Hello,
I bought my first Apple product some time ago and I was really looking forward to being blown away by it. Too bad that the 2017 iMac makes me sick instead. After months of light usage mainly in the evening, last week I attempted to use it for an entire day as I was at home and my eyes felt completely dry and very strained, I started to have headache and a feeling of warmth, like motion sickness. Ouch. I decided to limit the usage drastically and now I spend max 15 minutes at the time in front of it with night mode, brightness almost at the minimum, reduced resolution, glasses and low light in the room. With these workarounds I do not have headache and motion sickness but still something doesn’t feel right, my eyes are tired, and I feel a “disoriented” after using it. At night, with soft warm light in the room, it’s a bit better but far from what I consider normal, the screen still feels extremely tiring.
Surely the reflective glass and the “aggressive” colours with high contrast don’t help with my sensitivity for too much light and glare, but I don’t think that it can explain motion sickness. Never had this kind of issue before with other screens despite having spent many many hours in front of them in the last 25 years in all sort of conditions. I’ve been in contact with Apple and to be honest the lady I talked to was extremely kind. She told me seek some medical advice first and then we’ll take it from there. We’ll see what happens on that front, but I don’t expect much to be honest.
This is a list of laptops, desktops, external screens and smartphone that have never given me any issue (only the expected blurry vision in the case of overuse):
Laptop
Dell Inspiron 1720
17" 1920 x 1200
TrueLife TFT LCD / CCFL
Intel Core2 Duo T7700 @ 2.40GHz
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
Windows 7 32-bit
also connected to
LG Flatron L1915S
19" 1280 x 1024 at 75 Hz
TFT active-matrix LCD (matte) / CCFL
250 cd/m²
Desktop
HP Pro 3515
AMD A4-5300 APU
AMD Radeon HD 7480D
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1 / Windows 10 (build 1803)
connected to
Acer AL1717
17" 1280 x 1024
TFT active-matrix LCD (matte) / CCFL
300 cd/m²
Laptop
HP EliteBook 840
14” 1366 x 768
i5-4300 CPU @ 1.90 GHz
Intel HD Graphics 4400
Windows 7
connected to
HP EliteDisplay E201
20" 1600 x 900 at 60Hz
TN (matte) / LED
250 cd/m²
Smarthphone LG G2
Android v4.2.2 (Jelly Bean)
True HD-IPS, 16M colors
1080x1920 pixels
Gorilla Glass 2
The screen of the Dell Inspiron was the best I have ever used, it looked fantastic from every angle, resolution was great especially for that time, colours were so alive with the glossy finish (the name TrueLife was fully justified IMO) and most importantly it was usable.
In this one week of research I’ve noticed other users trying to summarise some possible root causes behind the headaches:
- Blu light
- LED backlight
- IPS panel
- PWM
- Dithering
- Software shenanigans (Intel drivers, etc)
I think that in my personal case I can disregard points from 1. to 4. Initially I had some hope that just connecting an external screen would do (I’m going to do that test anyway) but I don’t expect much reading other people’s experiences. As I type this text the letters on the screen don’t seem steady, maybe you know what I mean.
Is there anything else you can infer for my specific case looking at the list of devices I have been able to use without issues?