Eye strain issues with newer monitors(IPS/VA/TN)

[niros]

I had this issue with few IPS monitors and I found out the biggest reason was that I had 27' displays too close to my face.

when I mounted them on my table and pushed them far to the wall.
tweaked some settings like lower brightness, everything felt great and i had no issues playing long seessions without eye strain.

[dVoid]

Interesting. I've also had an issue with Dell XPS 9700 with the damned Nano-IPS screen. While I've felt some fatigue, I've thought I'll soldier through it and ended up with a severe dry eye syndrome which has rendered me unable to work for half a year . .

Please, do not overburden yourself with devices that do not feel good for your eyes in the first two days (maybe in some cases even few hours is more than enough to understand that something is wrong), and do not let yourself in the situation I experienced.

Since we are in the wild theories territory . .

Since the visible light is probably the same (never hurts to find someone with a spectrometer in your area and verify it, perhaps some wavelength makes a difference), we may speculate the effects of invisible light. These could include ultraviolet from one end and infrared from another. What is common between the old panels is that they are hardly energy efficient by today's standards, thicker and warmer. Perhaps a small amount of ir radiation warms back of your eyes to a comfortable point? Or perhaps slightly increase the temperature of oil in meibomian glands (oil there has a melting point about the same as human body temperature, so slight differences might count) . . Could you perhaps find a way to continuously warm up some panel and see whether it makes a difference?

Another more trivial (yet less likely due to the number of checked monitors) issue might be polarization sensitivity - some folks on Reddit have used a piece of polarized glass like sunglasses to check it and claimed that correct polarization has solved their issue (sometimes rotating screen 90 degrees has been reported as a solution).

[Fuzon]

did you ever figure it out? I noticed this strain on my alienware TN, but not my laptop/ office TN monitors.

[Lawlbringer]

did you ever figure it out? I noticed this strain on my alienware TN, but not my laptop/ office TN monitors.

Nope, still struggling. I'm going through a vision therapy program to see if it helps since my eye sight has no major issues outside of a slight astigmatism in both eyes which only makes very distant text appear a tad fuzzy (-0.50.)

I will say though that office/professional use TN monitors I've used in the past also never really bugged me. It's mainly all the "gaming" monitors regardless of panel type since about 2015ish that give me issues. I'm very tempted to try the new LG 27GR95QE-B since it's OLED and 27"/1440p but apparently the WOLED pixel layout is awful for reading text and general desktop use.

[boomlegshot]

I too have astigmatism and experienced focus issues which sometimes lead to strain but not as bad as yours, sorry to hear this. The pressure effect you mention I only got with strobing on, it immediately feels like eyeballs are pulling G's on a fighter jet.

Currently, I'm using somewhat of an old cheap TN monitor (Phillips 223v5lhsb2 60hz) waiting for a monitor I'm interested in to go in stock, oddly it seems to be more pleasant on the eyes compared to new IPS & TN monitors I tried.

Aside from very technical stuff the more obvious difference seems to be that the old TN has much lower contrast ratio 600:1 and only 80% srgb coverage compared to the newer monitors.

[Lawlbringer]

Does anyone know of a non-OLED 32"-42" TV with a high refresh rate?

I notice I have no issues using the Samsung VA panel TV's in my house at a distance. Might just try a smaller TV as a monitor that isn't OLED since I've always been sensitive to those.

[konchy]

Have you tried matching the brightness of the newer monitors with your older monitors? A lot of newer monitors are extremely bright and even the minimum brightness level may be too bright. If it's too bright, your iris will have to contract significantly, causing eye strain.

If you find that the minimum brightness level is much brighter than what you usually use on the older monitors, try using some programs that will dim the screen (the one I am currently using is called DimScreen). See if this helps.

[lyrill]

i hate to say this but this but shouldn't the designers figured all this out ages ago? if there is a problem then they are lacking, but we shouldn't have to do their job for them.

if there's nothing to BE done and "the tech is getting there" then maybe just revert to older gear, or get used to it, but definitely hold out for buying more new gear.

i think it's that simple (for those who don't want to read walltext, like myself who VERY occasionally visit bb these days)

[Lawlbringer]

Have you tried matching the brightness of the newer monitors with your older monitors? A lot of newer monitors are extremely bright and even the minimum brightness level may be too bright. If it's too bright, your iris will have to contract significantly, causing eye strain.

If you find that the minimum brightness level is much brighter than what you usually use on the older monitors, try using some programs that will dim the screen (the one I am currently using is called DimScreen). See if this helps.

I have. What's odd is my current old monitors are fairly bright when you turn off Night Mode in Windows which I have set to 60. It makes the screen warm enough to comfortably use. When I do the same to newer monitors it doesn't provide any relief.

I just ordered a colorimeter to check brightness and colors across all my monitors to see if I can get them more accurate/comfortable. At this point I have no idea why my eyes immediately strain using pretty much any modern panel type, resolution, or monitor size. I'm still doing my vision therapy until May to see if it helps but I really don't think I have a binocular vision problem.

[boomlegshot]

I have. What's odd is my current old monitors are fairly bright when you turn off Night Mode in Windows which I have set to 60. It makes the screen warm enough to comfortably use. When I do the same to newer monitors it doesn't provide any relief.

I just ordered a colorimeter to check brightness and colors across all my monitors to see if I can get them more accurate/comfortable. At this point I have no idea why my eyes immediately strain using pretty much any modern panel type, resolution, or monitor size. I'm still doing my vision therapy until May to see if it helps but I really don't think I have a binocular vision problem.

Any updates? How are your results with color corrected image? I've returned a bunch of gaming monitors after finding them uncomfortable, specifically the whites that seem to be too bright. I happened to be near a store that has monitors on display, they appear to just show them how they are out of the box and out of all of them only a cheap non gaming 75hz IPS seemed to have an actual pleasant natural image.