Eye strain from LED backlighting in MacBook Pro

What model of HP laptop? Most HP business/Elite laptop screens have very high frequemcy PWM or none at all.

How does it work with a digital connector (ie DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort?)

The main GPU manufacturers use the following dithering techniques:
- NVidia > Dynamic Noise (less perceptible)

- ATI/AMD > Dynamic 45/90 degree bars

- Intel > Static 90 degree bars (most perceptible)

Copied from: https://communities.intel.com/thread/31323

This may explain why nVidia GPUs are liked so much here.

I don't believe that. If Intel used only static dithering, the screen wouldn't change at all over time. No change = no eye strain.

Under Linux, you can change proprietary NVIDIA's dithering method from dynamic to static to off. It's off by default when the monitor's EDID reports a true 8 bit panel. Everyone else on the internet says it's always off in Windows. Maybe not when using integrated notebook screens that report only 6 bit, didn't find information about that yet. That's how the open source NVIDIA Linux driver, nouveau, works: No dithering at all by default for normal desktop monitors, only if it's a notebook panel further checks are done.

You know more than me about this. The hard questions seem to be:

Do you think one manufacturer's graphics cause less eye strain than another's?

What reasons could there be for this?

Is there anything a consumer can do to affect this?

Some possible causes and solutions (please correct where wrong):

Gloss and glare. Solution: choose appropriate monitor and alter environment to reduce glare.

PWM. Solution: use a (supposedly) PWM free monitor.

Blue-light. Solution: use f.lux or similar. Use blue blocking glasses/screen filter. These are obviously orange/amber in colour and blues will appear black or blue/green. Use CCFL or types of LED with different spectra. A pair of these glasses have helped me a lot, but not eliminated the problem. But this effect may come from affecting the perception of other factors such as room lighting, FRC, anti-aliasing, etc.

Room lighting. Solution: trial solutions without artificial lighting, in well sunlit rooms without glare. If artificial lighting is a problem then try adjusting set up, lightbulbs etc.

FRC (dithering). Solution: use a monitor with no FRC. Use a graphics card without FRC. Disable FRC using registry settings or card controls.

Anti-aliasing. Solution: ? Remove font smoothing, Cleartype text etc.

Other factors: ergonomics, resolution, refresh rate, electromagnetic radiation, fatigue, and odd suggestions like spirituality.

I believe there may be many factors at play. The traditional way to deal with this is to start with a completely clean system and then re-introduce elements one at a time so that the cause may be identified. But you can't do this when buying laptops. The ability to modify your system is therefore important, and as a rough rule, Linux is more modifiable than Windows which is more modifiable than OSX.

Would a Linux Nvidia system be best?

Thanks for this. What I've learnt has largely come from reading threads - mainly this one but many others. It's reassuring to hear that my understanding of the problem is ok. This means that I can't expect there to be any magic bullets that will fix my issues. I've been dealing with this since mid 2012 when I bought a new Macbook Air, then tried swapping to various other laptops and monitors over time. I'm 39, have 30+ years of computer use behind me. Work requires intensive computer use, and I never had any problems before the MBA. The "eye strain" I've experienced since then has been as close to eye strain as a broken bone is to a bruise. I've visited several doctors and optometrists and no problems have been found. I hope I might stumble upon a solution but, as other sufferers have written, what works for one person doesn't work for everyone.

Yeah the problem also is that some people talk about different problems, so of course there couldn't be a solution for everyone.

You summed up the problems really good, but in my case I explainend that I got the problem with a new notebook connected at the same place to the same old monitor which don't give me any problems with my very old notebook. The display of this notebook is so glossy that I can see myself all the time in the integrated display and it doesn't give me the bad eyestrain we are talking about.

So Glare and Glossy, roomlightning, ernonomics, refresh rate, resolution, clear type are of course the basics, somebody suffering from eyestrain should think about. But this things can't be the cause of the heavy bad eyestrain and focussing problems.

Next thing I'm really interested in. Does the graphics driver or card change the pwm frequency of a monitor? Is this even possible? Because, if the frequency is always the same at a monitor with a certain brightness level, I also can neglect PWM, since my trusted LG LED (1st generation) Flratron doesn't give me the problem with old notebook and gives me the problems with a new notebook, although I've never changed settings on the monitor.

So if we are on the right way, the cause of the issue could only be some kind of anti aliasing and dithering, but if that is true, that intel only uses static dithering we can also neglect the dithering theory. In that case I also have to mention that some new LCD TVs and mobile phones give me the bad eyestrain. Does they also use dithering? Like the people who where explaining that they can't use their iphones any more after an iOS update. Which things can be updated in that case?

Or is static dithering really the problem? Maybe it's harder for the eye to focus on that -> focussing problems -> eyestrain. But I'm not an expert in about this topic.

So what is remaining? Anti aliasing? Clear Type is not a problem for me on my old notebook.

Yeah. Of course also some strange things like electromagnetic radiation or maybe ultrasonic noise engendered from new hardware could cause the problems. But in that case a solution is really far away.

