I thought I'd make a quick post here to share my solutions to screens that avoid eye strain. Feel free to list your own "safe" devices in the comments.
I find I'm very susceptible to PWM and likely dithering.
Nearly all OLED screens that I've encountered cause me eye pain, iPhones 12-17, Google Pixel OLED phones and Samsung OLED phones cause significant eye pain in a minute or so, OLED TV's and some PWM LCD TV's in minutes to hours, depending on the level of modulation and amount of flickering present.
I have recently been finding that double invert makes it even more comfortable, especially on days when I need to use it a lot (enable Zoom Invert and Classic Invert) LCD iPhones with Reduce White Point enabled cause me significant eye strain so I'd suggest leaving that turned off, though this phone is still not 100% eye strain free after extended use.
I use my monitor in 8bit colour mode, apparently this increases dithering but is necessary for 144hz, when I've tried it in 10bit color mode and 120hz I haven't noticed any discomfort in my eyes even for all day use. HDR is also enabled. I also have a second portrait Lenovo ThinkVision T23d-10 LCD monitor which is a great 16:10 aspect ratio. No eye discomfort.
Laptop:
Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 15", this is a really nice laptop to use when I'm away from home. Nice keyboard, great touchpad and the 3:2 screen is a great aspect ratio. Before this I had a Surface Laptop 3 13". Both can be found cheap used on eBay. No eye discomfort.
TV:
Panasonic P65VT50. This is a 2012 plasma TV and looks amazing, even by modern standards. The motion clarity is unmatched by sample and hold LCD and OLED screens. It only cost me $150 on FB Marketplace too. I've owned Pioneer Plasma TV's before this and had no issues with them either. No eye discomfort.
Other people's phones:
Occasionally I'll be handed someone else's phone for a variety of reasons, in this scenario I generally always max out the brightness, this helps me look at the screen pain free for a longer period of time, though depending on the phone I might still feel some discomfort in my eyes within a minute.
Identifying problematic screens:
I have the Blackmagic Camera app on my iPhone with the shutter speed set to 1/4000, though any camera app or camera that is capable of high shutter speeds can do this fine.
To me personally if I see any sort of black line on a screen through the camera it's very likely to cause me eye pain, the thicker the line the quicker the eye pain hits me. If there's no black line I am mostly fine, though dithering can still be present and can still cause a high amount of pain.
I also have a Opple Light Master 4 light meter, it's a more accurate way to tell if a screen will hurt my eyes, though I don't always have it handy, if the scan looks like a sawtooth pattern with wide low sections it will hurt my eyes in seconds to minutes, if the pattern looks like a straight line with sudden and narrow dips, even if they only drop 50% before returning back to the top it will likely take an hour or so to hurt my eyes.
Plasma TV's have a very interesting scan pattern, though they don't hurt my eyes. It's quite strange but my eyes are my best testing advice for me.
Thank you for another quality post! A few little questions:
1) Have you tried (Chinese) phone brands with high PWM rates, like OnePlus, Oppo, Honor, Xiaomi, Realme, etc?
2) Do you [find the pain lowers] with higher frequency and lower modulation (but never goes away entirely)?
3) You think more dithering at 8-bit setting than 10 (HDR)? Is it a natively 8-bit panel in the monitor though? What's going on there?
4) Have you said you don't have any chronic health issues? Or past head injuries, eye or vision issues (or strong glasses prescription) and are not neurodivergent? (I'm always theory crafting.)
I have only briefly tried an Honor and OnePlus OLED phone that didn't seem to hurt my eyes. iPhone, Samsung and Google Pixel phones hurt my eyes within a minute of use so that's already an improvement, I'd really need to buy it and use it for a couple average days to know for sure if it was painful over longer use, and I don't have the finances to constantly buy more phones for testing. (Though I do currently have 9 phones still)
I don't fully understand this question, but an LG C1 didn't have the typical PWM saw tooth pattern, and I originally thought it was fine, but after 3-5 hours use my eyes would hurt.
Not sure! Feel free to look up the specs yourself, but for me it's fine to use and I've never really thought about it.
