Computer eye strain causes and relief tips

Have you ever felt headache or nausea after sitting in-front of those glowing panel for longer hours?And sometimes burning sensation in the eyes? Yup both of these conditions are due to the digital eye strain. This issue is common among the people who works on the computers. So let’s dig into this topic.

LCD and LED are the major panel technology used these days for display. Infact LCD is the king among all of them if we exclude smartphones here.The so-called LED panel in laptop or monitors are not OLED panel. Major of them are using term LED because they use LED as to light up the panel.Now let's jump to the real question. Why are we having these problems? Why is our eyes hurting after hours of sitting in front of computer screens? Is it because of the LED behind those LCD panels?

Is it the Brightness?

:confused: yes and no. It is hard for us to see the sun with our naked eyes, which clearly leads to the idea that too much brightness causes eye strain.Thus watching display screens with high brightness leads to eye strain. But some people practise to watch monitor in very low light which can also lead to eye strain. Therefore optimum brightness is recommended . Simply look at your surrounding and try to make the monitor brightness similar to the environment.

Is it the blue light?

Back in old days there used to be screen protector that overlayed on the CRT monitor which supposedly blocked harmful rays coming out from it. There are special spectacles available which claimed to block UV light and other harmful lights. Researches have shown that blue light penetrates all the way to retina which can cause damage to retina. There are software solutions which helps to adjust display’s color temperature according to location and time of the day to reduce eye strain. f.lux and redshift are some example of such softwares.
But this solution is not feasible for those designers and artists who need accurate colors.

Is it the FPS?

if you are a gamer, you might be already familiar with this term. FPS is Frame Per Second. Higher frame rate is more comfortable to our eyes. 500 fps is said to be limit of our eye. Modern laptops are sold with 60Hz. There are monitor which are capable of 144Hz but having monitor with greater capacity only won't help you. Video game performance drops as per low computation power. You must have good rig to throw higher fps output. There are external gpu which will boost up your pc performance but first check their compatibility. While buying monitor search for flicker free standard for normal work and G-sync for gaming purpose.

Some other factors:

Text size or resolution
Rule says that your text height must be 3 times of the smallest font you can read since the display screen is going be 20-30 inches away. I know designers and artists tend pull touch screens as close to their face while using stylus. Higher resolution is more towards natural feeling but icon and text size must be tweaked to optimum size. PopOS seems to have initial HiDPI support in linux.

Colour and temperature

Try to avoid low contrast schemes. There are lots of theme and scheme out there for your terminal and text editor. Some plugins are also available for browsers to switch themes.

Glare

Modern monitors came up with two options i.e glossy and matte display. Matte panel diffuse the ambient light and avoid screen reflection whereas glossy panel’s smooth surface tends to reflect it back quite directly, causing unwanted reflections and glare – particularly under strong direct light.Matte panel reduces the eye strain caused due to reflected glare in comparison to glossy. But users go for the glossy one since they are more color accurate than the matte.

Extra Stuff

E-ink/E-paper

What if your display screens act like hard printed ink paper. E-ink electrically pulls up the black particle that lies beneath the opaque surface.They are just like physical paper. That's why it is more comfortable for our eyes.It would be great if E-ink replaces our computer monitors.Initially released e-ink were not visible in darker environment. Amazon kindle e-reader are made up with those e-ink display. they are not available in higher Hz or FPS will be greatly reduced. Color e-ink are expensive and also lack full color range. There is proof of concept that company called Dasung initially manufactured e-ink monitor. Remarkable companies like sony and kobo are also using e-ink for their e-reader. Yotaphone uses dual screen ,one with e-ink for reading purpose.

When Eink will come up with capabilities like higher FPS and more color accurate standards, People will surely go for the E-ink.

20-20-20

whenever you realised you do care about eyes remember 20-20-20 rule.

• Every 20 min
• look something 20 m away
• for 20 s

Hope you liked my writing.
Keep commenting. You can rant me too. :smile: