Retina Display MacBook Pro eye problem and strain

There are several reasons for eyestrain with an LCD display, but one of the less obvious ones is too high of a screen resolution! Your eyes focus on tiny, sharply defined edges in the center of their view. An older display (e.g., iPad 2) has big pixels that are defined by a black boarder around each pixel, and that has a sharp edge that you can focus on. With high resolution displays (Retina and others) your eye cannot see the pixel edge and so has nothing it can focus on. The pixel itself is too big and has soft and glowey edges and does not help you focus,

As an aside, if you look at an iPhone, the distance from the edge of the display (which you can focus on) to the center of the display is a very short distance and your eye will naturally see (or glance at) the edge of the display often enough to keep itself in focus even when looking at the center of the screen. With an iPad the screen is so big that you aren't normally aware of the edge and so your eye relies on the center of the screen for focus clues and there aren't any,

Fixes have been proposed:

Lower the brightness - this kind of works for lower resolution displays because it lowers the glowey (halation) and allows your eyes to see the pixel edge better, but it doesn't make much difference on the high res displays (unless the brightness is way out of adjustment).

Install a screen protector or security screen - These plastic screens have imperfections or actual visible features that your eye can focus on, so your eye stops trying to focus on the pixel and focuses on the imperfections in the plastic and uses that as a proxy for the focus point of the actual pixel. The more perfect the screen protector, the less effective it is in allowing you to focus on the screen.

This effect is not Apple-centric, it can be seen on the Nexus 7 and other high res displays and aside from the suggestions above, it is baked into high res screens. The effect may be reduced by the use of a mat display because you can see the texture of the mat surface and may be able to focus on it, but I have not done that experiment (i.e., sanding the front face of a glossy display)

The stobing of an LED backlight (which see the MacBook Pro) can create issues, but I think the above will be found to be the source of the many problems as we transistion to higher res displays.

I can confirm that f.flux helps a lot and the result is visible in minutes. I always had calibrated display (working with Photoshop) but I also use Macbook Pro 2015 Retina for reading and writing. In one year my eyes got worse and I had to get eyeglasses. Today my eyes heart a lot after a long work. I found this thread, installed f.flux and... And felt that I can look to the screen without problems. Eyes are still tired but they do not heart at once when I look to the screen.

So, if you have a problem with your eyes and Retina display, try f.flux.

My 2013 MBP came with the "half scaled" 1400x900 (half of 2800x1800) and I never knew the difference. I just got a 2017 variety and couldn't figure out why my eyes burned if I looked at the screen. I have two external monitors so it wasn't too bad at first, but working without the monitors was terrible.

I then noticed that my wallpaper was weird and started looking into the resolution. The "native/default" resolution of the 2017 MBP is 1680 x 1050 (aka terrible) which means that instead of 1 pixel being represented by exactly 4, there is some sort of messy cludge going on to get a bit more screen real estate. Once I changed back to 1400x900 the eye strain is gone.

TLDR; default resolution is terrible.

If I need more real estate I may look for something to force native 2800x1800 and then increase font sizes all around, but this would be troublesome and generally I just get an external monitor when I need to do much work though.

Hi Ben,

I see lots of comments already, let me add a couple suggestions that I don't see in the responses.

1) Go into System Preferences > Displays and select the Night Shift tab. Create a custom schedule for all day and adjust the Color Temp as needed. Reason for this suggestion is that LED displays produce blue light which has been known to affect the brain and sleep. Maybe the blue light is causing your eye strain.

2) Many responses about needing reading glasses. Alternately you can also go into System Preferences > Displays and select the Display tab. Change Resolution to scaled and adjust for larger text.

I find that I can look at LCD screens longer. This problem probably isn't unique to Retina screens but they most likely accentuate the problem since all Retina screens are LED screens on top of high in pixel density. To conclude my findings so far:

1. Lowering ambient light helps (especially by avoiding light sources directly in front of the screen that contribute to glare).

2. LCD screens help (Samsung Syncmaster S24C750P in my case).

3. Kindle Paperwhite helps. I can look at for four to five hours straight without eye fatigue.

4. Rest every hour for 10 minutes and do some eye exercises can delay the onset of fatigue by an hour or two.

I find that in my case eye strain is especially bad in the morning. This probably has to do with ambient light being too bright. For people with severe cases of eye strain I recommend a dual screen setup and set your external LCD screen as default and only use the Retina on you MBP when absolutely necessary. Try not to look at computer screens the first thing in the morning. Look outside for a good 30 minutes before turning on your computer.

