Philips Envia 27M2N3500UK Circularly Polarized Monitor

AshX

I discovered this monitor and learned it was announced this past summer. It claims to be the first Circularly Polarized IPS LCD desktop monitor. More info here. It was apparently a joint venture between Philips and BOE. Press release here.

I found the specs on the Philips Singapore website.

Quick and dirty specs are:

27”
2K resolution
300Hz refresh rate
Flicker Free
Circularly Polarized
100% sRGB

From what I can tell different configurations of refresh rate and resolution will enable it to run in 8-bit, 8-bit+FRC, and 10-bit.

It seems the monitor is only available in-store in Asia. I can find nothing else but a few Instagram and Facebook videos from the company over the past month. If nothing else this seems to be a very interesting development and I was pleased to see the focus on eye health. That being said, who knows if it will ever come to North America and Europe and whether it will make a difference for any of us. But it’s certainly nice to see an attempt. Perhaps if anyone on this forums lives in Asia they may be able to give this monitor a shot?

simplex

AshX

I seen philips 27m2n3500pf in local shop, seller told it model with hardware blue light, and after measurment I found it have 460nm blue peak

Seagull

Any linear polarised monitor (ie IPS, TN, VA) can be made circular simply by applying a plastic screen protector.

This is because plastic behaves as a 'quarter wave plate' .

Waveplate - Wikipedia

ensete

I am interested in this. I have had some plastic filters make some bad displays good for me and I long suspected polarization may have something to do with my specific situation

Seagull

ensete Polarised light requires more processing by our brains to turn it into an image compared to unpolarised light. Its no surprise that this makes polarised displays worse for eye strain.

This is because our eyes perceive white polarised light as blue and yellow, and our brains have to correct this so we see white. For some people, their brains do not correct for this and they see blue and yellow spots when viewing LCD monitors.

See Haidinger's brush - Wikipedia

Circularly polarised light is closer to natural light so requires a bit less brain processing.

If you want to explore how polarised light affects you a pair of polarised sunglasses is a good start, but there are other ways. Light reflected off water is linearly polarised, so if you look at a large body of water with sunlight reflecting off it, you'll get both flickering and polarised light as the water ripples. I gave myself a migraine from this a few times.

You can also remove polarised light from a screen entirely by placing a piece of paper over it. This works because the paper scatters the light as it passes through. Something you can easily see if you have polarised sunglasses or a polarising light filter.

cooldudz

Seagull Very interesting. Thank you for the insight on all of this.

How come paper is able to scatter the light and not the screen itself? What qualities about paper make it so that it's able to do this and what is lacking in a screen that it's not able to do that?

Seagull

cooldudz

Sorry I don't really know the answer to that, and I suspect there is not an easy answer to it. Paper is made of opaque fibres, as the light passes through it will bounce around and off these fibres till it exits, changing direction and orientation with each bounce, and that's why it removes polarisation and makes it blurry.

But why doesn't that happen when passing through the plastic or glass the screen is made of? that's some complex physics, beyond my understanding.

cooldudz

Seagull No worries. I ran this through ChatGPT, as I was curious to know if the monitor I recently found that works for me (Dell E173fpc) had this, and while it doesn't, it did say this:

"Interestingly, many people sensitive to modern displays find these older, linear-polarized, CCFL monitors more comfortable, partly because:

The light spectrum is smoother (less blue spike).

The polarizers + matte coating diffuse light more naturally.

The color calibration (as in your low RGB defaults) is much gentler."

So I wonder if the polarization thing is the end symptom of something further up the chain that is wrong with how the OS and screen processes color and light. So fixing it very well could be something that helps people and takes care of their problem, but I wonder if the monitor being circularly polarized is needed because it's trying to compensate or put back in balance something more fundamental and deeper that is wrong with how newer tech processes everything you see on screen. And my older tech - older monitor, older graphics card, older OS, processes what I see in a much less harsher manner that the difference in relief between linear and circular polarization is so marginal that I don't need it to be circular to be able to use this screen.

