Eye strain from LED backlighting in MacBook Pro

That is very interesting David, there is a group of people who have an issue just like yours especially with taillights and ghost images and tracers. Very concerning when headlights become LED isn't it?

I agree with you Eric, I provided this link earlier because even though this coating hasn't fixed my extreme sensitivity I can say with a certainty it helps me for 10-15 minutes, it may help others who are less sensitive completely and is designed specifically for the blue light issue:

http://www.crizalusa.com/Crizal-Lenses/Crizal-Prevencia/Pages/default.aspx

Even if you do not need glasses you could get this coating applied to plain lenses and give it a try.

The difference between this coating and others I have tried is that they put science into blocking the specific harmful spectrum of blue light emitted by LED lighting. I have been working with the company and providing feedback to them about this product, I see more coming in the future from them on this front and they are investing real scientific research in this area.

My symptoms:

LG 27' DM2780D LED - after using this one in 5 days with 100% backlight with no flicker and dimmed by graphic card even more then my CRT screen (dimming by PWM - the same results)

- feeling hot face when working with it

- quick both eyes fatigue and strong burning eyes effect

- display was sufficiently dimmed but always seemed still too bright ...

- very big pain at morning in right eye (like I was hit by a fist) and congestion of this eye

- in day 4 and 5 I felt dizzy

Wearing even sunglasses did not bring improvement.

Stop using it. 3 continous weeks of: pain, congestion and blurred vision when reading something in right eye and photophobia ....

Big problems with any artificial light. Problemfinally passed away 🙂 The monitor had in total 24 Watts of Led backlight (info from monitor service manual). There is a lot of light. My kitchen LED has 2,5 Watt and it's enough for washing dishes.

Acer 24' G245H with two CCFL bulbs - ok.

Akai 32 TV with 6 CCFL bulbs used as monitor (dimmed like my old CRT) -Unfortunately, burning eyes but not severe

Generally speaking I don't like too much light (from bulbs, sun etc.) When the sun shines strongly I have often a headache.

You know what you experience. You do not know what other people experience, and it isn't the same as what you experience. I myself have found that f.lux makes a tremendous positive difference even on CCFL-backlit monitors. You didn't find this, and thus you conclude that everyone is just like you. That isn't scientific, or even rational. Don't speak for others. If you want to set up a psychophysics lab and do actual research on this topic, go ahead, but don't just make blanket statements in the name of "science". As far as your statement that since sunlight has all wavelengths (true) and people don't seem to get eyestrain from it (not sure about that, but I'll accept it), and thus there is "no way" that blue light could be the problem, that's nonsense. White LEDs have a radically different light spectrum than sunlight does. They have very little red and green components, a lot of yellow (due to the phosphor) and a huge narrow spike in blue. We have three kinds of color-detecting cells in our retinas (cones): those that are most sensitive to red, to green (roughly) and to blue. If you can't understand how white LED light could affect eyes differently than sunlight, you're not qualified to speak in the name of science. Sorry for the harsh tone, but I really can't stand when people say "this is the way it is for me, anyone who says otherwise is just imagining things". You found that PWM caused your problems; well done! What if someone told you "PWM doesn't bother me; you must be imagining things!" That's the kind of thing you just did. Eyestrain can come from many different factors, and they affect different people to differing extents.

I understand. I don't want to say that what works/doesn't work for me, is the same for all. But as I said, I've monitored this discussion for a long time and there are a couple things that pop up every now and then, without any real evidence. Like the display driver between Windows 7 and 8. I'm sorry, but I just can't believe that a display driver between different operating systems could cause problems. The problems that people have with the blue ligth from a LED seem also inconclusive. As I said, tried the blue filtering glasses my self. Also, those Uvex glasses can be purchased from Amazon for something like $7. So if there are persons that really think that the Blue light is the problem, buy glasses that filter out blue and test for a coupld of days. Then we would know for sure. I mean, my problem was so severe, that I just needed to find out what helps. That's why I tried several monitors and invested quite a lot of money. I could not work without having found out the PWM problem. So if blue light problem is so severe, I urge people to buy the glasses and try. Then we'd at least know if is the blue light or not. It is confusing if people with severe eye conditions report probelms in this thread. If you can't deal with normal office lights, then it's likely that you cannot deal with any display for a long period.

And here the frequency is 60 Hz in the electricity, so Christmas LED's would flicker at 60 Hz which would be visible to most if not all.

"And here the frequency is 60 Hz in the electricity, so Christmas LED's would flicker at 60 Hz which would be visible to most if not all."

This is very interesting, I have read that the Hz needs to be above 75 Hz to be "undetectable". If our power supply is running at 60Hz for everything then it is possible there is a perceivable flicker in everything.

