Out of curiosity, I decided to buy a lux meter and test out my various displays. I used a white screen image and kept the displays to the settings I normally keep them at. I then turned out the lights, put the meter up to the screen and took multiple readings. Here's what I found:

Toshiba Satellite laptop - 50% brightness:
36 lx

Samsung 32" smart TV - 80% backlight, 50% brightness and 50% contrast
54 lx

Acer V227Q bip - 40% brightness and 50% contrast
134 lx

Dell E173FPf - 80% brightness
87 lx

Obviously, my laptop is the dimmest out of all. My Samsung is surprisingly dim and unsurprisingly, the Acer is the brightest. My old Dell comes in third by comparison.

I also bought a Sceptre E205W-16003R 19.5 inch monitor to try out. I figured a slightly smaller monitor might be easier on the eyes. The monitor was insanely bright with its default settings. I had to turn the backlight brightness down to 0%. Unfortunately, it still read 117 lux with my meter and turning down the actual brightness setting crushed the color and image quality completely. The upside to the monitor is the text clarity is fantastic and doesn't strain my eyes to read.

First things first, you need ample sunshine exposure to get your vitamin D levels up and your thyroid functioning better. The thyroid is inhibited in many people from inadequate sun exposure as well as the fluorides that are prevalent through oral toothpastes and the industrial crap added to many public water supplies, which also ends up in many processed foods. Chlorine and bromides will also impede the thyroid.

First things first, get yourself a sun bed, go out in the full sun for 15 minutes with your eyes closed, no sunglasses, and go from there.

I appreciate the advice. I think I'm going to have to visit an ophthalmologist and see if they have any suggestions. It would be really fantastic if Asus, BenQ, or some other monitor company, had a monitor lineup for people with photophobia. Or at the very least, have a monitor setting that reduces brightness greatly, without crushing image quality

    Hi pal,
    Sorry for my english
    I am not a lenovo fan, but seems like they are the only brand to have a curious TUV certification
    Try google lenovo "TUV eye comfort"
    I dont have one but this look prety good for me: Lenovo T24d,

    https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/accessories-and-monitors/monitors/office/T24d-10A16240WT0-24inch-MonitorHDMI/p/61B4MAR1US

    Also you can check the new ones, most of they have that certification

    Anyway, If you get a lenovo monitor, pls share with us you experience.

    Good luck finding a monitor easy on the eyes

    Hi pal,
    Sorry for my english
    I am not a lenovo fan, but seems like they are the only brand to have a curious TUV certification
    Try google lenovo "TUV eye comfort"

    I dont have one but this look prety good for me: Lenovo T24d,

    https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/accessories-and-monitors/monitors/office/T24d-10A16240WT0-24inch-MonitorHDMI/p/61B4MAR1US

    Also you can check the new ones, most of they have that certification

    Anyway, If you get a lenovo monitor, pls share with us you experience.

    Good luck finding a monitor easy on the eyes

    Appreciate the suggestion. Although my problem isn't with the monitor itself, but dealing with the light emitted from them. The BenQ GW2280 I tried out had a TUV certification, but that one was the brightest and most discomforting monitor out of the three.

    Do any of your monitors support black frame insertion? It's used to improve motion clarity and bring your LED to a CRT like motion smoothness. It has an added benefit of halving the LED brightness as well. I'll put the link explaining it. https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/motion/image-flicker

    Appreciate the link. I've also found other software that aids in dimming the screen more:

    F.lux
    https://justgetflux.com/

    Dimmer
    https://www.nelsonpires.com/software/dimmer

    DimScreen
    https://dimscreen.jaleco.com/

    A third party display calibrator. Looks like it lets you adjust the cd/m2 white levels
    https://displaycal.net/

    Iris
    https://iristech.co/

    A friend of mine sent me this one. It sets every website you visit into dark mode.
    https://darkreader.org/

    I might use this one, so the image quality isn't skewered by third party filters. Although if I come across a bright scene in a movie or game, RIP my eyes

    I'm in a similar situation, I've tried 6 monitors so far an every single one caused me different types of issues. I'm desperate as I work in front of a screen for 8 hours or more a day and I don't know what to do. I've tried some TN panels from Dell, a TN from LG, IPS for AOC and Dell. I also tried a VA panel from Redragon which was a total crap... I've went to the doctor, picked a pair of glasses and still having issues....

      rotarski What was wrong with the Redragon VA?
      I recommend you try a glossy Dell or low haze HP. In many people, the matte coatings on these screens cause strain.

        rotarski

        Are you trying new screens? I find I have far greater success with older second hand screens.