G'day all

I strongly suspect that the described effect is achieved by Apple introducing temporal color dithering aka FRC in the display drivers. They basically buy a lot of panels, and let's just say not of the best color abilities. They need the color dithering to simulate better color, esp the new DCI-P3 attempt that is marketed as having 25% more color - true, just not at the same time. Your brain is supposed to aggregate the quick color changes into a bigger color space. When it refuses so, you feel all sort of drama.

I may think of starting a pet-iti-on to Apple to pay up for more organic screens with at least true 8-bit color, or at least to have software option to turn off temporal color dithering - but then the colors will look worse on those 6-bit panels i reckon. From the customer PoV, please demand true 8-bit panels and stick to sRGB gamut screens without PWM and you'll be right like

What resolution are you using? If you go to your monitor settings and choose "scaled" you can pick the different sizes, it looks like native resolution is 2560-by-1600, can you choose 1280x800 if you aren't already using that? I found that the in-between resolutions cause heavy strain.

Same here, I bought a MacBook Pro retina 15'' mid-2015, I found I couldn't easily focus on the screen, and have dry eye, red eye issues. I changed the display settings:

I changed the color to "ColorMatch RGB",

I changed the resolution down to 1280*800,

And reduced the brightness.

These settings helped to reduce the focusing issue a little, however, it couldn't fully solve the problem. I spent more than $2000 to buy this stuff. I regret buying it. I hope Apple could solve this issue by system upgrade to make the display much better for reading/daily using.

@Tingtao Wang, if you try 1400x900 is it any better? That would be exactly 1/4th of the pixels (of 2800x1800).

Done. The specialist conclusion is what we all are taking about here. We have spent thousands of dollars in a computer that needs to get the resolution adjusted to lower, dim the brightness, and use a blue light filter and a anti glare filter..... I've lost close sight, and suffer astigmatism, after 4 months using my new laptop, as video editor....... Before that I used other machines, for years, never had any problem, perfect sight...... I can tell you, this issue is gonna escalate until Apple and other brands will face the consequences....

I'm suffering from painful eyes whilst working on my MacBookPro 13" 2015 Retina. I have flux and night mode on but the problem for me is constant. I'm considering buying a monitor but not sure which type (LCD, AMOLED) to look for. I'm fed up of trying to be productive on my computer but failing due to eye pain.

As to what monitor, try BenQ (eyecare/flickerfree line) or LG. I am not affiliated. I found that they do not use PWM anymore for few years now.

I have had the Retina Macbook Pro for about three months and my eyes now have majore problems all the time. I have used a sony vaio solidly for about 4.5 years, prior to that a Dell, and HP, etc. Never, never have had any eye problems until getting the Macbook Pro Retina. I have been to the doctor and they diagnosed me with peosterior vitreous detachment...one month ago, it was only in my right eye. Now it is in the left too. Could lead to blindness if it doesn't get better. Again, I have never had any problems until getting this computer.

All I can say is that it is not worth it and the MBP Retina is not a thing I would recommend to anyone who has to spend more than aobut an hour a day on a computer. Don't go blind like I am doiing because of this computer.

Like the others, it started with eye strain and rapidly progressed to much worse. My vision is almost constantly blurred.

Telll your family and friends to avoid this problem by avoidning this computer.

cutterbump wrote:

Sigh...

I was not asking for an eye diagnosis—I am asking if anyone using this 2017 iMac desktop has experienced similar eye burning issues (since this thread has been going on for a few years). If so, then I know that it might be the computer rather than my lovely eyes.

I'm sure there are people using any device with a screen who suffer irritated/burning/sore eyes. This is likely dependent on the viewing environment, brightness, eye sensitivity, time of day, tiredness, air quality, dirty glasses, wrong prescription for computer work, etc. Asking if others suffer from sore eyes accomplishes nothing but the obvious, people suffer from sore eyes for many reasons. See a doctor if you are concerned about your eye health.

Yeh I’m using the default scaled. No difference. It’s pretty much all light I’m sensitive too but computer work is just too much. Even on my iPad Pro with Truetone I’m having difficulty concentrating.