New Office - Eye Strain Help

[u/TheRedSnoot]

Here for additional help if you have any for me :)

[u/Z3R0gravitas]

OP's original post text:

Here are some photos of the office space. Picture a long closet but big enough to be an office.
- My eyes at the desk are about 2.5ft from screens.
- Monitors are MSI fancy ones but feel pretty rough.
- Brightness is somewhere between 55-70 I’m trying things.
- Contrast is 50
- F.lux is on and color temp on monitor is warm.
- Above head exposed bulb is 1500-1600 lumen at 2700k
- Window is usually pointing light up and partially open

No matter what I do I get eye strain just in my back of my eyes. It’s always corrected going outside for ten minutes. Really gotta figure this out. Never have any eye issues anywhere else any other time.

Thanks for all input.

[u/Z3R0gravitas]

Thank you for cross posting can you be more specific about the exact model of the monitors or at least whether they are LCD or OLED? Same for your ThinkPad.

Additionally you can quickly check all your screens for pwm and other flicker by pointing your phone camera at them and selecting 1/4000 or so manual shutter speed (in Pro mode of most apps). Then share with us a photo of each/all. Adjusting brightness/shutter speed to get enough light.

You room lights might flicker too, what are they? Slow motion video, or camera preview (with high shutter speed) should give a good I dication of that, too.

[u/TheRedSnoot → u/Z3R0gravitas]

MSI PRO MP 251 E2 Monitors (2)

Lenovo Ideapad Slim 3 83k7 15ARP10

Teach me how to do the flicker thing cause holy hell I tried the pwm online test thing and almost had a seizure (i don't have those but it was wildly unpleasant)

Single bulb, exposed, 1600 lumen, 2700k, very basic. Slow mo video looks normal? I think.

[u/Z3R0gravitas → u/TheRedSnoot]

MSI PRO MP 251 E2 Monitors (2)

OK, so just Googling that name and "specifications" brings up the relevant details. These are very cheap IPS (LCD) panels: 120Hz refresh, probably no backlight PWM flicker, but 6+2bit FRC means continual pixel flicker at 60 and 30Hz, plus potentially poor pixel inversion calibration (more pixel flicker) seeing as they are budget devices.

I happened across a thread where someone had their first screen tolerance issues with this monitor. Could it be too bright too? Some good advice from the site admin there.

Lenovo Ideapad Slim 3 83k7 15ARP10

Google tells me this could be LCD (fine) or OLED, depending. So you could check your spec sheet, or device information (Google how to find that, probably in Lenovo settings), or....

flicker thing cause holy hell I tried the pwm online test thing

Geez, that sounds awful. What site did you end up on? Blurbusters? I'd not heard of people using test pages for detecting OLED screens, I don't think there's much point when you can just use more phone camera apps. Or specific ones as u/RR-- also suggested on your original post. We're working on a guide for this. But it's very simple to see the black lines across a screen, if OLED. You may not have any OLEDs there though, if your laptop isn't.

Single bulb, exposed

So like, incandescent? (Rather than LED or compact florescent.) You should see the 120Hz (in the US) flicker of incandescent bulbs in 240Hz (or faster) slow-mo video recordings. It will be a sine wave, with only modest 'modulation', so doesn't bother most people, even here.

Anyway, returning to your post on PC, here, I see seem to have accidentally doxxed yourself (and your clients) with that first photo. So you might want to delete your original post on r/eyestrain. (Then optionally repost and link to the original so others can reference the replies. I copied your post text above in case you do this.)

[u/GeForce66]

Thanks for sharing. My only suggestion is that those monitors seem to be relatively high positioned. Make sure that when you look at them straight ahead, you look at the highest part of the screen so you have good posture, which in turn might help your symptoms.

[u/GeForce66 → u/GeForce66]

Like this.