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Monitor White Light Eye Strain

Collider

Collider

Senior member
I'm noticing that I've been getting heavy eye strain during monitor use, mostly when reading black text on white background.

It gets so bad that if I'll switch from a darker background window to something with white background I instantly feel it on my eyes. Have been experimenting w/ lighting in my room, does not seem to help. Could perhaps forcing a higher refresh rate help (> 60hz) ?

Is there any way to alleviate this? Anyone experience anything similar?

BTW this seems to happen on both monitors I own: DELL U2412M and Acer x233h.
 
avp2306 said:
I'm noticing that I've been getting heavy eye strain during monitor use, mostly when reading black text on white background.

It gets so bad that if I'll switch from a darker background window to something with white background I instantly feel it on my eyes. Have been experimenting w/ lighting in my room, does not seem to help. Could perhaps forcing a higher refresh rate help (> 60hz) ?

Is there any way to alleviate this? Anyone experience anything similar?

BTW this seems to happen on both monitors I own: DELL U2412M and Acer x233h.
Click to expand...

Hey man what's up.

This is what everything on my computer looks like, it's Grey letters on black background.

I switched to this years ago, because I was doing 12 hours in front of the computer ^_^

Untitled.jpg
 
You can try Flux: http://stereopsis.com/flux/

I don't use it personally because it would defeat the purpose of having a perfectly calibrated monitor. But health comes first and if your monitor is really stressing your eyes then you'll need to take action.

Another thing I do to avoid eye strain on monitors is hooking up some bias lighting. It works tremendously well for the past year or so and I don't think I'm going to ever use any lcd panel without bias lighting again.

Try it - you can order some dedicated kit specially designed for lighting or just use some case CCFLs if you have some around. A white CCFL kit costs $8 and all you need is some adhesive and an AC to DC 12v adapter. (same output as psu molex).

antec_bias_lighting_06_thumb.jpg
 
I just turn the brightness well down. Most monitors come far too bright for my liking and I run my Dell U2410 on 0 brightness and have turn the contrast down to get it into acceptable range. Screws with the colours a bit but eye strain comes from the monitor being too bright for its surroundings, either you brighten the surroundings or you reduce the monitors brightness.
 
I'm using flux both at work and at home. It's definitely true that it's not good for any color sensitive work, but for most applications it's perfectly fine.

I don't even noticed it anymore. When you turn it off, you notice how different the colors are, but if you set it to change gradually (over 1 hour), you don't notice it.

Otherwise, lowering the brightness might work, yes. Keep in mind though that you do have to do your part as well. It's not technically natural to look at a screen all day long. Remember to blink a lot, take breaks if possible, and also train yourself to look at a distance every once in a while.
 
LCDs are always on compared to CRTs that flicker. So unlike CRTs, refreshrate dont cause eyestrain.

However the regular problem is usually that people forget to blink their eyes. So the eyes gets dry.
 
Do you wear glasses? If you don't, try it. Get some low power reading glasses and try that. I have found that when I wear my glasses I don't get any eye strain and the colors don't bother me because of the way the lenses bend the light. With my contacts I have to consciously think about blinking and use rewetting drops periodically.

They do make special glasses that filter out the harsh light from a monitor. Gunnars Optics makes them. Their marketing is a little strong. I mean they use some proprietary words and language that seems like a telemarketing scam. Thing is, they actually work. They just cost too much for me. I've spent $500 on prescription sunglasses and a second pair for when I have contacts plus my regular glasses. I can't see spending upwards of $100 for something I'd only use at my computer and doesn't add to the hardware side. They make both tinted lenses and clear lenses. The clear ones don't meddle with the colors but greatly help with eyestrain.
 
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In addition to all the good advice about adjusting brightness of monitor vs surroundings (either by turning down the display brightness, turning down the color temperature ala Flux, and/or turning up the surrounding brightness with ambient lighting/turning on your room light), I'd also like to suggest adjusting the viewing distance to your monitor.

Maybe you are too close/far to your monitor, so any little brightness change affects you more greatly than if you were at an optimal distance? If the text is too small/large at that distance, you could change them too for better readability at the new distance.

Personally I've tried flux and liked it, it helped me to feel sleepier at night as it got toward bedtime, whereas without flux the vivid color temperature would seem to stimulate me awake more. Also, I changed my room lightbulb to a warmer temperature lower brightness fluorescent. So less brightness and warm up the colors all around, and that might help (both the monitor color/brightness and the room lighting color/brightness).
 
You can lower your monitors brightness and alter contrast to dull the whites a bit, if your monitor supports saving custom configuration profiles then find something more comfy and save that, switch between profiles when reading and other tasks like media/games/images etc, some already come with presets for various different tasks, sometimes one of them is for reading.

With any apps that support changing background and text colour, try setting colours that are closer to each other or contrast less, greys on blacks. For long term use it's probably better to have overall less brightness so given the option try using black backgrounds with white text instead of reverse.

