I'm thinking of trying out some blue light filters, probably physical like a coloured transparent overlay. Has anyone had any success with these? It stems from a problem I have that no one else seems to, I cannot tolerate any IPS LCD screens, immediate migraine if I look at one. At first I thought it was the unique horizontal light polarisation these screens have. I experimented with changing and removing the polarisation, this helped, but I still get the migraines - noticeably less intense and take longer to start but they still occur. So I am wondering what else is it with IPS? They've always looked very 'white' to me, almost glowing. I had believed this to be an artefact of my brain struggling to process the polarised light (polarised light distorts in our eyes requiring our brains to undistort it). Now, having just bought a phone with a TN LCD that has the same white look, and has given me a similar migraine I am wondering if the 'white' look is just an excess of blue light. Perhaps IPS LCDs allow more blue through than TNs? So that brings me to blue light filters. Anything to recommend? Anyone had success? I am thinking of getting a few transparent coloured plastics and sticking to screens. A spectrometer would be great for testing, though I imagine quite expensive!

Turns out I was wrong on the spectrometer cost, found a diy-ish one on ebay for a tenner that attaches to a smart phone <a href="https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/113998715081?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=710-134428-41853-0&mkcid=2&itemid=113998715081&targetid=520884138159&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=1006589&poi=&campaignid=6744139851&mkgroupid=78343140926&rlsatarget=pla-520884138159&abcId=1139126&merchantid=6995734&gclid=CjwKCAiA3abwBRBqEiwAKwICA7YL_JdSmLFacL0-u1rt-2bNyNFQprJSlzyysf27SPvZiOuwsNP2JRoCReAQAvD_BwE" rel="ugc noopener nofollow" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Here

I've been experimenting with the cheap spectrometer, and boy is it cheap, as far as I can tell seems to work. Unfortunately, it has shown me nothing useful. All the LED LCD screens have a near identical output of a high blue peak, and lower red and green. The plasma tv I tested was much more balanced. It did show however, that despite the smartphones being set to what seemed like a similar brightness to desktop monitor, they were infact significantly brighter. Desktop monitor Benq BL2405, -30% blue light mode enabled Plasma tv Old Iphone (not sure which, still had a 4" screen) IMO Q2 Smartphone I'm going to try some physical and software overlays later and see how the spectra change.

Seagull The graphs are rough but still very interesting. Do I understand correctly - you fill the screen with white while measuring ? Also, any OLED phones among the measured ?

I have said it before - I don't think Blue Light is the problem here. It's definitely not GOOD for you, and it could be a contributing factor, but if it were the problem someone would have come up with a new pigment to use in the Liquid Crystal layer that's better at blocking the bad frequencies.

Gurm Maybe it's not abundance of the blue light, but lack on the red side of the spectrum, or blue/red ratio.

cybee Yes, all the screens were displaying white when I captured the spectrum. Unfortunately I don't have any oled devices available to test. cybee My thinking also, I will try to balance the spectrum with colour filter overlays and see if my tolerance to them improves. Here is a halogen bulb It may be possible that new quantum dot screens produce a much more balanced spectrum As they use a variety of coloured LEDs, not just 'white'. If the indicative spectrum shown below is correct Qdot lcds may have a much more plasma like spectrum.

Seagull Here is a halogen bulb Looks like a mercury vapour lamp - actually reminds me of the projector UHP lamp spectrum. In Incandescents yellow/orange/red should absolutely dominate. Maybe limitation/inaccuracy of the spectrometer ? Projector UHP bulb spectrum example: Halogen (incandescent): Seagull My thinking also, I will try to balance the spectrum with colour filter overlays and see if my tolerance to them improves. While I'm interested in results of such experiment, I must say that in theory filling the LCD screen with red colour should produce the same results. I personally don't find it tolerable - the full red or green gives the same strain (not sure if less or more). Although maybe external color filter will do better filtering so worth trying. BTW it would be interesting to measure the spectrum of red (and green) screen, would there be detectable blue peak or other pecularities..? Just as we're discussing spectrum part of screens - I disassembled LCD display recently and must say that LCD panel itself is quite opaque even in white (open state) - 60W incandescent lamp barely penetrates it. The LED backlight is extremely bright and has quite unpleasant violetish tint (I almost fell of the chair when accidentally enabled the disassembled screen 🙂). So if there's some parasite spectrum part that is invisible and is not filtered by the LCD panel, there can be enough of it to produce straining effect for sensitive people. But then, something like computer screen glasses should help, as they have UV filter etc., which is not the case for me.

cybee It certainly isn't the best, particularly in low light. Plus its not been calibrated in anyway. If I find relief from the colour overlays I may invest in a better spectrometer so as to better understand whats occurring. Tried to get a spectrum of an led screen running flux, but didn't turn out very well. Seemed to crush green, and bring the blue spike down to the level of red at moderate levels.