I have not follow this thread for a while. I think I almost found a solution for my headaches due to backlit screen exposure. I am using a projector+a sun glass (blocking blue light). After adjusting the contrast level of the projector to a very low level (as low as possible), I also need to increase the brightness in order to balance the screen of the projector, then I can do whatever I want for hours without any problems. I can have a good night sleep right after hours of use. Last time I had this good feeling was about 6 years ago. The bad thing is that I still have to suffer the backlit screen in my office. It will be great if there are non-backlit computer screens available in the market.

Which projector do you use? I think all projectors use PWM, that is why I never bought one yet. Do you have it at full brightness? And the sun glass, did you put it in front of the projector or do you use it like regular glasses? Do you get eye strain if you use default contrast and minimum brightness?

I am currently using an aaxa p4x projector, but it is pretty noisy and I plan to try another one RIF6 CUBE. It is at a high brightness, probably not 100. The sunglass is used as regular glasses, I am actually using clip-ons hooked up on my regular glasses. With the default contrast and minimum brightness, I don't feel good. but I did not test this specific setting for a long time.

Hi, I noticed that you are on the way disabling Temporal Dithering on macbook pro, can you please share with me the result? And if you need money, I would consider. Thanks. vinkenbog@gmail.com

Hello, Im also having lots of troubles with screens, and i have tried lots of new laptops and external monitors. I have eye strain and my eyes become dry and red with blurry vision after some time in front of most screens. I have a laptop from 2008 (lcd) and a 2010 (led) laptop that i can use for many hours without many problems. I have tried more than 10 laptops and 10 external monitors, most screens give me very bad eye strain after 30 minutes..

After lots and lots of hours searching for a solution i had an idea that i would like to try. Reduce the contrast of the screen, so that the black are less black, white less white, and colors less saturated. The problem is that i can't find a way to reduce the contrast of a mac screen. THE 2 SCREENS I CAN USE FOR MANY HOURS HAVE ONE COMMON ASPECT, the low contrast. From my experience led technology is much harder on the eyes than lcd, but also most led screens have much more contrast than lcd screen. Reduce the brightness also help my eye strain.

Does someone know how to reduce the screen contrast on a mac? Or can someone try to reduce the contrast to know if it help the eye strain? I would love to buy a macbook pro, but unfortunately it give me very bad eye strain. My laptop is obsolete and can't find one that give me no eye strain. From my experience, it's necessary to rest the eyes for a few days to know if a new screen will work.

Thanks

Contrast ratio can be adjusted through Display -> Color -> Calibrate, but adjusted contrast will make screen unreadable.

The major cause that make your eyes dry is Dithering Color, you must have been told that Macbook Pro Retina uses 6bit LCD panel which doesnt support millions of color as Apple described, they use some technical methods to simulate millions of color. However it's nearly impossible to turn off Dithering option on Mac OS X (is able on Linux).

So the solution is :

1. Waiting for Apple to fix it and produce a 8 bit LCD panel for Macbook

2. Wish someone to develop a .kext to interrupt kernel driver loading Dither function

3. Install Linux and turn off Dither in Xorg configuration

Thanks for your answer. I have also tried to use the laptop screen (that give me no eye strain) as an external monitor with an lcd controller board. It also give me eye strain with a modern mac or windows computer, so the screen itself isn't the problem, at least with this screen. I also have tried flux, red filter film and matte film with no success. I think one of the solutions can also be to use an e ink monitor, but unfortunately there aren't good commercial e ink monitors available. There is a huge market for good e ink monitors, so many persons work all day with computers that don't need the accurate colors. The light from the screens aren't healthy, and in the long term many persons will have serious eye problems because of that.

Thanks vinkenvvt! I think i finally found the reason of my eye strain, color dithering. I have installed ubuntu and it help a lot. Unfortunately it's very hard to turn turn off Dither in Xorg configuration, i have no linux experience. After 5 hours google searching about disabling dithering in mac, windows, linux, explorer, chrome, firefox,.. without sucess, i found an interesting post about disabling dithering in android. Can someone try it to know if it solve the eye strain problem with android? I have an iphone that give me very bad eye strain, so i can't try it in android..

"Have you ever experienced the issue with your s3 where you see faint lines going across the screen? I have, and it's an issue that is well documented. I can tell you from experience, it's annoying. Many people have said turning off hw overlays in developer options solves the problem. The sad thing is, it only minimizes the issue and you have to select the option again whenever you reboot. Not only that, the gpu is stuck doing the work which adds lag to the the phone. Well guys, I've found a real solution. However, you have to be rooted. There's an app called pimp my rom, it's very useful. If you open it and go to tweaks, enable and disable features, you should see a surface dithering option. Check it and reboot. Bam! No more problems with screen flickering. I have been able to confirm this on a few s3 devices that this does indeed solve the issue. If you have ever experienced this problem, please try my solution. I hope this helps!"

Do you know if there are true 8 bit monitors with 8 bit output? I think this monitors will have no dithering, but im having difficult to find a monitor with this characteristic. The brands are not very clear with specifications. Thanks