How bad is an old 20" CRT on your eyes?

I can do 1600x1200 at 72 mhz, but the font is REALLY tiny and I can read it fine, but I'm a little concerned that I might strain my eyes because it's a CRT and it's not as crisp as a LCD.

are CRTs any good? especially old old 20" dell ones (like 4-5 years old)

If you don't feel it hurting your eyes or giving you headaches don't worry about it.

My 19" started dying so I bought a 24" Dell LCD. Guess what? Headaches and eyestrain immediately and all the time. I sold the LCD and bought a used 21" five year old, Trinitron CRT and my eyes couldn't be happier.

Read this:
http://cloanto.com/users/mcb/19960719lcd.html

Don't change for the sake of change. You might get a worse result. CRT is still king in many areas.

This old CRT blows away the LCD I repaced by having way better black levels, perfect viewing angles, absolutely no smearing or ghosting, perfect multi resolutions capability, much better video playback. Also the screen doesn't have the screen that looks like sandpapered plastic that most LCD have.

Stick with CRT as long as you can...

I had a CRT (two 19'' Trinitron Sony G400s) that was getting old and really painful for eyes. So I got the 2405, same as you, and it also annoyed me, same as you. But the Dell 2405 is far from the best LCD around (it's pretty bad, really). Next, I got a Dell 3007 and behold, my eyes are thanking me. I'd never go back to a CRT. A good LCD will be way gentler on your eyes than any CRT, especially for text.

Snowdog said:

If you don't feel it hurting your eyes or giving you headaches don't worry about it.

My 19" started dying so I bought a 24" Dell LCD. Guess what? Headaches and eyestrain immediately and all the time. I sold the LCD and bought a used 21" five year old, Trinitron CRT and my eyes couldn't be happier.

Read this:
http://cloanto.com/users/mcb/19960719lcd.html

Don't change for the sake of change. You might get a worse result. CRT is still king in many areas.

This old CRT blows away the LCD I repaced by having way better black levels, perfect viewing angles, absolutely no smearing or ghosting, perfect multi resolutions capability, much better video playback. Also the screen doesn't have the screen that looks like sandpapered plastic that most LCD have.

Stick with CRT as long as you can...

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Yea I cant stand the sandpaper effect on LCDs, I notice it on all of them (even my Nintendo DS Lite which has a smooth / glossy screen). Easily noticable on brighter backrounds ..its like there's a layer of very fine sand on the screen.

I have a 19" LCD, I can stare at it for hours no eye strain at all. My parents have an old 15" that kills my eyes in a few minutes. Im at work right now and looking at a 19" CRT that about a year old and its killign my eyes too.

Maybe I am just used to LCDs now from being at school.

Very bad or very good depending on how you set it up. The bigger the resolution, the less your eyes have to work. I didn't know they made 20" CRTs. Thought it was 19" then 21".

At any rate, at that size you should do something like 1280x1024. I had a 19" (18" viewable) and 1600x1200 was crisp and great to use but I have to say it contributed to the down fall of my eye sight. It too was a Dell and was 72hz refresh rate, but I found 85hz (ahh the good old days of refresh rates) was more comfortable which could only be achieved at 1280x1024.

Play it safe and buy a 17" LCD. 19" are going for $200 these days.

The thing with CRTs is that they are very glary. The glass reflects all the light which often the thing that's bad for your eyes. Most LCDs aren't even close to being reflective.

a ronin said:

Very bad or very good depending on how you set it up. The bigger the resolution, the less your eyes have to work. I didn't know they made 20" CRTs. Thought it was 19" then 21".

At any rate, at that size you should do something like 1280x1024. I had a 19" (18" viewable) and 1600x1200 was crisp and great to use but I have to say it contributed to the down fall of my eye sight. It too was a Dell and was 72hz refresh rate, but I found 85hz (ahh the good old days of refresh rates) was more comfortable which could only be achieved at 1280x1024.

Play it safe and buy a 17" LCD. 19" are going for $200 these days.

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Note to the original poster. Beware of the clueless on the internet. Looking at anything will not destroy your vision, unless it is so bright that it burns your retina ( like the Sun or a welding torch) I had glasses before I ever saw a computer, for the last 10 years I have been a working programmer, plus an enthusiast at home. My presecription for glasses hasn't changed in that 10 years. 10 years of mostly looking at 19" and 21" CRTs at 1600x1200 for 10+ hours/day every day.

