Eye strain from 144hz monitors. Plz help

[Kickstart778]

Hello,

Im new to the Forum and Ive been having a problem wich I hope I can get some help or insight with.
My old monitor was a Samsung S24E450 wich i had no problem with, I play Overwatch a lot and decided to upgrade to a 144hz monitor after playing with 60hz for a long time and I decided to buy the Asus MG279Q IPS. I loved the colours in the beginning but then after an hour or two I noticed I was getting eye strain. I tried a lot of different settings with it and even had a very low brightness but for some reason the monitor felt too bright even though I had very low brightness.


So I decided to swap out this monitor and my next monitor choice fell on the Samsung C27FG70 VA. Again I loved the screen but I started getting eye strain but this monitor didn’t feel to bright. I tried a lot of different settings again by changing the brightness, gamma, colour temperature turning on and of Freesync, installing Flux, but still something with it gave me eye strain wich I still don’t know what it is. So once again I swap out this monitor for my current one wich is the BENQ XL2430 TN.


This monitor is not as bad as the other to but I still get eye strain from it even though its not as bad as the other two. The things i tried with this monitor is 100 brightness to very low brightness, Blur reduction on for a week then off for a week, same with black equaliser on for a week and then off for a week off, I tried mixing with the gamma settings and the colour temperature but the result is the same. It seems like no matter the setting after 5-10 minutes it seems like my eyes start to be a little itchy and then after 20 more minutes I get a little eyestrain wich builds up the more I play.


Next i went to an optician to check if there was something wrong with my eyesight wich i started to suspect. After an hour of test the optician said my eyes was fine and didn’t really had an answer for the eyestrain from monitors but from his view my eyes are fine. Next I found this websight and im getting quite desperate to know what could be causing this. I would appreciate any input or advice what could be causing it.


Worth noting is that my friend bought the Samsung Q8FN TV and got the same kind of eye train from that, ive had no other problems with other tvs.


Yesterday i tried again to mix with new settings,

35 Brightness

50 Contrast

Low Blue light 10

Blurreduction off

Black Equaliser 0

AMA High

Instant Mode on



But today my eyes are more sore than ever.

Does anyone know what could be the cause of this? Is there some kind of tech that I don’t know about that im sensitive about that are in all these monitors/tv? Ive tried to read up some of what it could be but im really not sure.

Im starting to become really desperate to find what could be the cause and any suggestion, input or advice is welcome.


Sorry for my bad English


Kind Regards

[Jason38]

What about playing different games? Is it just this game that is causing the strain? See if you can rule that out. Some games are known to cause certain people strain.

What about blue light? Buy a pair of SCT orange glasses off Amazon they are super cheap. These are the only true way to block blue light. Gunnar glasses don't block near enough. If you get pain while wearing these glasses it's probably not blue light but something else.

How is your room lighting is that causing strain? Lots of natural light and high CRI light or is it all crappy low CRI flickering LEDS?

Do you get eyestrain from DLP? Plasma? CRT? Go buy a cheap CRT monitor from a garage sale see if it gives you eye strain. What about a CCFL monitor does that cause eye strain? OLED??

Chief has answered so many peoples issues on this forum about eye strain and there are all sorts of answers.

Good luck!

[Chief Blur Buster]

Try reading through this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5361

You might be affected by the blue-light spectrum of LEDs.
You might want to test out the orange glasses that forum member is using?

[Notty_PT]

Did you try a 144hz TN panel instead? Because your old Samsung afaik was a TN panel, altho at 60hz. I also have problems with IPS and VA panels on first person shooters as I use a very high sensitivity and looking around with all that ghosting causes me severe eye strain. This is why I only consider TNs and Oleds. So that´s my suggestion for you, try a fast TN panel instead.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Alas, there's a lot of potential things at play here:

-- LED Blue light (but the old Samsung was also LED)
-- Ghosting (but some of the displays don't have much ghosting)
-- PWM dimming (but the XL2430 is PWM-free in non-strobed mode, though the C27FG70 reportedly had PWM)
-- Room lighting

Etc

From what was written, it is extremely hard to diagnose your type of eyestrain. But one thing you can test is high quality orange glasses -- SCT orange glasses -- can make a major difference for some people.

Also, in place of F.Lux, Windows 10 has a Night Mode that can help, though it can't reduce the blue light coming from LCD blacks (which sets the guaranteed minimum blue light that an LCD will always emit). Only physical filters will help with that, if you have an extreme blue-light sensitivity of some kind.

Note: When I say extreme blue-light sensitivity, I refer specifically to the blue sharp peak (~465nm) of common blue LEDs that are used to manufacture white LEDs (via phosphor coating on blue LEDs). The blue sharp-peak will still exist in LCD blacks even with the best orange-colored software you have, and it just seems that some people are just hyper-sensitive to this wavelength (far beyond a circadian disturbance).

Common rules of thumb:
-- Adjust viewing distance (including setting up display slightly further away)
-- Try to be PWM-free
-- Try to lower blue light amount
-- Try a higher refresh rate
-- Try making sure that lighting around the screen is proper (screen not the brightest nor darkest object in front of you)
-- Try adding/reducing motion blur by raising/lowering refresh rate (Reduced motion blur helps some, but increased motion blur helps other)
-- Adjust your viewing angle if you're using a viewing-angle-sensitive panel (VA, TN) that causing some eyestrain from viewing angle
-- Test VSYNC ON or GSYNC or FreeSync (for some users, VSYNC OFF microstutter/tearing gives eyestrain)
-- Test blur reduction + VSYNC ON (if you have an extreme motion blur sensitivity)
-- Obtain a color calibration device (such as a Spyder) and try recalibrating to a good gamma curve. Try out high gamma and low gammas and see how they respond with your eyes.

It may even be a compound mix of multiple of the above causes.

If you are spending lots of time doing lots of motion, and a clearer monitor is forcing your eyes to exercise a lot more than usual -- then you may have a different kind of an issue. Were you getting eyestrain with Overwatch with your original TN panel?

It can be quite difficult to drill down to the precise issue you're having. That can get expensive mind you, to try to drill it down to the causes you're having, especially if your doctors are unable to diagnose you (usually they can, but the 0.1% cases are particularly pesky).