Well I gave some colour filters a try, but no joy so far. I am somewhat hopeful that the green filter might help a bit when I have a migraine, but it does not appear to be a factor for me. I am going build a pwm detector as described by martin, perhaps that will shed some light.

How do blue light filters work? Is it different from me manually decreasing blue levels? I got a new monitor which has a blue light filter. It overrides RGB adjustments when activated. But it is still too blue for me since I'm used to adjusting the blue of my old monitor manually so low that my monitor literally looks yellow. Isn't the blue from the backlight already filtered out when I lower blue setting manually? How should I use my monitor?

Anyone had success with blue light filters?: Page 2

Anyone had success with blue light filters?

HAL9000

I've tried several of them and they made no difference to a Macbook pro or Dell laptop that caused me similar problems. I've also tried blue blocking glasses / gunnar glasses and they made no difference 🙁
I also use Flux but I dont think it does anything as my 'good' devices are good without it

Quad43

Have you tried Ocushield ones? For some reason this makes every device totally usable

bkdo

Quad43

Did Ocushield really work for you? What devices did you have trouble with before using it?

Quad43

bkdo

the glasses yes. the screen protectors - zero

Quad43

bkdo

iPhone. Dell Windows 10 Nvidia machine. TVs

ensete

I've spent literally thousands on custom color tints testing, custom color tinting sheets, custom color tinted lenses, repeated testing, at multiple practitioners who were 100% blue light was the issue. In my case at least it was a complete red herring for screens.

jen

ensete In my case at least it was a complete red herring for screens.

I agree with you - I know for me blue light is a red herring. I’ve run genetics teaching labs for a decade and we routinely use very bright, constant current (flicker-free) LED blue light transilluminators with thick orange filters for imaging DNA. There is no red or green light produced and the blue light peaks at around 470nm. The blue light (without the filter) has never bothered me in the least- it’s extremely bright, but has never triggered or exacerbated my LED symptoms. Also, the thick orange glasses made to be used with the transilluminator that block blue light much more completely than others don’t help me at all with my screen sensitivity or sensitivity to flickering LED lights. No other blue-blocking lenses help either. My neurologist has told me that she’s noticed that blue-blocking lenses seem to help some people with headache issues but don’t seem to help others at all. I’m guessing the majority of us here are in the latter category, unfortunately.

BlueLight

TLDR; Success with 99.9% blue light filter glasses.

Yes. I have eye strain from LED screens like Xiaomi smartphones, Samsung screens and televisions. E-ink is okay. I think it's from dry eyes. I am able to manage my dry eyes with eye drops but regardless of how good I take care of my eyes the eye strain from screens won't go away. Hence, I searched on reddit for a solution. One of the most upvoted answers was blue light filter glasses. So, I bought some cheap ones for like 20 bucks with something like 50-70% filter. My eyes felt a little bit better, but this wasn't the solution. I decided to buy 90-95% (orange tint) blue light filter glasses. Now, these made some real difference. Without them I could maybe look for a few minutes at screens before it starts to hurt, but with them I can go for 2 hours. Now, I went to Amazon again and bought the real deal, 99.9+% (very very orange tint) glasses and voilà these are the game changer in my case. I'm able to look at screens for 8+ hours with only very slight eye strain, which is absolute acceptable. Of course there's no silver bullet and things that work for me doesn't have to work for you, but I just wanted to share this story in case there is someone who either never considered blue light filter glasses as a possible solution or who tried lower strength glasses but wasn't statisfied and might want to consider very high strength glasses.

mike

BlueLight

Hi BlueLight, and welcome to LEDStrain!

It would be nice if you write more about your eye strain problems. The more info we get, the more we all can help.

BlueLight I think it's from dry eyes. I am able to manage my dry eyes with eye drops but regardless of how good I take care of my eyes the eye strain from screens won't go away.

For me it’s the ledstrain problem that gives me dry eyes. I would say that it’s a consequence of my eye muscles working wrong/to much. So have an open mind what’s the cause.

