L
LukasF

  • 3 Feb
  • Joined 19 Jan
  • In Reduce OLED flickering and increase eye comfort

    So after some further testing I have determined that this doesn't solve the OLED flickering. It improves it, but I can still feel the eye strain. Its really frustrating.

  • In Reduce OLED flickering and increase eye comfort

    Hello everybody,

    this thread is meant to share fixes for the OLED flickering that causes eye strain, why it happens and how to combat it. While there can be medical reasons for eye strain, this thread is meant exclusively for fixing issues with OLED tech. If you have medical issues please discuss this in other threads. From my personal experience I have had eye strain from a QD-OLED screen and these helped reduce it, if not completely eliminate it:

    1. Disable variable rate refresh (VRR makes OLEDs flicker)
    2. Set screen refresh rate to the maximum available. This reduces the interval any brightness fluctuations happen, making them less impactful.
    3. Raise the black level of OLEDs in the screen settings menu. This is something I have found myself after looking at the rtings review for my monitor https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/dell/alienware-aw3423dwf In the picture you can see high latencies in the first row of up to 6.1ms, which is a whole frame on my 165Hz refresh rate monitor. This behavior seems to be normal for all OLEDs. They struggle when going from 0% brightness to anything higher. This creates a pulse width modulation (PWM) like overshoot in dark scenes. Raising black levels made a huge difference for me subjectively. You can test your monitor black level by displaying a completely black image in a dark room. There should be a faint glow and no complete darkness (contrary to what you are used from OLED). I hope this eliminates the first row in the image I posted, making transitions between frames more uniform and not having the black Pixels lag behind or overshoot. It may also help overall latency.
    4. Set a comfortable brightness depending on environment light. Too bright or too dim will strain your eyes.
    5. Have some light in your room behind your OLED screen.
    6. Night light color / red shift in the evening or all the time if you prefer. Your operating system should have one variant of this available. This helps relax the eyes and improve your sleep because of the melatonin production from red light.
    7. Disable HDR to disable the automatic brightness limiter. Depending on your screen this will work or not work. For my screen I needed to disable HDR anyways to raise the black level in the monitor settings. HDR content also has high brightness that can strain the eyes. For me personally stable luminance is easier on the eyes.
    8. Choose the highest available color bit rate. This makes it easier to see detail content. If you can only choose either high bitrate or high refresh rate, choose high refresh rate. Beware though, depending on your monitor higher (or lower) bitrate can be FRC (frame rate control), which is a kind of temporal dithering that some people perceive as straining.
    9. Color calibrate your monitor. If you have (or know someone willing) with a colorimeter, then you can color calibrate your monitor. This will make it easier to see things and as a side benefit improve the quality of the picture.

    These are all my recommendations for now. Your mileage may vary, but I have found these very helpful in improving eye comfort and usability of my OLED monitor. Point 3 of raising the black levels is something I have discovered by myself and it has made the biggest difference to me subjectively. Thank you for your attention and I hope this will help alleviate issues you might have with your own OLED ☺️

    Best regards

dev