This and other clueless old wives tales, like reading in dim light being bad for the eyes is just clueless BS. If it doesn't hurt, don't worry about it.

Snowdog said:

Note to the original poster. Beware of the clueless on the internet. Looking at anything will not destroy your vision, unless it is so bright that it burns your retina ( like the Sun or a welding torch) I had glasses before I ever saw a computer, for the last 10 years I have been a working programmer, plus an enthusiast at home. My presecription for glasses hasn't changed in that 10 years. 10 years of mostly looking at 19" and 21" CRTs at 1600x1200 for 10+ hours/day every day.

This and other clueless old wives tales, like reading in dim light being bad for the eyes is just clueless BS. If it doesn't hurt, don't worry about it.

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Are you rebuking my entire statement as false? There are generally accepted truths about computers causing problematic symptoms for their users. There are still controversy amongst the experts, so it would be premature to put this issue out to pasture.

One example:

http://www.irishhealth.com/index.html?level=4&id=816

a ronin said:

Are you rebuking my entire statement as false?
http://www.irishhealth.com/index.html?level=4&id=816

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You claimed high resolution led to downfall in your eyesight, which is complete BS and one of the stranger claims I have seen.

Quoting from your link:
"Despite the fact that there is currently no scientific evidence to prove that computer use causes any damage to eyes, the AOI has stated that nonetheless, a large number of computer users experience some form of eye complaint at one time or another."

I think that just about says it all. No evidence of any damage.

Complaint is another thing. Obviously many can get eyestrain by looking at anything in the near field for long periods of time. Nothing special about computers here. This does not damage vision any more than read books does.

Some old CRTs (esp Sony tubes) are still beautiful.
Heck, if it weren't for the space issue of trying to fit two 19" Sun / Sony OEM monsters on my desk, they wouldn't be in the garage

CRTs are bad for you eyes. LCDs are better they may not be perfect but its the best option if you want to see later on in life.

We still have a 19" sony that's still sublime - especially for games (it's my wife's system) - it has a feature on the adjustment for "picture effect" that goes from standard to dynamic and really brightens it up alot like the gaming mode on the viewsonic aperture grill monitors (this one is AG as well and came from a 2003 sony VAIO system).

i switched to LCD's last year; and I can it really did hurt my vision. Once I started using the computer for hours straight I could notice my vision getting worse. However; this could have just been a coincidence, but when I switched to LCD's and they are much much easier on my eyes. This, however, is different for everyone i suppose.

zone_86 said:

We still have a 19" sony that's still sublime - especially for games (it's my wife's system) - it has a feature on the adjustment for "picture effect" that goes from standard to dynamic and really brightens it up alot like the gaming mode on the viewsonic aperture grill monitors (this one is AG as well and came from a 2003 sony VAIO system).

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Agreed, I still have a 21" Sony G520P (2003 model, pictured on the left here) wich has the picture effect modes , the Dynamic setting looks great for Gaming & Movies.

It depends on the monitor. I had an Acer that's backlight burned my eyes staring at it for long intervals. The CRT that I use has been trouble free for me.

Yeah the sony's are just plain excellent. When i would put that monitor up side by side to any other monitor other than another sony the sony was always better - sony AG's always comes out on top with superb blacks and vibrancy unmatched. My own Shadow Mask 20" is not as good as my wife's sony above in the pic.

DusanV said:

I had a CRT (two 19'' Trinitron Sony G400s) that was getting old and really painful for eyes. So I got the 2405, same as you, and it also annoyed me, same as you. But the Dell 2405 is far from the best LCD around (it's pretty bad, really). Next, I got a Dell 3007 and behold, my eyes are thanking me. I'd never go back to a CRT. A good LCD will be way gentler on your eyes than any CRT, especially for text.

Click to expand...

Well you seem to have an awful lot of money to toss around at monitors.

Depends whether you ask an lcd !!!!!! or not.......

krameriffic said:

Well you seem to have an awful lot of money to toss around at monitors.

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Not really. The Sony monitors are six years old now. I returned the 2405 for a refund and got the 3007 for ~US$1500. Not sorry at all that I got it.

