Seeking Tolerable Gaming Monitor! Any thoughts welcome

Gemsand

For the past 7 years I have been on an unsuccessful quest to find a gaming monitor that I can tolerate. I am hoping someone in this forum who has experienced something similar to the below might have successfully cracked this puzzle- I am definitely open to any thoughts or suggestions!

After years of research, and much trial and error (I have tried over 30 monitors!), I have concluded that something about the LED light of modern monitors itself causes my symptoms (similar to those described by many others here): retinal pain and eye strain, disorientation, etc. I have confirmed this by finding LED desk lights that produce the same symptoms! I have identified 6 basic low-end computer monitors I can use no problem all from the year 2013 or earlier. I have yet to find any monitor manufactured after 2013 that I can tolerate. The older monitors that I can tolerate I can use for 8+ hours a day without any strain whatsoever; whereas the intolerable monitors cause symptoms within minutes- there is a distinct difference.

I strongly suspect the culprit is something in the color spectrum produced by the LEDs- probably due to the more red-leaning color spectrum used to produce a “full color spectrum” measurement for monitor tests. (All “low blue light” solutions seem to be irrelevant for me.) All the offensive monitors seem to have a slight orangey-reddish hue to the light. I’ve seen some other posts on this forum that seem to corroborate this conclusion.

Yesterday I tried a true RGB OLED monitor with Quantum Dot (the amazing Dell Alienware AW3423DW)- very sadly it was also not tolerable. I’ve also had problems with LG WRGB OLED TVs. But, I have never had an issue with any OLED phones, nor any laptop that I have seen (though I haven’t tested too many laptops).

I can use:

Basic monitors from year 2013 or earlier (for example Asus VS247H-P, Dell P2014HT, Acer G276HLGbid)
Modern basic Samsung LED backlit TV Model UN55TU8000FXZA (manufactured 2022)
Modern Chromebook
All modern phones that I’ve seen so far, both Android and Apple, both with LED or OLED screens

I can’t tolerate:

All gaming monitors that I’ve tried so far (for example Asus PG279Q, PG278QR, VG248QE, VZ27AQ; Acer XB271HU; Nixeus NX-EDG27; LG 24MP59HT-P; QNIX QX2710; Samsung C27HG70, LS27AG500PNXZA; Dell Alienware AW3423DW OLED)
All modern non-gaming monitors that I’ve seen
LG C7 OLED TV

I keep hope because there exist both LED backlight and OLED screens that fall into both categories, and because gaming-worthy monitors exist- but I just can’t seem to combine the two!

Has anyone had a similar experience and had any luck with this? I’m gratefully open to all thoughts and ideas. Thank you so much!

machala

As I posted in another thread recently I am now convinced the biggest contributor to these issues is terrible pixel inversion issues that most modern monitors have. This causes slight flickering that results in the observed symptoms. Pixel inversion state is specific to every single produced unit therefore you cannot find a "good type".

As for the LED lights as far as I know some LED lights may be flickering too… but I don't really know for sure.

It may be that your problems lie elsewhere, but in the past several years I did see two laptop screens that were perfect for my eyes, I could see how stable their image was. This again leads me to believe this is no recent LED backlight changes or anything else of the sort that some others here suggested.

With those gaming monitors… did you try to run them at a higher refresh rate? What was the rate and did you feel any relief or difference when the refresh rate was higher?

Gemsand

machala

Hello sir! I very much appreciate your thoughts. I've been thinking about your other post, so thank you.

Yes, I ran the gaming monitors at up to 175 Hz successfully but no relief was experienced.

The fact that I have found LED desk lamps that produce the same symptoms makes me think it is related to wavelength spectrum produced- but your post makes me wonder if those desk lamp LEDs also flicker in some way. Also I noticed that when the LCD LED backlight monitors were ON but the computer was OFF (black screen but backlight still on), I still experienced the symptoms (I actually sat and stared at a blank screen for 5 minutes to test this- very interesting). Still, I'll give further thought to pixel inversion or some kind of other LED flicker as a possible cause.

Allekss

LED lights ( monitors, bulbs, cars , etc … ) are harmful to us and it's now proven in European Union by this article!!!

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/16/health/blue-light-led-health-effects-bn-trnd/index.html

This is one major factor that makes us feel really bad. I would like to know too if there are some monitors LED free !

Gemsand

Allekss

Ironically, it is the monitors sold as "low blue light" and "Eye Care" that cause me the worst symptoms. The offensive monitors tend to have a reddish/ orange-ish hue to them, so I actually wonder if the issue isn't more in the red/ orange (longer wavelength) end of the spectrum, rather than blue; or perhaps even some wavelength outside the visible spectrum.

Allekss

Gemsand all this " eye care " monitors are just marketing for companies to sell more and for dumbies to buy more… You can have a pair of blue light glasses and you're done… The MAJOR problem nowadays is the LED backlighting of monitors + how DIRECT DX12 render things…

EyeDiscomfortCertificate

You need to look at 28 (not 27!) inch gaming monitors. They use Innolux panel, and I've heard the least amount of complaints regarding these panels. Examples: Gigabyte M28U

Gemsand

EyeDiscomfortCertificate

This is a great idea, I'll look into it- thank you! I've never considered an atypical size (28") 4K monitor- maybe the panel/ LEDs are different.