Seagull

cooldudz

I am fairly sure this statement is wrong

"The polarizers + matte coating diffuse light more naturally."

Polarizers haven't changed, and I did not find any change in polarisation comparing older or newer monitors with a polarising filter.

I have an alternative explanation for you to consider. You are getting older, as you age your brain becomes less plastic. Less able to learn and adapt. The older devices you have used may work better purely because you were younger when you first started using them, so your brain could adapt fast enough that you did not experience symptoms, and has retained that adaptation.

I came to this conclusion myself when I tested for dithering in different graphics cards.

GPU Dithering - LEDStrain Forum

I had thought that I could use my then current GPU because it did not dither, but I found that it did dither, and that some of the modern GPUs I couldn't use didn't dither! ultimately I concluded I could use this card because I'd had started using it when I was younger and didn't have any problems with screens because I could not find anything to differentiate it from other modern cards that I could use, other that them dithering on slightly different frequencies.

cooldudz

Seagull hmm interesting perspective but I disagree. This was my younger brother's computer that I'm now using, this monitor has never been used before as it's a model me or my family never owned, and quite literally I'm still using my iphone 6 that I was able to use all day everyday before my screen sensitivity manifested but now the phone gives me symptoms. Also have a laptop that I used to use comfortably all day be the absolute worst device for me now.

So I disagree about the brain adaptation thing but I do agree with you on some level that the problem is me, as I am fortunate to know the source of my problem, which is that all my screen sensitivity issues started literally the day after I strained my neck badly. Once I fix my neck, I'm quite confident that I could use any screen, but after all the knowledge gained here about PWM/dithering/polarization/flicker/RGB/etc, it's kind of like... why? Sure my symptoms probably won't be like they are now, but I wouldn't doubt that the most aggravating screen would at least give me something like reduced energy or increased irritability that I wouldn't otherwise have. So it's just not worth it for prettier pictures on a screen. I value my health more.

Seagull

cooldudz

Sorry I can't be of more help. Neck injury is an interesting one, I feel like others might have said similar things. Not sure what the connection is between our necks, and vision given our eyes are directly connected to our brains.

Come to think of it though, I do get headaches if I have to turn my neck to look at a screen - I used to have two computers at opposite sides of a corner desk, but with a regular non swivelling chair so I'd do that a lot.

As for older devices being better, I'd look at things like resolutions being lower, or the colour space being narrower (a smaller range of visible colours) or being a lower colour depth (bigger gaps between colours). Post processing might also be a factor, ie adding a layer of blur to remove sharp edges and make everything look smoother. That's something that much more likely to come up on modern software as it needs more GPU processing power than older devices would have had. I've struggled in the past to use software which visibly does this. If you have a modern computer you can use, try installing VS Code and seeing if it triggers you, that's got a very post-processed blurry look to it.

cooldudz

Seagull yea you nailed it with everything you said in the last paragraph. Thank you for the tip as well!

Our necks houses the occipital nerves which are very tightly intertwined with our eyes. Also the trigeminal nerve is close to all of this, so inflammation/compression of that can as well affect everything surrounding it (including the eyes). I strongly believe that everything within the neck/scalp/face/eye area are so interconnected and intertwined, and space in that region being so tight and limited, that something wrong in one area (whether that's inflammation or compression of a nerve due to inflammation or tight fascia) can affect the function of another area. This is why people with vestibular issues also have issues with the occular system. They are very dependent on one another. This also explains why I observed many people with neck issues/seb derm/migraine issues (unrelated to screens)/long covid sufferers, etc have screen sensitivity issues. Because nerves originating in that brainstem area are compressed due to inflammation or tight fascia due to strain which is causing dysfunction that manifests as screen sensitivity, light sensitivity, migraines, dizziness/vertigo, etc.