LED Backlighting Causing Eye Strain/Headaches?

I'm trying not to think about it too much but at times I seem to be refocusing when reading every 4 seconds or so, which is not normal for me. I'm not seeing any duplicates or strobes that I can consciously recognize, but something might be bothering my eyes and making them lose their "aim" every few seconds - so that I have to zero-in and tighten down my focus all over again every time it happens. Its almost like having a grip that loosens, so I have to re-tighten my "grip". When it is in focus it looks great so I'm hoping I'll adjust to this.
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.... To be fair I've been pretty tired lately and getting over what may be some kind of headache-inducing sinus infection this week so I should give it some more time. When I get tired my focus "loosens" regularly even when I'm reading a book. Also, I can remember after getting my used graphics-pro crt, that there was an adjustment period at first but then it looked great once my eyes "learned" how to look at it. I'm also using my monitor at a different distance and a different resolution than I had been using for a long time which might be making my eyes "stretch" to a new focal point than they had been trained to use. I'll have to see how it turns out during this 14 day return period. Photos and games on the ACD look ridiculously good so I'd hate to have to return it. One of the only other options is a 30" hp zr30w but I'm afraid that the over-aggressive anti-glare would drive me crazy.
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.. I did install the exe extracted out of bootcamp so that I could tweak the backlight a bit btw, since the 27" ACD doesn't have an OSD. I just bumped it up a little few minutes ago since I had the brightness turned down quite a bit in the gpu drivers.
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My gut tells me that this is just an adjustment period but I will post back here if anything changes either way.
 
Mathesar did you have problems with regular florescent backlight lcds?
I think I read it on here but can't find the original post...
 
Well, I run my ACD27" with Brightness set to ~55%. With my eyes, I honestly can't tell an ounce of difference from this LED-backlit display to my former CCFL-backlit DELL U3011.
 
the more I get used to my new setup and tweak the settings, the better its all looking. My eyes have to learn new displays sometimes. I did bump the brightness (backlight) up a bit to keep the whites cleaner looking, and added a nearby lamp to my area lighting so that the brightness isn't a shocking contrast to the rest of the area. Everything looks tight now. Maybe very dim could cause a problem like was discussed though.
 
I can confirm the Asus VE228H 21.5" I have gives little or no eyestrain but
I think it's making me sick lol well at first my face was burning then that went away then my hands started to get cold. Maybe my nervous and imune system will adapt to it?

Just weird how I can't use these things I'll try it another week see what happens.
At least it's not giving me Nausea like regular florescent tubes do.
 
I feel much better but my eyes feel really tight this led lcd is a improvement over regular fluorescent back-lite for sure. My eyes feel really tight though I hope it goes away within' a week though.
 
I use at home zr30w and at work lp2475w hp lcds non led backlighting displays and no eye strain or headaches. at school i use the apple 27in that screen uses led tech and same no eyestrain or headaches. so i think its from user to user not lcd to lcd
 
Hey I just used the ASUS led lcd for a whole week I was in real bad pain from days 1-6
I thought for the longest time eyestrain alone causes my problems but I know for a fact it's environmental
and my body's inability due to either toxins or the brightness of the monitor alone that causes me to cave in while using one.

It wasn't the eyestrain but the BURNING sensation I got that made me switch back to a CRT.
The Burning was in the eyes and face. It's still burning as I type my face is still hot.

Maybe the led lcd I chose was the wrong one but I think this technology just isn't user friendly.

I'm afraid now since trying 6 different LCDs that this technology isn't for me.
 
It's no a EMF field since LCDs don't have one but the light alone causes the burning and it's my body's way of rejecting it.
 
comixbook you must be choosing the crappiest cheapest LCD's out there because I've got sensitive eyes too and the first one I bought never gave me much problems, only dry eyes but that is because I do not blink my eyes when being concentrated on the screen.
As for headache, haven't experienced it yet so far so maybe your sitting too close to your screen?
 