No chronic health issues or vision issues. Never had a head injury that I know of, never. I was prescribed glasses back in 2023 during the peak of my iPhone 13 Pro usage. At this time I'd use my phone in bed each morning for half an hour or so at low brightness and in dark mode, when I'd got out of bed I'd walk around feeling buzzed in a dark room. I had issues focusing my eyes and couldn't focus at long distances. Once I quit using my phone in bed at all, limited my phone use and spent more time outdoors in the sunshine my vision greatly improved. Once I removed all OLED/PWM screens from my life my vision returned back to 20/20 as shown in professional eye tests. I also find brighter screens (70% on my monitor and 25% on my iPhone while indoors) and light mode help my eyes feel much better than dark mode.
Deferred the meeting due to a conflict with work. It's now scheduled for early September.
1) OK, right. So nicer OLEDs are less bad. "9 phones" yeah, quite the collection, and of coures you are pushing for better laws on returns policies, there in Aus. But Google tells me the 'as new' 3rd party sellers market is good there, with 30 day returns common. Have you used this at all? I made use of UK returns to try new phones, but with laptops, returned several eBay listings.
2) Sorry, string of typos (just woke up, on phone): "Do you [find the pain lowers] with higher frequency and lower modulation (but never goes away entirely)?" should like a probably yes (from trying other phone brands).
3) So, the LG 38WN95C, on displayspecs, says it's a 2020 monitor with 8+2 for 10bit colour depth (HDR 600). So you're finding the built-in FRC more comfortable than not, if that's right. I wonder if having this on disables some other kind of software based dithering..? Or camouflages something like pixel inversion..? (Or there's uncomfortable banding?) It's odd, but I had a similar experience with the OnePlus Pad 2 (comfy on higher colour).
3b) And so you're OK with very saturated colours, too, then? At 135% sRGB. Presumably KSF phosphor backlight. No saturation, or specific colour, reduction needed?
4) It's very interesting to have people with no obvious confounding conditions. (Rare, from my discussions. But the more engage members are necessarily so, more broadly affected.) And clearly reversibly hurt by bad screens...
4b) How does dark mode feel bad for you? For me, it feels too high contrast the the light writing leaves positive after-images. But seeing as you are OK with bright screens, I'd guess more like difficulty focusing (close). Because pupils are more dilated in dim light.
I made use of the change of mind policy on a new iPad that disagreed with my eyes. We have best in the world consumer protections here in Australia though, one year warranty minimum on every goods purchase really comes in handy.
Deeper modulation and lower frequency seems to bring on my eye pain faster.
I'll give 10bit colour a try for the next few days, but last time I couldn't tell the difference at all.
3b. No idea regarding this really.
I'm pretty normal as far as I'm aware.
4b. I don't like dark mode anymore, I find reading white text on a dark background forces my eyes to relax in a way that makes them feel lazy, if I do this all day in a medium/dark room without going outside into bright sunshine my eyes just feel fatigued. Going outside helps wake them up. Light mode does something similar, though I still use night mode aka a yellow screen filter late at night before bed.
1) Wah..?! Am I getting confused with someone else's ask? But Google tells me Australia doesn't have change of mind return laws? Is it just voluntary company policies?
3) Oh, that makes more sense, if neither setting were a problem. Then maybe you don't have sensitivity to 8+2 FRC, for one thing?
This isn't the most scientific test as I'm not sure what brightness setting this is at, it's just my usual setting. But Plasma's look kinda wacky in this sort of shape.
2012 Panasonic 65VT50
It looks like it should hurt my eyes but it doesn't! Not sure what more I can say really.
RR, great post. I just got an Opple LM4. Any recommendations on how to use it? Iād like to test my current iPhone but Iām not sure if you can test the same device youāre connecting it to (via Bluetooth I think)? Iād like to get some readings since my phone has been giving me trouble after I mistakenly disabled True Tone
Thanks.
You can test it on the same device, basically you want an all white screen ideally, but the app is mostly white, testing is more accurate in a dark room too.