          CheesyBiscuit Hi, if I can advice you..stop looking for any new monitor. My experience is that there is no new suitable one...at least for me, because of its LED backlight (panel technology - I mean TN, IPS or whatever - does not matter). Just try to get an old one with CCFL backlight. It was the only thing which helped me... so I bought several as a reserve 🙂

            @K-Moss the screen quality was really bad, screen door effect, you could see the pixels really bad in the sides of the screen and the motion blur was way too high, even with all the settings, was causing me dizziness. I believe a glossy surface would annoy me even more.
            @Seagull I only tried new screens...I tried 2 models which were launched in 2018 if I'm not mistaken and that didn't helped....

            I am now without a monitor and I'm using my Dell Latitude 5401 and for an hour or so I thought this is better for me eyes but I can notice that this also gives me eyestrain...not as much as a bigger screen I guess, but it's there. Especially when watching videos when youtube. I'm desperate...

            6 days later

            An update: I've been using the Acer V227Q bip for a few weeks now. It still causes me strain. I've adjusted the the blue light levels to 70% (which is helping a little), kept the brightness 40% and contrast 50%. I'm using dark mode for everything but reading text and viewing bright scenes in videos is still bothersome.

            From some research I've been doing, 24 inches seems to be the 1080p standard. Considering I'm using a 21.5 inch monitor, I'm wondering if the text is being crushed from the slightly smaller size. I could lower the resolution to 1600x900, but I don't want to lost image quality.

            I'm wondering if I buy a 23.8 inch monitor, it'll clear the text up a little bit.

            BlasterFX Try to contact Toshiba and lets see if you get an answer.

            I'll have to try that. If they can't give me an answer, I could always buy a broken Toshiba Satellite and dissect the monitor. The panel manufacturer is usually printed on the inner hardware.

                8 days later

                I've tried 23,6, 23,8 and 24 inch monitors, all on FHD resolution and noticed that even though the pixel size is the same on each monitor with the same size (0.2745 for the 23,8 ones), not every monitor shows the text the same. You can get a 23,8 FHD that has pixelated text or you can get one that has crystal clear text. It's a f**** mess picking a monitor.

                I believe you can fix this by getting a higher resolution screen and increase the text size in Windows. I'm now using a Dell Latitude laptop that has a 14 inch display FHD resolution and text size set on 120% and the text is as crisp as you can get but for some reason this gives me some eye strain even though it's a WVA panel.

                CheesyBiscuit 40% brightness is much too high for one sensitive to LED screens. Most of use brightness levels under 10.

                    I gave up on white LED backlight monitors. They all force me to turn the brightness extremely down so I could only use them in a dark room, and then still my eyes don't feel truly relaxed. I'm currently using my 43" Sony 4K TV (XG8096) from last year as monitor replacement whenever I need a PC. Somehow its display is different from others, meaning I have no brightness issues anymore. Probably due to the Quantum Dots they use. It's not that bad having such a big display as the 4K pixel density is equal to having 4 21.5" displays at 1080p each. I wonder if all current Sony TVs of all sizes have this backlight, too. Could be a solution if nothing else helps.

                    K-Moss CheesyBiscuit 40% brightness is much too high for one sensitive to LED screens. Most of use brightness levels under 10.

                    Eh? I would suggest many of us set the brightness high on the monitor to avoid any PWM issues, and then use the GPU controls to reduce the output brightness levels to something that is more comfortable.

                        8 days later

                        Dell U2414H, 2407 get the most love on here, followed by Benq EWxxx. I like LG24GL600F via displayport & AMD

                          AgentX20 Are you saying monitors that explicitly advertise being "flicker free" still have some PWM? PWM at lower brightness levels isn't common anymore. I don't even know how to adjust the brightness level using my OS. I use integrated Intel graphics and Ubuntu Linux.

                          • KM replied to this.

                              K-Moss At least they have a ripple. That's not PWM but flicker nonetheless. How big it it is and what frequency they use differs between models. To me it looks like even small flicker can cause symptoms.

                              Changing the backlight brightness can change both amplitude and frequency of the ripple, so experimenting with brightness may be worth it. There may be a sweet spot that's usable. It doesn't have to be 100% in this case.

                                  KM Do you know how I can use 100% brightness on the monitor and adjust via software to lower the brightness at the GPU level?

                                    dev