I personally know for sure through painful testing that flicker is an issue, I also know that 5000K spectrum lighting is an issue for me and probably anything bright white or blue. There is a much greater intensity of vertigo, nausea and migraine for me with anything bright white or blue and I have not found something with that spectrum that does not bother me yet. I feel you both have valid points and I still feel there is a strong possibility both flicker and spectrum are at play here.

The UVEX glasses only work for me with fluorecent lighting and this is my personal finding, other people who get random migraines suggested them to me and they fixed my constant migraine issue until LED lighting was installed at my work. The Crizal coating for normal glasses is designed to filter out harmful blue light and it would be the only true test if your having issues with LED. I'm pretty severe but I still have doubts the UVEX glasses would help with LED, just to be clear.

Mojarvinen,

Saying that you "can't believe that a display driver update" could cause problems isn't helpful. People are seeing REAL problems here, and the fact that you don't understand the mechanism is not helpful.

There are MULTIPLE issues happening:

- Blue light

- Flicker

- Temporal dithering

- ???

To discount any of these is hybristic and unhelpful.

HOWEVER, now that I've said that - it IS the case that this thread is a bit of a clearinghouse of problems, and it WOULD be helpful to have some consistency in the troubleshooting process!

Money being no option we could set up several experiments. We could use a power filter, flicker free monitors, monitors that use PWM and some that don't and some people who are sensitive😁

My view: These are neurological flicker symptoms. PWM flickers and newer hardware combined with newer drivers makes the LCD pixels flicker in a snowy fashion. Snow is hard to detect because the light gets somewhat mixed. One would have to measure a single isolated pixel for flicker in a PWM-free monitor that causes flicker symptoms to be able to detect the snow flicker if it was there.

Some people have both flickers present in their devices, some one, some none. PWM duty cycles and frequencies play a role.

Flicker puts a certain load on certain parts of the nervous system. Strong people can deal with that load, but for some it is too much and the body tells them to stop exposing themselves to the harmful light by causing symptoms. Pain serves that function.

Blue light contains much more data for the system to process than red light. The brighter the light entering your eyes, the more data comes in that needs to be processed. That is why filtering the blue light and dimming the light without PWM takes off some on the load on the nervous system, but doesn't solve the problem. Flicker is so the key role here that by removing it other factors would hardly play a role. Exceptions are persons with real eye disorders.

Many light sources flicker with problematic 120Hz/100Hz (twice the mains frequency). Many light sources use electronic ballasts and the kHz are too fast to create problems. These same electronic ballast lights cause strong problems by flickering within the problematic Hz numbers whenever they don't get enough voltage or are nearing the end of their lifespan without the flicker being visible to the naked eye for a long time.

Many will disagree with what I write and my current view may not be the real problem, but it's the best conclusion I can make with the data I have. I have read about people seeing the snowing pixels by looking at the screen closely from a certain angle. The smaller the pixels, the harder to see/detect the snow. Retina displays disguise it most successfully. Pixel flicker seems to have been introsuced at about the time PWM got removed from the backlights of Apple products (Slightly after LED bcklighting was introduced). Just something to think about.

Dovez,

that's pretty much my experience as well. I could see the "snow effect" you mention with the two screens I've had problems with: my retina MBP and in boot camp Windows with my older MBP.

The fact that the 2011-MBP is absolutely fine for my eyes (and no snow) in MacOS but causes problems when I boot into Windows makes me wonder if there is a software solution to this problem. The only difference is the OS and driver.

Yes, I can see the snow effect as well and I presume it has a role in what we experience.

But what's weird is that my HP pavilion g6 laptop has both a LED screen and the snow effect (on windows 7). And I'm fine with it. But frequency and spatial organisation of the flickering are probably different.

One should try to put windows XP/vista on a problematic Apple Laptop (I don't know if it's possible?) and see what happens because the first windows known to handle the Snow effect is 7

I remarked the other day at work how 'noisy' the HP ElitePad's screen is. On a white screen there is noticable coloured noise. It was visible to others too, others I might add who are not effected by the LED issue.

My eyes have recently started being sensitive and feeling tight. I work with an iMac (it's old-doesn't have an SD slot), and have a iPhone and recently upgraded my ipad2 to a mini.

I'm wondering if my mini has exacerbated an underlying problem, because I've only just noticed it. I'm not using devices more often.

I work in IT, am studying online and gererally have a paperless existence, but this is totally ruining it for me. To make things worse, I am addicted to my devices. I actually wrote on a piece of paper last week and immediately lost it! How am I going to cope? Having an app for everything certainly isn't helping!

Is this the new asbestos? Are we all going to go blind?