Of Monitors, Migraines, and Hopefulness
Posted: 10 Dec 2020, 16:31
I posted this on /r Monitors and was told to ask this again here as you all are known as a community to be experts in the field...
This is long, please buckle in. I thank you form the bottom of my desperate heart to those that read it all, and have educated suggestions. You have no idea how much.
I am looking for a monitor. It will be for everything. Watching content, maybe playing video games, god and science willing, reading text, writing text, some image editing, etc. It is the only screen I will be using. For everything. I should explain...
I have extremely severe, disability grade atypical vestibular migraines. My neurologist and I believe they are triggered by certain types of light, your LED's, CFL's, florescent, oled, etc. I also have trouble with certain types of sunlight, think overcast, think low angle winter sun. I also have problems with certain types of movement, think fractal, like water ripples or snow flakes swirling, as well as unsmooth motion, think flucuating frame rates, mismatched frame/refresh rates, etc. I also seem to have extreme sensitivity to various kinds of dithering of likes used for video compression. I for example can't watch netflix, or D+, amazon prime, etc. (I also use an iphone 4s as it's the only phone that I can look at for more then 30 seconds before things start to go neurologically sideways)
SO...I am currently using Dell I2713HM and it has served me well. Mostly. I would prefer something with adapative synce of some kind as the smooth motion on the monitors I have used allowed me, for the first time in years and years, to play video games again.I would also very much like a higher refresh rate, and the screen with the natural ability to playback video as native frame rates(or their doubles.) Right now I can no watch anything made in a PAL country as my brain can't do the 25fps into 60hz dance without leaking out of my ears. I can manually change the refresh rate and or resolution in the NCP, but not having to touch anything would be swell. I wold also LOVE a larger screen, 32inches would be ideal.
I have concerns about curved screens. I have again extreme hypersensitivity to many visual things and if I CAN habituate to something and I do it becomes very hard to go back. For example, using KODI to watch a season of a British TV in a binge, and then going back to NTSC on my 60hz screen took me days to recover from. So the idea of using a curved screen at all considering it realize of an optical illusion for comfort seems like a bad idea. Going from a curved screen to a “straight object” world would have my brain doing back flips. Additionally I use this screen for everything. Including running on a treadmill which is maybe 6 foot distant. Relaxing at night in a chair also 6 foot distant. A curved screen that that distance would be distracting if not worse.
I have tried and returned so many items that amazon sent my a warning. After I explained I had a disability, and the realized I was a high value customer(Not hard to do when you can't go into many stores for long because of the lighting, online ordering is a godsend.), they sent me an apology to the warning. So here is a short list I can remember off the top of my head... LG 48CX, Acer XV273K, Pixio PX329, Viewsonic XG270QG, Gigabyte aorus AD27qd, Dell s2721dgf, Asus PG279Q & PG278Q. The very worst of that bunch were the Pixio, the Acer, and the two Assus displays(something about AUO panels? Is that possible?). The rest were all some level of uncomfortable to damaging(The viewsonic was maybe the best of the bunch, but confusing the Dell was one of the worst non AUO displays. Odd since they share a NANO-IPS panel). I had the highest hopes for the 48CX, but it was too big by half and uncomfortable to boot. Although the motion clarity was so good that for 2 days after I boxed it up watching content on my old Dell was almost impossible because of the motion blur that seems to smear everything.
I live in fear of my Dell dying. You have no idea what existential that threat is. It basically one of the few safe spaces I have in the word. I would love a newer replacement. That isn't teetering on being a decade old. I had my eye on the costco offered(super return policy) LG 32un8880-B.AUS, but it is only 60hz, although the size is great, theoretically.
I place my hopes in you Reddit Monitor community. Thank you to whoever got this far and makes some suggestions. Please nothing smaller then 27 inches, and it seems 48 inches to to huge. Anything else is game I guess.