I recently purchased an LG LED U2260EV to replace my aging LG Flatron L228WTG, and it made my head hurt after only 15 minutes. I tried adjusting the brightness on the monitor and gamma on the video card, but I could not get a good mixture of brightness and color fidelity. I took it back after 2 days of trying. One thing I notice about LED monitors on display is that about 80% of them are way too bright. I'm not sure if this is because most places blow out the contrast to give them more pop by people who see them on display, much like Best Buy and other electronics retailers do with their HDTV's, but it's very troubling.

My new Dell XPS15 has an LED screen that doesn't give me any problems, though I do turn the brightness down to about 70% on it.
 
Comixbooks said:
Mathesar did you have problems with regular florescent backlight lcds?
I think I read it on here but can't find the original post...
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I did when I had a 20WMGX2 & FW900 CRT side by side, The LCD would strain my eyes after extended usage but It may of been due to the smaller screensize plus it was a pretty bright screen, My current PX2370 / 2333T combo has been fine so far, the 2333T isnt LED.

I will say that now that im using both side by side I most likely wont be buying LED in the future (at least not edge lit led). Not because of eye strain it just seems like led's slimmer design causes more than average backlight bleed, which in turn also causes a blue'ish tinge with black levels in darker scenes (due to led lighting being more of a blue than white like standard CFL monitors).
 
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I have two computers setup now the old rig CRT for reading on the net and surfing.
Then the LCD for gaming a day or two a week at the most (on my days off)

This way I can sleep off the problems I have mainly it's not bad.....but when I goto my sucky
retail job the exposure to the florescent lights just kill my nervous system and eyes.
 
GodBlessTexas said:
I recently purchased an LG LED U2260EV to replace my aging LG Flatron L228WTG, and it made my head hurt after only 15 minutes. I tried adjusting the brightness on the monitor and gamma on the video card, but I could not get a good mixture of brightness and color fidelity. I took it back after 2 days of trying. One thing I notice about LED monitors on display is that about 80% of them are way too bright. I'm not sure if this is because most places blow out the contrast to give them more pop by people who see them on display, much like Best Buy and other electronics retailers do with their HDTV's, but it's very troubling.

My new Dell XPS15 has an LED screen that doesn't give me any problems, though I do turn the brightness down to about 70% on it.
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That's odd, I'm using a 22" 226WTQ-PF monitor from LG at 1680x1050 60Hz and they do not piss off my eyes as my CRT did at 60Hz...
This one doesn't make my head hurt at all....
 
I have problems with eyes when comes to eyestrain from computer screen. For 3 years I've had allergy and I couldn't watch on any LCD monitors. At home I used CRT. In 2010 I tried to give it a shot again and I got 22" Fujitsu Siemens, CCFL, not LED which is not causing me big eye strain but, before buy I was looking also on LED screens and they caused me good eye strain as well. I think this stuff is happening to people with more sensitive eyes, or some vision condition. And probably the only thing you can do is to accept it and get the screen that is good for you, not to strain yourself with newest LED stuff.
 
There are many variables in display setups, and not just the panels and their settings but the environment itself so it would be really hard to tell what is bothering some people. High contrast causes more extreme (and potentially painful) brightness, and LED's are capable of being very bright. This is also highly dependent on the lighting environment., and placement of lights. Also, if you only have light on one side of you, that can also cause unequal pupil dilation and headaches. Using a chair that lacks neck support right up against your neck and head at all times can also lead to headaches and bad posture. There are so many variables.

If necessary, you could use different monitor/gpu driver presets for gaming/movies and reading, with reading being the lower contrast. You can alternately edit many applications so that their backgrounds aren't blasting white light while maintaining higher contrast settings on your monitor. Firefox has this convenient add-on that allows you to replace colors or use a simple slider to darken backgrounds (and it remembers on site-by-site basis, leaving unadjusted sites unaffected).
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/color-that-site/

Although some people can focus completely at different distances, some distances cause more effort to maintain focus which strains their eyes. I've found that my eyes get accustomed to certain reading distances after awhile, and different panel types (crt, lcd). When I set up my new monitors, they were farther back, and also a higher resolution. This took awhile to adjust to after using the same two monitors for several years but my eyes adjusted pretty quickly. Keeping your monitors on ergo arms would probably help if your vision requires more of a 'sweet spot' distance-wise.

