All IPS monitors are causing eye strain. TN not.

K-Moss

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/all-ips-monitors-are-causing-eye-strain-tn-not.3470550/

Two users here reporting IPS screens have punished their eyes while TN screens have been fine.

cdprice

K-Moss IMHO TFT structure(IPS, VA, TN) is irrelevant. Most old IPS panels have high haze anti-glare coating on it. It gives IPS bad reputation.

JTL

cdprice IMHO TFT structure(IPS, VA, TN) is irrelevant

On the other hand. TN panels have been known to use aggressive dithering in the past, but otherwise I agree

K-Moss

Could be right regarding aggressive anti-glare. However, my Microsoft Surface RT is glossy and it always irritated my eyes. It's an IPS.

Also, I came here to post this anecdote: [Help] Dell Ultrasharp U2715H seems to hurt my eyes a lot.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Monitors/comments/5l5o2r/help_dell_ultrasharp_u2715h_seems_to_hurt_my_eyes/

He says going back to his TN screens solved his issues with that new IPS. Were those screens known for aggressive matte screens that the TN screens weren't?

Also, I had a TN-based Sony laptop that was quite comfortable. It did indeed have a glossy screen. As you know, I definitely prefer my low haze HP to the matte HP I have right next to it. I don't know why low haze screens aren't more prevalent for home users who can adjust lighting and positioning to suit the display. Low haze in and of itself allows the eyes to relax. I know because going from the low haze HP to the matte HP, I can feel the eyes tensing with the matte and relaxing with the clearer low haze screen.

On that note, I'm curious about Dell's S series. They have 1% haze 27" that is a current generation IPS that most people seem to enjoy.

K-Moss

Another useful comment for those saying panel type makes no difference. He claims IPS simply doesn't have enough contrast once you crank down the backlight. However I suspect you could run the IPS at higher brightness and retain color and contrast simply by keeping it further away from the head, either through scaling or by getting a bigger screen with less pixel density. The first thing to try in terms of reducing eye strain should be sitting further away from the light source. The second thing, ambient lighting.

Well, I know this is an old thread, but this is an important issue, although for a few people only.

I have first encountered this eye strain problem when quite a few years ago I have sold my MAG500T Trinitron CRT and bought a flat screen TFT. It was - as far as I remember - a 22" 16:9 Acer with TN panel, 6+2 bit dithering and a CCFL backlight - all the bad things. I was happy. Well... for about half an hour, when my eyes started to hurt. I have tried every setting possible, looked up some forums... in the end, after spending a few hours in front of this monitor, I got such a terrible headache and eye strain that I literally could not work for a week. I could not watch TV or sit in front of a monitor, my eyes swelled up, it was tragic.

So I did some "research", and bought an S-PVA display - a Samsung 971P. I still have it. I turned down brightness, turned up contrast, etc. Also got a lamp behind the monitor that lights the wall, and I was happy again 🙂 Later on I bought a BenQ BL2400T, which has an AMVA panel. It was somewhat harder to set up, but it was OK once again.

However, just today I got a Dell U2515H. I wanted to do some color sensitive work, get WQHD resolution, etc... And now again, my eyes are starting to melt. I look at the BenQ beside the Dell, and it's a relief. I look back, and it's starting to hurt again.

I am still evaluating this, but I strongly suspect that for me, it all comes down to contrast. And contrast is... well, more complicated than one might think. I am perfectly fine with the AMOLED screen of my Tab 8.4 S, even though it has very tiny text. I am also OK with the *VA panels, as they have about 3x the contrast of IPS panels: I can set brightness to almost zero, while turning up the contrast, so that I have really deep blacks. But on an IPS... even the blacks radiate. If I turn down the brightness up to the point where it is fine for me, the contrast becomes very low. There is just no sweet spot. If I increase the ambient light in the room, it is somewhat better, but still, IPS - and TN of course - just have way too much intrinsic light hitting my eyes, IMHO.

I would recommend to everyone that have this problem to try some sort of an *VA panel display with about 5% brightness and 50% contrast, with a lit background, and see whether it helps or not.

BTW: the U2515H was professionally calibrated.

That said, I agree an aggressive matte finish definitely is going to cause eye strain.

K-Moss

I forgot I had posted this already.

I tried to find a book talking in detail about the different panel technologies and how they work, but I didn't see one available from Amazon. The material online doesn't really go into the kind of depth I'd like. Does anyone here know any especially good websites on the differences between TN, VA, IPS with a deep and technical focus versus aimed at consumers?

Someone says:

im not sure about the technical aspects but ips monitors seem to have more light filter through the pixels, which is why they can be viewed from different angles, and also why they have light bleed. tn monitors maybe only have light angled in one direction only, and if you look at it not straight on, the light is not hitting your face directly.

WhiteStrain

Well in my case the only IPS monitor I had, Asus VX229H, caused me huge eye strain even on minimum brightness, no matter what I did, especially with content that has lighter shades such as white or light grey, which unfortunately is almost anything, websites have white background, and inverting colors has issues.
I got a new VA monitor, AOC C24G1, and oh boy, what a difference, I can even use it at normal brighness levels such a 50% and no eye strain at all. Text rendering has some issues though due to subpixel layout, but depending on the browser used or the windows font used it is improved enough as to not bother me.
I also have a laptop with a terrible TN display, that has 200:1 contrast according to a review, and obviously PWM modulation, but no eyestrain at all. It is weird as to why this happens, maybe it is the lower haze, the AOC has a light matte anti-glare surface according to pcmonitors, and the ASUS would probably be a medium one, because image was more grainy and I couldn't see my face with light behind me, whereas with the AOC I can see myself just a little, indicating a less aggresive surface. My TN laptop is glossy and I definitely prefer glossy over matte.

eDenon-2

I have had a test between my IPS monitor vs VA monitor, the result is, VA's color is more vivid and more real than IPS. However both didnt bring me eyestrain, I dont think eyestrain is related with panel type.

dollarslice

I've never found an IPS screen that doesn't give me headaches (including other people's phones, iPads, televisions, etc.) and I have been able to use TN screens comfortably for many years.

I have also had some OLED devices over the years (phones and mp3 players) that were totally fine for me, it was only in the last few years that some OLED/AMOLED devices started bothering me, which I suspect is due to software/OS changes. Or I guess my brain/eyes could have changed.

Azhursh

I don't exactly know the type of my laptop monitor but it does give me a lot of eyestrain, only on Linux sadly but it does happen. My ips monitor from my graphic tablet cause eyestrain on Linux too but is less painful. I had another cheap monitor that was worse than my laptop screen.

The only thing I can confirm is at least IPS suffers from eyestrain as other types of monitor, even though the does not seem to have a noticeable PWM compared to my other monitors. So PWM does not seem to be the issue in my case. Now I think my graphic tablet screen might have a better bit deph so maybe the problem is there. I want to check what type of screen is my laptop

ronghua

Avoid LCD Panel like VA and TN that has really bad color accuracy.

If you can afford it, OLED has the best image quality, if your budget is limited, get the IPS Panel that still perfect.

https://pctechtest.com/ips-versus-oled-display-monitor

Sunspark

Accuracy isn't intrinsic to the crystal alignment, but other factors as well.

According to f.lux, I have 100% sRGB coverage on my old TN monitor. I have no idea if this is accurate or not, but the colours look pretty good to me.

OtherJonny

In my recent experience, IPS caused bad strain for me. TN panel didn’t hurt hardly at all, however, the LED backlight on the TN was the dealbreaker. I’ve tested enough screens to know what strains from LED lighting feels like.