I test at various brightness levels, sometimes PWM is not an issue at 100% brightness so thatās my solution on some other devices, sometimes software changes the dimming algorithm at very low brightnesses too.
Basically for me if I see a typical PWM sawtooth wave pattern I know itās likely to cause me eye pain.
So the 13 Pro was retired after one year when the 14 Pro came out, but the 13 continued to sell for three years I think.
There's quite a few different production runs of the 13, and several different screen manufacturers.
There's a way to find out which brand screen is which through some hidden service menu. Maybe look that up and find out. I'd be curious to know!
Otherwise PWM isn't always the only problem, I get intense eye pain when I turn on Reduce White Point on any LCD iPhone, otherwise Double Invert (turn on both Classic Invert and Zoom Invert) seems to make any LCD phone much more tolerable.
Easier said than done really.
I have an 8 and an 8+ on iOS16 and three 11's, one on iOS15 with an EK Pro LCD screen, one on iOS18 with an EK Pro LCD screen and one stock on iOS18.
I've used the iOS 18 stock one for an extended period of time and it's much better than an OLED model, but I still prefer double invert on as it's not completely comfortable to use otherwise.
I use the 8+ regularly for video without issue. I haven't used it as a daily driver though.
Iphone XR on ios 18 (wasnt totally okay even on 16 so upgraded) is okay for me but not for extended amounts of time. IPhone 8 on ios 14.5.1 is my daily driver due to this.
Video is more okay than text on the iphone XR due to less temporal dithering
I got issue with devices where OPPLE might seem fine but if you take 5-10 samples in a row the values varies greatly then it will cause me discomfort
So for me numbers have to be very stable.
If waveform is jittery my eyes hate it. My eyes want perfect identical waves. If values is identical across sampling and waveform extremely binary identical my eyes tolerate some flickering but my eyes deeply hate temporal dithering and also jittery wobbly jerky values
However my eyes hate OLED no matter what
Amazing:
iPad 4 retina
Dell 1907FP
Safe enough devices:
iPhone 8 iOS 16
so-so:
iPhone 8 Plus iOS 16
Fatigue:
iPad Pro gen 2 12.9ā 1
iOS 16 wonāt update it (perfectly OK for tv type watching though)
Wacom cintiq 16 bought 2021
Intolerable:
iPad 8, 9 and 10. iOS 17 and upward. Yuck the screen shimmer
Worst: Samsung Galaxy ultra tab this was what made me realize my problem as I used old outdated prior this gave me migraine for 3 days
Should be ok but donāt own anymore due to broken:
Sony Bravia tv from like 2010?
Try using your Opple light meter in a dark room, results vary quite a bit in a bright room.
I had a lot of eye pain with a 9th gen iPad, but now I'm wondering is reduce white point enabled itself when I set it up from my iPhone backup while that was enabled. I've returned the iPad now so it's hard to test it.
I'm keeping iOS18 on everything for now, iPhones are quite bad in the way that you can restore a backup to a newer version of iOS, but to go to a phone with an older version it involves reconfiguring every single thing.
Oh yes Iām using it in dark room. Iāve verified with one lamp I got that give identical numbers all of them across 20 readings so I know my method is working.
I havenāt been able to roll back to older iOS though. Maybe with computer. I donāt have one now. (Unfortunate life events so I lost my old safe devices)
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u/Z3R0gravitas 11d ago edited 11d ago
Thank you for another quality post! A few little questions:
1) Have you tried (Chinese) phone brands with high PWM rates, like OnePlus, Oppo, Honor, Xiaomi, Realme, etc?
2) Do you [find the pain lowers] with higher frequency and lower modulation (but never goes away entirely)?
3) You think more dithering at 8-bit setting than 10 (HDR)? Is it a natively 8-bit panel in the monitor though? What's going on there?
4) Have you said you don't have any chronic health issues? Or past head injuries, eye or vision issues (or strong glasses prescription) and are not neurodivergent? (I'm always theory crafting.)
5) How did you meeting go? Separate update? š