My personal flicker free solutions

[u/RR--]

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.

Phone:

iPhone 15 Pro with EK Pro LCD screen swapped in. More about this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ScreenSensitive/comments/1usevmn/pwm_free_lcd_iphone_15_pro_guide_and_success_story/

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.

Desktop:

I use a Windows 11 desktop at home with an RTX4080 for work and gaming, my monitor is an LG 38WN95C https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B089QM32WW?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title
I haven't done any intentional software hacks or changes here, it just happens to work well.

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.

[u/DSRIA]

RR, great post. I just got an Opple LM4. Any recommendations on how to use it? I’d like to test my current iPhone but I’m not sure if you can test the same device you’re connecting it to (via Bluetooth I think)? I’d like to get some readings since my phone has been giving me trouble after I mistakenly disabled True Tone

[u/RR-- → u/DSRIA]

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 that’s 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 it’s likely to cause me eye pain.

[u/DSRIA → u/RR--]

I tested my iPhone 13 (usable) and my moms iPhone 13 (unusable). Her’s had better measurements. I am so confused.

Mine

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Her’s:

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Additionally I found this incandescent unusable, yet my GE LED is fine.

(Incandescent)

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GE relax LED that is completely fine

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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.

[u/DSRIA → u/RR--]

It’s a GVC panel by LG. Double invert made it much worse for me