Eye pain from Gigabyte M32Q Gaming Monitor, help me understand [eyestrain]

[Land_0dse]

Good afternoon, I don't need your help. I recently sold my (brand new) Gigabyte M32Q Gaming Monitor which was giving me terrible eye pain. Regardless of the monitor's presets (including reading mode) my eyes were watering as if you were looking at a fire and getting burned. My eyes only stopped hurting after 5-6 days with another older monitor. Whatever I did, I changed the brightness, contrast, screen resolution, percentage of colors according to sRGB, used the program "Flux", tried to calibrate the monitor Datacolor SpyderX Pro Colorimeter SXP100 but my eyes were still terribly painful.
Gigabyte M32Q Gaming Monitor features SS(Super Speed)-IPS (IPS-Type) matrix from manufacturer Innolux, but be careful Gigabyte evades all questions about what kind of matrix is installed in this monitor, so I had to collect information from the Internet. I have a laptop Lenovo Legion 5 Pro c IPS matrix (LTPS TFT-LCD, LCM) from China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd (TCL) so on this matrix, my eyes do not hurt, or rather they hurt only on calibrated presets, and one uncalibrated preset from the factory eyes gradually get used to and can work without problems.
By education I am an engineer and tried to find the cause that causes eye pain, but my knowledge in this area of science is not enough. From what I know for sure my eyes are not afraid of pulse-width modulation, because my old monitor Samsung SyncMaster 223BW never hurt my eyes (or hurt very, very rarely), I assumed that so eyes react to the types of backlighting and its placement but in Gigabyte M32Q Gaming Monitor and Lenovo Legion 5 Pro the placement of backlight is the same (Panel Backlight/ Type: Edge light type), about the types of LEDs in these monitors quite a bit of information, but in Gigabyte M32Q Gaming Monitor (Lamp Type: W-LED PFS Phosphor) in Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (Lamp Type: WLED). Please help me to understand what may be the reason. I am attaching the summary characteristics of 3 monitors I had to deal with. If it helps, I will do Lenovo Legion 5 Pro, Samsung SyncMaster 223BW matrix analysis with calibrator later. And yes ... it just so happens to be painless for my eyes when the screen is a little yellow.
At the moment I'm afraid to buy any monitor, because without understanding the cause of eye pain from the monitor history may repeat itself.

Best regards

[Chief Blur Buster]

Blur Busters has many members coming for advice about displays with less eyestrain;

There are unfortunately so many different possible causes of eyestrain, that we need to go down a different diagnostic troubleshooting path;

Let me do a modified improved crosspost that is based on my post from another thread, viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10438&p=84782#p84782

"Self diagnosis is required when it comes to gaming monitors."

(as most eye doctors don't know the differences between 2 brands of monitors -- they can create vision issues)

Common attributes suggest doing some additional tests
- Color gamut issue (try a SDR backlight)
- Motion blur eyestrain (try turning ON strobe backlight, or use higher frame rate, or OLED)
- Flicker eyestrain (try turning OFF strobe backlight, or use OLED brute framerate to reduce motion blur strobelessly)
- Stroboscopic eyestrain (try turning on GPU motion blur effect in your game), www.blurbusters.com/stroboscopics
- Wavelength issue from the phoshpors (try a non-NanoIPS)
- Antiglare texture (try an Apple display as a test)
- Brightness (try dramatically dimming)
- Polarization sensitivity (try rotating monitor 90 degrees)
- Blue light (Don't use the low blue light mode as it still leaks a lot since LCD black isn't perfectly black; try wearing orange-tinted computer glasses from Amazon/eBay, this gives you a proper physical Low Blue Light mode)
- Etc,

So I am crossposting:

There are MANY causes of eyestrain that are not related to flicker or PWM.
- antiglare filter texture
- polarization
- pixel structure
- brightness
- contrast
- color gamut
- blur eyestrain
- stutter eyestrain
- screen too bright relative to environment
- viewing distance
- etc

Everybody is different. Some people get more motion blur eyestrain, to the point where strobing reduces eystrain (especially when using VSYNC ON framerate=Hz, especially when reducing strobe crosstalk via refresh rate headroom, e.g. 120fps 120Hz on a 240Hz panel). So your eyestrain won't be the same as others.

Strobing framerate=Hz is often less eyestrain than PWM dimming, because the phantom array effect is the bigger eyestrain cause than the direct flicker itself.

Brightness strain test: Reduce brightness via monitor OSD. If already too low, adjust using NVIDIA Control Panel. Add a bias light behind your monitor so your monitor is not rudely blatantly the brightest object in your vision field.

Blur eyestrain: Turn strobing on and see what happens (optional, but recommended, use framerate=Hz too as strobing amplifies jitters). Temporarily lower your refresh rate, if necessary, since some monitors do poor quality strobing during max Hz, and better quality strobing during lower Hz.

Stutter eyestrain: Test VSYNC ON (or similar framerate=Hz sync technology like RTSS Scanline Sync) or use VRR.

Color gamut strain test: Reduce contrast in NVIDIA Control Panel and see what happens. Or try a dramatically different screen tech (LCD vs OLED, SDR -only 72% NTSC backlight vs HDR capable wide gamut backlight, etc)

Viewing distance: Try sitting twice as far away as a test. If it helps eyestrain, try doubling the size of the display (get a TV) and doubling the view distance. Same angular view. See if that helps. Some people now use TVs as computer monitors (e.g. 4K 120hz G-SYNC LG OLED TVs have become popular gaming monitors for the 42", 48" and 55" sizes -- usually pushed to the very back of a meter-deep desk, or wall-mounted, even move desk slightly back).