I love my LED monitors now and the only headaches I get lately are from sinus problems with the weather.
 
Acer_Sheep said:
I have problems with eyes when comes to eyestrain from computer screen. For 3 years I've had allergy and I couldn't watch on any LCD monitors. At home I used CRT. In 2010 I tried to give it a shot again and I got 22" Fujitsu Siemens, CCFL, not LED which is not causing me big eye strain but, before buy I was looking also on LED screens and they caused me good eye strain as well. I think this stuff is happening to people with more sensitive eyes, or some vision condition. And probably the only thing you can do is to accept it and get the screen that is good for you, not to strain yourself with newest LED stuff.
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I have not experinced eyestrain but I have also acted preventive using my monitors in low brigthness over the years.

I dont think it is cause of LED but simply because of the development for LCD monitors. When the TFT screens arrived peaple were happy just because they were flat. Nothing more was really needed. Since then manufacturers have started to focus more and more on imagequality but how?

1) More brighter displays (increasing brightness is probably one of the easiest way to make a monitor look better.)
2) Far more vibrant colors
3) Much bigger monitors. (We started at around 15 and now 23-24 inch is more or less standard.

All these different factors cause increased stress on your eyes so I am not surprised at all that more and more complaining about it. Dont know if it is cause of LED. I think it is more because of a trend with monitors that causes more stress for your eyes.

Many people can handle it but some others can't.
 
Oled said:
I have not experinced eyestrain but I have also acted preventive using my monitors in low brigthness over the years.

I dont think it is cause of LED but simply because of the development for LCD monitors. When the TFT screens arrived peaple were happy just because they were flat. Nothing more was really needed. Since then manufacturers have started to focus more and more on imagequality but how?

1) More brighter displays (increasing brightness is probably one of the easiest way to make a monitor look better.)
2) Far more vibrant colors
3) Much bigger monitors. (We started at around 15 and now 23-24 inch is more or less standard.

All these different factors cause increased stress on your eyes so I am not surprised at all that more and more complaining about it. Dont know if it is cause of LED. I think it is more because of a trend with monitors that causes more stress for your eyes.

Many people can handle it but some others can't.
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Yes I agree with you here but what is most important factor is time spent in front of screen. Seems most people today use computers for excesive amounts of time. Ones for work, others play games and so on. It is becoming a lifestyle and not everyone is really into it.
 
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I want to add that my newer screens, especially the LED ones, have very white whites. This becomes very evident when I pair them next to (admittedly medium quality) TN monitors from a few years ago (a hannspree 28" and a samsung 2333HD) which look almost brownish/yellowed by comparison, even if I set them to "cool" modes or tweak them away from yellow/brown and up the brightness/contrast in the drivers in an attempt to get them to comparable whites. If your room lighting vs your brightness/contrast levels is not balanced/controlled it could be like staring into a light bulb after awhile. especially on LED backlights. Once I tweaked my monitors several times over a week and set up my room lighting, I didn't get the white blasting my eyes any more. I do use that firefox color add-on's slider to dim the backgrounds on some sites that have harsh white backgrounds though, so that I can keep the contrast popping for games and movies without having to change settings on anything. It just makes it easier on the eyes for extended reading sessions on certain sites. I can customize my chat apps and 3rd party file manager's background colors to whatever I want as well.
 
I have a 2007WFP @ home and have no issues using it for hours on end.

I'm using a G2410 @ work, have been here for 2 hrs, and my head is pounding w/ serious eye fatigue.

FWIW, we have chill non fluorescent lighting in the office.
 
