Brightness setting and eyestrain

wyem

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 7, 2015
Messages
100
Hi,

I've heard that turning down the brightness setting on a monitor can reduce eye strain. Is this true? And is there a big effect?
 
Certainly. Turning it up to 100% on most monitors is a rather intense experience.

Most monitors seem to be designed to have brightness set up to be normal for most people somewhere around 20%. You should not ordinarily be setting it much higher than that, unless the monitor is particularly old and faded.

It's quite common to set it much dimmer than that, all the way down to 0%. Generally speaking, the darker the room is, the lower the brightness should be set. PWM-free monitors are a good idea if you are working in very dim rooms, because some cheap and irresponsibly designed PWM monitors may have flicker at Hz low enough for those sensitive to flicker to notice when brightness is set that low.

Don't use monitors or TVs in a completely dark room. That's a shortcut to eyestrain. You need a certain minimum of light in the room. Bias lighting, which is simply having a dim light bulb on behind the monitor, is a good idea to mitigate eyestrain.
 
3008wfp

Brightness: 0
Contrast: 22-28
F.lux: set to max


are you seriously asking if staring in a bright light is harder on your eyes than not staring in a bright light? the answer is yes
 
Don't use monitors or TVs in a completely dark room. That's a shortcut to eyestrain. You need a certain minimum of light in the room. Bias lighting, which is simply having a dim light bulb on behind the monitor, is a good idea to mitigate eyestrain.

So this is what I've been doing wrong all these years! Thanks for letting me know :)
 
Set the monitor to match the room. Dimmer in a dark room, brighter in a bright room. As evilsofa mentioned, a bias light is the easiest way to make looking an a monitor more comfortable to look at.
 
1)add always a light behind the monitor , if u wanna be fancy exist things likeantiumbra or the dancing lightpack....
:D

2)never work without a light.

3) lower the brightness at confortable level.
 
I have the MagicLux setting enabled on my monitors (Samsung) which auto adjusts brightness depending on room lighting, haven't had any eye strain issues in years, it basically keeps the brightness lower at night and brighter during the day.
 
Some people make much more fuss about monitors light being hazardous than it is. If eyes deteriorate from light from monitor then people who are often outside should all be completely blind. Luminance outside at summer at sunny day is orders of magnitude higher than that of monitors.

Similarly PWM. What PWM do is cause specific sensation to be felt in eyes and if it is interpreted as something bad and to be avoided then brain will generate pain. If the same eye see PWM monitor but brain think this sensation is sign of something good will cause pleasure and you won't feel PWM as painful but pleasant, refreshing even. In any case, why would there not being image for a while be hazardous to my eyes? Brightness of typical monitor is nothing compared to seeing pretty much anything at day outside. Eyes can handle luminance far exceeding that of monitors and they can surely handle some flickering.

Some people have their paranoia running so strong that they run monitors on lowest brightness levels and lowering contrast making images and details barely visible thus making eyes actually work harder due to low light amount. Eyes like light to be on certain amount for optimal performance and it is not <50cd/m2 but much brightner. This only show how disconnected those people are from their own perception and advanced in their paranoia. Some people even have headaches from AG coating, now how silly is that?

Running monitor very bright should not cause anything by itself and if there are some issues they are most likely with your brain interpreting some signals as potentially dangerous and not eyes being burnt to death. It is possible to reinterpret things and make them pleasurable and if you can do that then please use monitor at 100% in pitch black room. If you cannot then lower brightness but not until it is comfortable but make it comfortable and up brightness until you are ok with 100% brightness. Being comfortable means eyes are relaxed and not tensed up. You do not need to tense eyes at eg. 250cd/m2 as much as for 100cdm2 and will see more details with less eye-work. There is no possibility to hurt your eyes with that amount of light. Ambient light helps only because by default we need to be wary of wild animals that could attack us so we try very hard to see when in dark environment. As far as I can tell there are no wild animals in my room so I can relax my sight at any time.

In any way, if you know how to use eyes (and it is not insult, most people are clueless how to do it) then any monitor at any brightness will be good.
 
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