Huawei MateBook 14s, eye strain and how I solved it

I can confirm roughly the same feeling for the recently bought ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 GU603ZU-N4013 with the following matrix (also Tianma):

Tianma TL160ADMP03-0  (IPS/LTPS-LCD WXUGA 2560x1600 240Hz DCI-P3 100%) (panel review)
* the laptop itself is different, but has the same panel installed

Unfortunately, I cannot find the matrix on the panelook so if anyone knows other sites to pick up its characteristics I will be grateful. The display itself as branded as ROG Nebula Display (note "Display" and not "HDR", it's an important distinction).

I decided to keep this laptop as a result. At least I can work on this thing without desire shut it down and go for a walk after 30 minutes (as it was with with BOE NV156FHM-N6E). I already tried working the full day on it without signnificant interruptions and so far it's been ok (not great! but just ok). I have been owning it for about 2 weeks.

The settings I found work best for me:

• Force 8 bit
• Switch Nvidia GPU ("Ultimate" mode in Armoury Crate or G-Helper), follow these instructions to ensure dithering is off (I do not believe it changes something, but doing it just in case)
• Flux (colors: 5200 - 4200 - 3500)
• Decreased gamma to 0.9, decreased color contrast to 0.45 using Nvidia color settings. This increases text readability a bit (however, the general practice does not recommend decreasing gamma, my experimentation lead me to believe that I am more comfortable with sharper text it yields).
• 60 vs 240 Hz I tried both and I do not see much difference in terms of eye strain for me.
• Also I found that "Eye Safe" color mode in Armoury Crate is good for long text reading sessions. Sometimes I turn it on (esp. in the evening) for additional comfort at the expense of colors. This mode is not just adding a blue light filter (which is pretty standard), but it also increases text contrast and readability somehow. I wish I could figure out the exact settings they use to arrive at this level of text contrast, while delegate blue light filtering completely to flux, but unfortunately I do not know how to do that.
• I am using the latest Win 10 builds and drivers (not experimented with setting up older Windows builds, and honestly not needed here as the text is not a problem it is sharp enough, and in my experience the only thing older windows builds can help with is text sharpness).

What's good:

• Eyes concentrate on text, text is rather sharp. Also, you can have your eyes really close to the laptop and they still would not strain which is typically a good sign.
• No headaches noticed except for some initial period of accommodation (but this is to be expected for any new display)
• No backlight bleeding, good amount of contrast for a modern IPS screen
• Otherwise great for gaming/content consumption
• Matte finish, but no crystal or screendoor effects. Can work in dark theme as opposed to OLED screens.

What's no so good:

• The screen still has 'micro-sparkles' (micro-flashes) as any IPS screen I've used, and it sparkles more than my 8-year old Innolux screen (which let's say is 10/10 for eye comfort). I am pretty sure It's not dithering, qs all my IPS laptops (even old ones) have this effect to a varying degree. Maybe it has something to do with how my eyes work , qs I see similar effects when looking at the blue sky for example (but not when looking at paper). In any case, it is not like a clean static sheet of paper , it leads to less text readability especially when you have a long read of text on white background in front of you, you have to concentrate to read. Honestly it's fine in web interfaces, but it becomes noticeable when you have to read a long Word doc for example. However, this does not lead to huge eye strain that I've had on other modern IPS screens. Yes it is not nice and I'd prefer the screen to be static as a piece of paper, and it's definitely not it. However, at least it does not make my eyeballs or head hurt after prolonged use and there is no immediate desire to close the laptop and go for a walk.
• I still feel a bit weird at times in front of this screen after long periods of working, but again not as bad as some other screens.

Verdict: I am keeping this laptop for now. Will continue searching for an ideal option, and will sell this if I found one (it's not an ideal by any means, but good enough in comparison to some other IPS options).

RomaRS Try turning off the toggle "Panel Self Refresh". You can find it in Intel Comand Center. Please let me know if your viewing experience improves any further.

Andreiid it's been turned off from the beginning for me. btw I've been using dGPU mostly. But last two days I checked on Intel iGPU just out of curiosity. My settings are all default, plus I turned off panel self refresh and all other power saving panel options. Also decreased contrast in color section from 17 to 12. Forced 8-bit. G-Sync disabled. Ditherig tool launched just in case, however I do not see much difference with or without it. To me the experience on iGPU is roughly the same as on dGPU, so can copy-paste my observations above for the Intel iGPU as well. Oh one more thing I debloated my zephyrus laptop by removing asus bloatware using armoury crate uninstall tool and switched to ghelper. not sure if that's important.

pavvell

Would you be able to measure the pixel flicker from pixel inversion and/or temporal dithering using a cheap microscope of your display? A lot of folks here are concerned and interested in temporal dithering and I have recorded many videos of pixel flicker using the Carson MicroFlip scope and a 240fps slow motion phone camera. Perhaps setting color depth to 8 bit might have removed or reduced the pixel flickering but it is ideal to have empirical evidence of this.