The 2007WFP is a S-IPS monitor most likely, with some of them being a S-PVA, both of which are 8-Bit displays. IPS is the best screen technology currently, its being used in Ipads and every Iphone. It gives wide view angles. PVA is like a notch down, but still very impressive. 8-Bit means that all the colors are reproduced from windows without faking the eye with dithering and Frame Rate Control.

The G2410, is a lower end TN monitor. It has terrible viewing angles, and is 6-bit. It has to use its processor board to calculate the colors, and dither the image to look like it is displaying 16 million color. When it really can only do 262,000.

FRC blinks pixels on and off to make you think a red color is lighter in tone.


I can see the blinking of a TN monitor. I just have to look to the side and my peripheral vision picks it up easily. I can also easily notice when a CRT is at 60hz, 75, and 85 hz.


The odds that your problem is related in to cheap piece of junk TN monitor is much much higher than anything to do with the back-light, being LED vs CCFL.
 
I notice this is an old thread but I do have some knowledge in this area. Has very little to do with the monitor, brightness, etc.. There are a few factors at play but is one main ONE that causes the eye issues. I myself had this exact problem. If you want information on this you can private message me.
 
I am loving my U2713HM and S2740L's....No PWM, Now my work laptop with LED backlight, I just run at max brightness when I am off my dockstation
 
tombaker said:
FRC blinks pixels on and off to make you think a red color is lighter in tone.

I can see the blinking of a TN monitor. I just have to look to the side and my peripheral vision picks it up easily. I can also easily notice when a CRT is at 60hz, 75, and 85 hz.

The odds that your problem is related in to cheap piece of junk TN monitor is much much higher than anything to do with the back-light, being LED vs CCFL.
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Although this is an old post, I'm replying to this because I have a 1000fps camera.

The majority of the blinking is caused by the PWM dimming of the LED backlight, not from FRC. I've created several high speed footage of LCD's. (Some of it, a 2007 LCD and a 2012 LightBoost LCD, is on YouTube). The FRC doesn't blink pixels on and off but udulates the pixel between the nearest 6-bit values (e.g. a light gray and a slightly lighter gray, back and fourth). That kind of blinking is less than the full ON/OFF flashing of the LED backlight of PWM dimming.

IPS color quality is better. But look at the new BENQ XL2420TE 120Hz ZeroFlicker (PWM-free backlight in the "E" suffix) owners reporting less eyestrain on this TN panel, than on several models of IPS LCD that has PWM dimming. They say the TN has worse colors (agreed) and more color shift (agreed), but less eyestrain (which TOTALLY disagrees with what you said).
 
FRC should not be a problem but as most thing it depends. I've seen modern TN panels where the FRC was noticable for when eyes were moving over the screen. In IPS panels the dynamic FRC is part of why its so color accurate and also fixes banding problems regardless of calibration. So you actually want the FRC for those image improvement reasons (which in itself should mean less eye irritation).

But if you want to try something without FRC you should try something with AMVA panel. They dont use FRC and are 8bit. But there might be other types of irritation with VA-panels. One have to test for oneself.
 
CrabJuice said:
FRC should not be a problem but as most thing it depends. I've seen modern TN panels where the FRC was noticable for when eyes were moving over the screen.
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There are two causes of the shimmering, FRC (dither patterns) and LCD inversion (checkerboard patterns, also occurs on IPS LCD's) -- As seen on www.testufo.com/#test=inversion and www.techmind.org/lcd/index.html#inversion as well as www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/inversion.php Some people confuse FRC with inversion and vice versa, or they are seeing artifacts from both at the same time. As a rule of thumb, today on newer TN's, the temporal pixel udulations caused by inversion tends to outweighs the temporal pixel udulations caused by FRC. Inversion is also often more visible on TN panels too than IPS panels.

Since CCFL gave way to LED backlights, the PWM dimming has become MUCH harsher, and that's wny PWM-free backlights is beneficial regardless of IPS, TN, VA. (While still also having an optional strobe mode for motion blur reduction, e.g. XL2420TE being a PWM-free monitor, but still has LightBoost for the strobe-based motion blur elimination).
 