Quad43

blue light glasses made a huge difference here also. which brand?

BlueLight

Quad43

Spectra479, "Blocks 99.82% of light in the critical 450 - 510nm range"

Another thing that I might want to try is to add a ~99.9% blue light blocking glasses clip to a ~99.9% blue light blocking glass. Call me crazy but two glasses would be like ~99.9999% filter? I'm not an optometrist but I would guess that these filters adds up. Maybe we have to shave of these extra tiny percentages for our sensitive eyes. But maybe this is not the way how it works, just something that came to my mind. Anyways, I'm currently doing okay with my Spectra479, other brands with similar filter percentage should work too.

bkdo

BlueLight

On your recommendation, I went and got a 99.9% pair of clip-on blue light blocker lenses, I'll be trying them out for the next couple days and will see if there's any improvement. Glad you were able to find a solution 😃

BlueLight

mike

Sure, I'm a programmer in his thirties who spent pretty much all day long in front of screens since late 90s, if you include things like sitting in front of a television and play video games, then since mid 90s. So, heavy screen time exposure for 25 years. Of course the old devices weren't LED based, but I guess it's still not good to stare at any kind of light for decades. My first problems with computer usage has been a mild form of repetitive strain syndrome (RSI) in my right arm starting in 2015. I couldn't move the computer mouse with this arm anymore, so I had to switch to my left arm. I did some special excersises and it took about a year solve the issue, but my arm is pain free now. However, I still continue to use my left arm for the mouse.

In 2018 I had my first eye problems with computer screens, television and smartphones. It was very slightly at first, just a little eye fatigue in the evening, but it has gotten progressively worse over the years. So of to the eye doctor I went and he (plus three other eye doctors that I visited in the last years) told me, that my eyes were dry and that this is quite a common problem for people who spent their time in front of screens all day long. He (and all the other eye doctors) told me to use (preservative free) eye drops on a regular basis. I started to use eye drops 5-10 times per day and a gel for the night and it mostly solved my problem with the dryness, no more irritated, itchy or red eyes. However, the drops didn't solve my eye strain from LED screens. That's a pain I feel in the back of my eyes after looking at screens for some minutes (started in the hour range). I know some of you have a set of specific devices which works and which doesn't, but I wasn't able to find any device that doesn't give me eye strain, except for my ebook reader (E-Ink display). During COVID-19 pandemic my eye strain got so intense, that I seriously had to do something about it, otherwise I couldn't continue with programming. Therefore, I started online research and came to blue light filter glasses.

BlueLight

bkdo

Does the 99.9% blue filter clip make any difference so far?

bkdo

BlueLight

It's tough to say, but I think I do notice a slight reduction in symptoms while using these clip-ons. I have a few more weeks on the return period, so I'll be testing them more for sure.

ensete

Sorry to hear that. I've heard mixed things about Irlen, how was your experience overall with them?

ensete

I went through Irlen testing and had custom tinted lenses made, They completely cured my symptoms for approximately 1 month, then completely failed. The Irlen practitioner said this was common and put me through severl additional rounds of testing, but I was never again able to achieve any symptom relief

BlueLight

bkdo

Slight reduction of symptoms sounds good. Yes, please report back after a few weeks of usage.

Nick83

Seagull

You mean blue light filter glasses? They were a no-go for me. Gave me horrible eyestrain, even if I was using them to read simple paper. I thought it was just the adaptation period, but after many weeks I gave up. I only managed to get eyestrain despite not using LCDs at all.

Maybe try some FL41 glasses (brands: Theraspecs, Axon, etc). They didn´t work for me, but seem to help some people with photophobia related to migraine.

Besides, you can try prescription colored filter glasses. Also used by people with migraine, except they don´t come in a standard color. You need to go to an optical shop (or something like that) where they make filter tests (they will try different colored filters on you, and put you in front of screen, leds, etc, to see how you react). They don´t just do this in most optics, you have to find one (or your doctor should tell you where to go).

I had better results (but far from optimal) with software blue color filters. But blue filter glasses… more eyestrain and nothing else.

logixoul

Nick83 Absolutely the same results here. (with clip-ons branded "Spectra479 - Blocks 99.82% of light in the critical 450 - 510nm range" - the ones @BlueLight used).

In fact, while wearing them, I got strong eyestrain in seconds instead of after 1 hour of use. They made my left eye unable to properly focus while wearing them - it saw everything on the screen blurred.

Oh well, was worth a try 🙂

« Previous Page