                • Maxx replied to this.

                  I tried Nokia 8. Phone is 3½ years old but it has some decent specs including 5.3" QHD IPS display and Snapdragon 835.

                  On the website NotebookCheck it reports 2.3K PWM at 17% brightness and below. I tested this myself with a Canon 80D DSLR camera with 1/640 shutter speed in video mode, and I can clearly see PWM stripes up until 24% brightness. If I increase the shutter speed to 1/2000 there are still very slight stripes visible up until around the 50% mark, but they are nowhere near as evident as before 24% brightness.

                  Colours of the screen are a bit oversaturated and have a strong blue tint. Especially the whites seem blinding to the eyes indoors. There is nowhere in the settings that allows adjusting the colour temperature or saturation. At first I tried using the 'Night Light' feature of Android to correct this but it made the screen too orange even on the most minimum setting. So then I downloaded the app 'Colour Corrector' from the Play Store which was better, but still not sufficient to correct the problems... The only way to deal with this would be to unlock the bootloader and install a custom ROM which has support for KCAL colour correction.

                  Despite of this, I can tell that even with the proper adjustments my eyes are still going hurt from this screen. The PWM is causing a problem for me, and is there well beyond the 17% brightness that NotebookCheck reported... It feels like my eyes are sore, tired and heavy when using the Nokia 8.

                  With that - I have officially given up with Android smartphones. Most of them use PWM (even the ones with IPS) and the remaining devices (like Realme) are all way too oversized and impossible to use comfortably with one hand. I already tried HTC U11, Huawei P20, Redmi Note 8 Pro as well with no success.

                  So, I have decided that a switch to iOS is inevitable and I will purchase an iPhone XR as the next device!

                  QlaGzr
                  I'm in Finland, too. Are you sure that the refresh is 50Hz in Finland in a TV? The Led lights on the ceiling are 50Hz x2, but I would think that the display refresh is 60Hz, which is not affected by the power grid or TV signal.

                  AI have also the same TV, as well a newer one from Sony that is also flicker free. But this years models are not PWM free anymore. I think they all use the 750Hz or some other higher frequency.

                  But this is really to the point that I'm worried. If one has a problem with 60Hz, but not 50Hz, it starts to be impossible to resolve the problem. Maybe if there would be a way to evaluate this a bit more scientifically to really confirm what it is that irritates the eyes, or causes a migraine.

                  TV's are also a bit problematic testing source, since few people watch TV more than a couple of hours a day and it usually happens in the evening after most likely using a problematic device at work, such as a laptop or conference room display or projector. E.g DLP projectors get my eyes red in 30 min.

                  On that note, I was testing several projectors a year ago but found none that would not flicker with a DSLR test. All produced eye strain quite quickly.

                  Now that I have returned the 5 laptops and back to using Lenovo x280 and HP display, I have zero eye strain.

                  I'm tempted to try the Motorola Moto G100, which is kinda an updated version of G 5g Plus, which is also problem free for me.

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