I'm about to get an LCD myself (20.1" WS). I know there are things that i'll be giving up, but to be honest here gaming is no longer as big as it was for me anymore. The occasional RPG and even a few older games is about it - and that's a very good thing because it will allow be not to get so frustrated and hell bent on having to always have the very latest GPU. Don't get me wrong i still plan on getting an X1900XTX or nVIDA equivalent but not SLI or crossfire. I figure that the trade offs for blacks and graininess with an LCD will be much better text and overall easier on the eyes. Plus easier to move .

I used to think that CRT's caused eye strain, but turns out I was an idiot and had my monitor set up wrong.

Using a program to help set up convergence, brightness, and contrast correctly can do a hell of a lot for text clarity. I used to have my contrast so high that it caused the text to bleed together, making my eyes have to focus harder or forcing me to turn the resolution down. After digging around I found Nokia Monitor Test and used it to get everything set up properly. Now my eyes are thanking me. The change in contrast and brightness did take some getting used to. I still see the whites as being a little 'yellow' or just darker than usual when I first sit down, but after a few minutes I don't notice it anymore.

I agree about settings making a huge difference on both lcd and crt. I think alot of displays just need good calibration to get rid of eyestrain.

Of course this means contrast and brightness settings, and there is also an image sharpening setting in nvidia's driver controls that can be bumped up slightly. The three of these things adjusted properly can make the edges of fonts very sharp. This produces nice tight fonts instead of 'blobby' edged fonts that sortof 'glow' (black or other font color) outside of the font borders.

When your display is set up properly like that your eyes aren't trying vainly to focus the edges of the fonts. Basically unless you setup your screen to have sharp edged fonts it appears to your eyes/brain that the screen is out of focus and causes your eyes to strain in an attempt to focus in tighter to clear up the fonts/screen.

Another issue is that LCD screens are usually incredibly overbright out of the box. You are basically staring into a lightbulb. See how much eyestrain, headaches, etc you get staring right into a bright lightbulb or flourescent light from 1' away. ;-) I turn my lcd brightness Waayyyyy down, and adjust the rest of the settings to get the best picture I can. If turning your brightness down makes the whites off-color you can also adust your color temperature and even adjust the red, green, and blue levels individually in your video card driver's color correction panel.

Another thing I use is the cleartype power tool I downloaded from microsoft. This adds a cleartype tuner icon to control panel that gives you checkbox to turn on cleartype, and runs a wizard to adjust your screen fonts. Cleartype fonts are nice anti-aliased fonts which make the text look more like a typed page, or a pdf file. They look very good on LCDs, and if tweaked properly look pretty good on higher end CRT's also.

A few other things I've noticed are that even though some crt's and video cards will technically display higher resolutions, some of the poorer ones lose alot of clarity at the higher resolutions. This is due to many things like poor dot pitch, tube quality, 2D chip quality, and the age of the tech in some cases, etc. The smaller fonts just look terrible on some crt setups. They are fuzzy, smudged, or noisy and cause alot of eyestrain. If you use a lower resolution or otherwise increase the font size it makes the text sharp and easier to read on many of these setups however (providing you tweak the brightness+contrast+image sharpening also of course).

I have a viewsonic 2025WM (20.1" LCD). Before I adjusted the brightness way down and stumbled upon the image sharpening slider in the nvidia drivers, reading on this monitor hurt my eyes. Now with it all tweaked out properly and using cleartype fonts, its a great monitor and reading is a pleasure. It also has a frosted anti-glare layer but with the brightness turned down and adequate room lighting hitting the monitor it is very subdued, and what little shows my eyes got used to and I barely notice.

I also have a big CRT with a good dot pitch and very high quality tube.. It took me almost a week of changing settings now and then to get the settings just right. The text is very sharp now, and the blacks black without making the text edges 'glow' black. The crt and lcd both look great now. In my opinion, text is much easier to read on the LCD. They are great for that. Both screens have tradeoffs. I could probably sharpen the CRT fonts more on the CRT if I turned cleartype off. As it is now I adjusted cleartype to look best on both monitors rather than one or the other since I am using them in dual mode. If cleartype could be adjusted per monitor it would be great but thats not the case.

One final thing about my dual monitors ("best of both worlds" as some call these setups..); my eyes actually change focus between the two monitors. After my eyes adjust to the crt the text looks much sharper. I have trained my eyes to bounce between displays and it doesn't seem to strain my eyes.