OLED Eye Strain [Doesn't affect everyone]

[calvincrack]

Hi, I’m hoping someone might be able to help me with diagnosing my issue. I’m suffering from serious eye strain from newer OLED TV’s. I’ve bought and returned many after finding that they all gave eye fatigue. Here’s a list: LG G2 (77”), Sony A95K (65”), LG B2 (77”)… and now I have a Sony X85K (75”, LED) and a Samsung S90C (55” OLED) in my possession. And for a bit of history, I had a 2017 LGE7 OLED (65”) for years that never gave me any issues that I can recall. I also own an HGIMI Horizon Pro Projector, and use a 100” screen, and this causes minimal eye fatigue.

The Sony X85K LED is marketed as flicker free, so I was convinced this would solve my issue if it was indeed PWM sensitivity that was giving me eye strain — and at first things seemed ok. But the second or third long session using it, I came away with major eye strain that lasted into the next day. It was at this point I decided to try the Samsung S90C QD-OLED as it’s a *much* better TV (I figure if I’m going to get eye strain, might as well do it in style). Also I learned that the S90C does 144hz, and since I use my TV as a computer monitor and primarily for gaming (including PS5), that’s a major plus. Also I thought that perhaps a higher refresh rate could help my eyes. I’ve had a decent enough time with the S90C but there are still obvious issues going on. Since it seems every TV affects me now, I’m determined to get a 77” of this model (which I love) and figure out what’s happening to my eyes and how to minimize it.

I have used the wonderful tests on this website and determined that the “microstuttering test” causes me the greatest amount of eye strain which feels most similar to what I generally experience.

Things I know:
-Eye fatigue seems worse when things are in motion.
-While super high contrast (like HDR) appears to hurt my eyes more, reducing the brightness and contrast to 0 and using SDR does not fix my issue, which is like severe dry eyes and tired muscles, but is somewhat agnostic to brightness.
-Sometimes I have an ok time with certain content. I am using GSYNC on PC (I have a 4080), and can sometimes have longer gaming sessions that don’t hurt too bad. Primarily testing with Uncharted 4 (PC release), Rocket League, and others. Mostly at 144hz.
-Yesterday I noticed I was doing well enough playing Rocket League at 144hz for an hour, but then I started a movie on VLC (a 23.97fps film I believe) in SDR, TV set to 144hz, and IMMEDIATELY felt eye strain. This made me believe more than ever that a content/ framerate mismatch could be a factor. I watched an entire 23fps movie on the S90C OLED the other day but set the graphics output refresh rate to 23fps and that seemed to go much better.
-Yesterday I had this succession of events: Played PS5, in game mode: COD MW Remastered (60fps 1080p upscaled to 4k by TV). I experienced some actual motion sickness, which I have never had before from a TV. So I tried sitting a foot further from the screen, and that seemed to help (or I just adjusted and it was placebo, hard to tell). But I have never experienced that nausea feeling from a TV, it’s usually just sore eyes. So hopefully that’s a hint. I then switched to playing Uncharted 2 Remastered (which is 60fps and 1080p upscaled by the TV to 4K), VRR and HDR off. I enabled BFI eventually, and it did seem to help, but it’s hard to tell as I was already sore. That session was a decent experience overall, but I ended up with eye fatigue (could have been from before I turned on BFI — more testing is needed with BFI). After the PS5 session, I switched to PC, set it to 120hz and played Uncharted 4 at 120fps with GSYNC enabled and found it easier on the eyes. I also found just staring at the static desktop to be not an issue.

The evidence is mounting that this is more of a motion issue than a brightness or flicker issue as I had originally thought. I’m sure there’s more testing to do, but I’m hoping I’ve provided enough evidence that someone knowledgeable can ascertain what my issue is and offer some suggestions that help! Thank you!

[wingsred]

I had Zowie monitors and discovered that my eyes were damaged. Since then I have worn glasses. I could go to the ophthalmologist. Maybe I have some degree of vision damage. At a certain age I can no longer stand blinking, but good medication and glasses solve the problem. When you're young, you can tolerate anything.

[Dalek]

I had Zowie monitors and discovered that my eyes were damaged. Since then I have worn glasses. I could go to the ophthalmologist. Maybe I have some degree of vision damage. At a certain age I can no longer stand blinking, but good medication and glasses solve the problem. When you're young, you can tolerate anything.

So you're saying your eyes were damaged from Zowie monitors? how?

[Chief Blur Buster]

I had Zowie monitors and discovered that my eyes were damaged. Since then I have worn glasses. I could go to the ophthalmologist. Maybe I have some degree of vision damage. At a certain age I can no longer stand blinking, but good medication and glasses solve the problem. When you're young, you can tolerate anything.

So you're saying your eyes were damaged from Zowie monitors? how?

Not the monitor in specificity, but Computer Vision Syndrome is a common problem by people spending overtime at computers for years.

Computer Vision Syndrome (article)

And millions of results by googling.

Can affect any monitor, but less so with certain tech than others (e.g. better viewing distance, ergonomic features like low blue light mode, broad-spectrum white light with WOLED, etc)

However, it is not necessarily the cause of permanent vision problems growing up -- although can be contributory, e.g. accelerated cataracts from excess blue light from bad backlights (e.g. certain types of backlights with excess blue light) + prolonged "career style" use (like 70 hours of screen time per week, combined work+pleasure), where it might start to happen at age 45 instead of 55 or such. Also similar for working outdoors all the time with no sunglasses, etc.

[MvDoorn]

Just wanted to follow-up on this thread and see if there has been any progress by the topic starter? I'm struggling with the same issue and have been able to eliminate (eye) health reasons. I'm hoping to try the LG C3 or G3 this year around Black Friday, but would be comforting to know if someone with the same sensitivities has succesfully tried them.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Just wanted to follow-up on this thread and see if there has been any progress by the topic starter? I'm struggling with the same issue and have been able to eliminate (eye) health reasons. I'm hoping to try the LG C3 or G3 this year around Black Friday, but would be comforting to know if someone with the same sensitivities has succesfully tried them.

I have the opposite effect. Some NanoIPS screens were giving me more eyestrain than the current WOLED screens.

My main monitor is currently a 45" ultrawide OLED that I use for mixed office/gaming with lots of static content including Visual Studio

WOLED with MacType font renderer optimizations for "OLED-aware ClearType", can be a wonderful general-purpose compromise in deciding what high-Hz screen technology to use for both office+gaming+multimedia.

However, some people get the opposite effect, more eyestrain on OLED. Everyone eyestrains / motionsicks differently, for various reasons. There are over 100 different ergonomic problems other than "blue light" and "PWM dimming", and different people are tripped up by different things. Even motion blur is a source of headaches for some (our name sake, Blur Busters, is a kind of an ergonomic beacon for non-esports high-Hz users too).

Also if you are one of the people who get headaches/motion sickness from stuttering -- please bear in mind for perfect framepaced material (VSYNC style / perfect VRR), an LCD stops stuttering at about 40-50fps, and an OLED stops stuttering at about 70-85fps, so make sure you throw a bit of GPU power to fix any stutter-related eyestrains! So MOAR GPU POWERZ, to solve that "specific" ergonomic problem...

Big ergonomic rabbit hole indeed. We may start a Display Ergonomics forum, as it's a growing part of Blur Busters.