Mark Rejhon said:
...e.g. XL2420TE being a PWM-free monitor, but still has LightBoost for the strobe-based motion blur elimination).
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I have read multiple accounts on multiple sites about the TE finally being free of this nasty PWM backlighting system. Sadly, they're charging for it too!
 
I'm still waiting for a group of Americans to bring a class action lawsuit against one of the major LCD companies. Such action even if it doesn't succeed would hasten to death of PWM LEDs.
 
I'm normally against ridiculous lawsuits, but I'd like to see PWM be brought up. That, and contrast claims .... 1000000:1 dynamic contrast! Or even static contrast claims which quite often is lower than what the manufacturer states. I think BenQ was only around 2000 off on one of their VAs, for instance.
 
Mark Rejhon said:
There are two causes of the shimmering, FRC (dither patterns) and LCD inversion (checkerboard patterns, also occurs on IPS LCD's) --
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Yep. It was probably inversion that I saw. Didnt consider that option. Anyway, it seems worse on some TNs than others.
 
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ThomasJL said:
Actually, according to some people who posted in the first thread listed in the original post, the eye strain and headaches occur when they dim the LED backlight. The same people claim that the eye strain and headaches lessen or go away when the LED backlight is at full brightness.
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say there, you may have something!

last week I bought a Samsung newmodel S27c750P 27". the 1080p only is all my videocard can handle.

I must have looked for 30 minutes at the bestbuy display, of it. I watched the demo go through its cycle many times and often the background was very glaring white.

when I walked away, my eyes had no problem.
I bought it.

of *course* I turned the brightness way down, when I got it running.

then I began to notice the problems. my eyes began to have a feeling a bit of sand in them. was not irration so much...hard to describe. I only used the monitor for two hours on a sunday morning then I took my 4 mile walk to Panaras. my eyes felt like they could hardly focus on the world! like as if I were looking through a kind of mental fog.

I wonder if too, it takes time to acclimate to any new monitor as previous patterns of brain sensings has to be changed and the conflict will be there between the new vs the old, for a while.


but I had noth thought about that dimming! you may be right. one has to peer even more into a dim display.

this monitor is the best that I have seen yet! there is less of a screen door effect to images than even of the hp25bw sitting next to it, that boasts of superior images!

I might even go back and buy another one.

the catleaps/crossovers need a larger video card, for me, and more expense. I cannot run them on my single link vid card.

I wonder though under just what category my Problem lies.
maybe best to describe it this way:
----that when I look away from the monitor and even for hours afterwards, I "see" a kind of afterimage of the "fluorescing" light! like of an afterimage of the light itself and it stays with me for an hour or three!


that's It! that is how monitors affect my eyes! the after image of the light itself! and as if my eyes were still trying to focus on the screen even after I have left my room!
back to my aging crt. even that will give to me a slight afterimage problem if I have its light on too too bright!

how can I lessen this afterimage problem? no light? this is a black screen!

freestone
 
from another thread....

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1776591&highlight=eyestrain

chahahc n00bie, 1.4 Years Status: chahahc is offline

Quote:
Originally Posted by charles_k View Post
edit : differences in PPI has no effect for me






interesting...For me ppi seems to be a major factor in eye strain. As an example, I tried out a samsung s27c750p for a little bit (best buy's 15 day return policy, thought i'd try it and if i liked it id keep it). Even with its high contrast and non-pwm backlighting, it still gave me more eyestrain/brain fogginess than my shimian q270 lite. Even my cheapo samsung sa300 tn panel monitor was easier on my eyes. Most high ppi smartphones don't seem to bother my eyes. At least not nearly as much as a low ppi monitor. That's why i'm waiting for sharp to get their igzo panels onto the market. 3200x1800 @ 14" = mmmm....I think.

I think there are different types of eye strain. strain from low contrast feels kinda foggyish, low ppi screens feel headache/brain foggyish, and overly bright screens and pwm sting the eyes in my experience.(for what it's worth)
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freestone
 
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