Blue light: Try orange-tinted computer glasses commonly available on Amazon and eBay. They're non-vision-correcting, just like sunglasses, except designed for computer use. This is superior and fuller than monitor based low-blue-light feature, since that doesn't help blacks and dim colors at all, which will often still be fairly bluish, creating eyestrain issues in things like dungeon games that is unfixed by the Low Blue Light feature.

Polarization strain test: Most monitors use a rotatable stand, so rotate your monitor 90 degrees (And configure Control Panel for a portrait display) and see if your eyestrain changes on your IPS panel. Some people are eyestrain-sensitive to the light polarization of certain LCDs. Many IPS panels are polarized 90 degrees differently than many TN panels. Also, AUO vs Innolux sometimes have different polarizations.

Some are difficult to test (e.g. antiglare texture test).

Unfortuantely, you will have to self-diagnose, as there are too many eyestrain causes of a monitor.

If you've got a TV or tablet that does not give you eyestrain, please list those displays. By knowing what screen technology, I can give you a screen recommendation that is more successful than most non-esports eye doctors. Screens have hidden vision pitfalls that are a massive rabbit hole that is poorly researched.

Also NanoIPS generally doesn't strobe as well, due to the red KSF phosphor issue. So if you diagnose your eyestrain to motion blur nausea, then you need to use a different screen and backlight technology that has better motion blur reducing capabilities. 120Hz-240Hz sample-and-hold still has lots of motion blur, you need >1000fps 1000Hz (sample and hold) or a good strobing feature (flicker like CRT) to kill the display motion blur. If you have a modern VR headset (e.g. PlayStation, Quest, Rift, etc) and you never get eyestrain from them, then you know: Possible motion blur eyestrain, because all modern VR headsets are strobing (flicker-based motion blur reduction).

Heck, even test a 42" LG OLED TV as a desktop monitor. LG's latest OLEDs are generally all 4K 120Hz with G-SYNC built in. Or try the new 170 Hz ultrawide desktop OLEDs that hit the market.

Displays are imperfect simulations of real life. Remember LCD monitor backlights are often a complex light-emission curve -- no two LCD backlights/edgelights are the same. NanoIPS backlights emit different sharp-peaks than QD backlights than old SDR LED backlights than old CCFL backlights. The shape of the spectra is one of the many "niche" causes of eyestrain.

Your 3 displays are too identical, so you need to dramatically go sideways.

I recommend OLED only simply as a binary-search "cause search" endeavour because it hits practically half of the vision checkboxes. A dramatic sideways technology change eliminates half of the potential issues listed). They don't use antiglare, they have totally different light emission spectra, they have totally different blue light control features (much more complete), they have perfect blacks, they enforce a viewing distance change, etc. So it's like a totally brand new environment for your eyes to experiment with.

If you want to stick to LCD (there are many good reasons, like low lag and ultrahigh Hz, plus lower-MPRT strobing capability in some good models), that means more minor changes that you have to test more clearly, you have to self-diagnose more by testing at least 10+ displays bare minimum, and inform the brands to me, because I need to see more dramatic differences in backlight LED phosphors and LCD antiglare filters. 10+ monitor test minimum, 3 is not enough to self-diagnose if you're only doing a single-line-item self-diagnosis, better to suddenly change a lot of checkboxes simultaneously in this difficult self-diagnosis endeavour.

You always should have vision doctor help like you did (to at least find common root causes of your vision). But once that's solved and you still have eyestrain -- we can play an additional supplemental role fine-tuning because of the hidden rabbit hole of the vision-ergonomic differences between different displays.

Since this is becoming a more popular subtopic, and I've sometimes had success in helping reduce many peoples' "esports monitor eyestrain", I may begin to create a dedicated subforum for "Gaming Monitor Ergonomics (Eyestrain, etc)". But for now...

Note: This is old. There are now new 240Hz OLEDs that may be your eyestrain savior, since they solve multiple eyestrain (but not all) checkboxes. It depends on your specific display-derived eyestrain/headache/motionsickness ailment.

[Chief Blur Buster]

So the next step is, please tell me:

- Do you use any displays that DO NOT give you eyestrain?
(televisions, phones, laptops, Macs, iPads, DELL/HP office monitors)

- Have you noticed what technology they are?
(CCFL vs LED backlight? Dimmer? Brighter? Bigger? Smaller? Higher resolution? Lower resolution? More blur? Less blur? Etc)

- Have you noticed any other patterns with ANY other displays you use?
(Viewing distance like getting less eyestrain if you connect a computer to a TV, and sit about 4-5 feet from TV?)

- Have you noticed a pattern of consistent eyestrain on hundreds of displays you randomly see in real life? Or you only sometimes get strain on certain specimens?
(Provide as much info as possible)

Depending on how you reply, and how much you've learned about your eyestrain patterns -- you may be required to change multiple lineitems extra-dramatically (like switching to OLED, or massively changing the size), the displays you have in your Excel spreadsheets are too identical to take a risk without further advice.

Remember, low blue light (F.Lux) is only 1 lineitem of literally dozens of ergonomic-problem lineitems -- so you may not want to take the risk of such minor monitor-switch changes like your spreadsheet -- without providing further information.

[boomlegshot]

Title "help me understand", beginning of post "I don't need your help", what?

Like Chief Blur Buster says, it's useful to try something different. I would advice looking into monitors with QD (Quantum Dot) treatment on the backlight, which emits shifted and longer wavelenghts, less concentrated and energetic like shown in this article by pcmonitors .

I'm speaking from similar experience and symptoms, having also an older 22" LCD that is less bothersome than newly produced LCDs, tried (TN,IPS,VA) flicker free, low blue light etc... The only thing I haven't ruled out is maybe the annoying grainy anti-glare coatings which were on all the displays I tried and what I mentioned above but I'm not able to get ahold of a QD monitor right now nor found one locally to look at in person.