Make sure you've had your eyes tested recently and do so every few years, it snuck up on me, I had perfect vision for years, but one day got a projector and was having trouble focusing it and realised it wasn't the projector that was the problem it was actually my eyes!! That's quite literally how I found out I was slightly short sighted lol...anyway because this can come on very slowly over time you simply don't notice it happening and the blur of being unfocused can cause headaches and discomfort and is worth correcting with glasses.

Refresh rate is only a problem on CRTs which have flicker, on LCDs you don't have the same flicker so the refresh rate has no bearing on comfort.
 
Agenesis said:
You can try Flux: http://stereopsis.com/flux/

I don't use it personally because it would defeat the purpose of having a perfectly calibrated monitor. But health comes first and if your monitor is really stressing your eyes then you'll need to take action.

Another thing I do to avoid eye strain on monitors is hooking up some bias lighting. It works tremendously well for the past year or so and I don't think I'm going to ever use any lcd panel without bias lighting again.

Try it - you can order some dedicated kit specially designed for lighting or just use some case CCFLs if you have some around. A white CCFL kit costs $8 and all you need is some adhesive and an AC to DC 12v adapter. (same output as psu molex).

antec_bias_lighting_06_thumb.jpg
Click to expand...

So is this iust lighting in the back of the monitor like the shown in the pic? I might want to try this, any articles or additional info on setting this up?
 
avp2306 said:
I'm noticing that I've been getting heavy eye strain during monitor use, mostly when reading black text on white background.

It gets so bad that if I'll switch from a darker background window to something with white background I instantly feel it on my eyes. Have been experimenting w/ lighting in my room, does not seem to help. Could perhaps forcing a higher refresh rate help (> 60hz) ?

Is there any way to alleviate this? Anyone experience anything similar?

BTW this seems to happen on both monitors I own: DELL U2412M and Acer x233h.
Click to expand...

AVP I feel your pain. I just recently started having issues with eyestrain horrible tension headaches and double vision. No matter what I did lighting changes moving my monitor back I tried everything to combat it nothing worked.

until I bought a pair of cheap 17 dollar computer glasses. Instantly my headaches went away. This worked for me 100% so it might be a cheap solution too your problem cant hurt right. If your thinking about doing this get a pair with yellow tinted lenses.
 
Another thing that I just came across is the LED flicker. Apparently in order to reduce brightness in response to settings selection, monitors lower the frequency at which LEDs flicker. However if brightness turned up to 100% flicker is reduced.

This video demonstrates this perfectly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnlnbQfDb8w

This is actually quite noticeable if you wave a hand in front of the monitor, you'll see the trails distorted, with brightness turned up the trail is more smooth/blurry.

I switched the brightness to 100% and turned down the contrast to 30%, seems a little bit better but will have to give it more time to really tell.

I'm thinking if I should return this u2412m because of the LED flicker and settle for an IPS w/ CCFL lighting instead.
 
borisvodofsky said:
Hey man what's up.

This is what everything on my computer looks like, it's Grey letters on black background.

I switched to this years ago, because I was doing 12 hours in front of the computer ^_^

Untitled.jpg
Click to expand...
How do you get your browser to use that theme smoothy. I tried and it still keeps most of the background color of AT.
 
shnikies said:
until I bought a pair of cheap 17 dollar computer glasses. Instantly my headaches went away. This worked for me 100% so it might be a cheap solution too your problem cant hurt right. If your thinking about doing this get a pair with yellow tinted lenses.
Click to expand...

This got me thinking - is there a difference between the yellow tinting provided by the glasses, and the yellow "tinting" provided by flux?

Also, can you get the same yellow tinted effect by placing a film over the entire screen? Maybe there is a cheap cellophane from an arts and crafts store, cut to size and tape over the monitor?

Although, if it's all equivalent, I think flux is the most elegant solution because it adjusts over time depending on the lighting conditions to best match ambient, but computer glasses or other filter would seem to be ideal under certain specific room lighting conditions (such as yellowish artificial room lights that are well-suited to the yellow, but not blue/white lighting? just speculating here...).
 
I had an apple display that at the default brightness would kill my head. I turned it way, way down and it was fine after that. Not sure why some of these monitors come so bright.
 
A super-bright display can be useful in a well-lit room, like one with many windows on a sunny day or something. It's always nice to have the ability to turn down a bright monitor, rather than have a too-dim monitor you can't turn up when the room is bright. But I would highly suggest people put their monitors in a room where you can control the lighting and avoid eye strain due to a mismatch between the monitor and the ambient lighting.
 
I have another vote here for the gunnar glasses that i have seen floating around. A friend of mine spends all day on the computer for work and at home and the glasses have helped with eye strain quite a bit.
 
SZLiao214 said:
I have another vote here for the gunnar glasses that i have seen floating around. A friend of mine spends all day on the computer for work and at home and the glasses have helped with eye strain quite a bit.
Click to expand...

Question, is there a cheaper alternative to Gunnar that doesn't cost $80 per pair?

I'd actually be even more interested in a pair of prescription glasses with the yellow tint to them. (Actually looking at Gunnar's site, they apparently do prescriptions, but I still don't feel like paying $80 for a pair of glasses.)

Until then. I'll continue using F.lux for $0.
 
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