eye strain

[CNeub]

hello,

I have a Notebook with Intel Core i7 4710 - Intel Graphics 4600 and external Nvidia Gforce GTX 850M for about 2 weeks now. I connect the Notebook on two different places per HDMI with nearly three year old lg monitors. With my old Notebook (Intel Core2Duo and Nvidia Gforce 9500GT) I had not any problems with this two monitors. However when I connect one of the two monitors with my new Notebook I get eye strain and headache. Of course I use the right resolution FullHD and tried out different brigthness and contrast adjustments in intel graphic properties. OS is Windows 7 Prof x64 and the newest drivers are installed. Version:15.33.22.64.3621

Nearly two months ago I purchased an other Notebook with Intel Core i7 4700MQ - Intel Graphics 4600 and Nvidia Gforce GT755 M. I had the same problem there and so I sent it back, because I thought that the Notebook has an defect. I tried out Windows 7 and Windows 8 and had the same eye problems in the two different OS.Now I do not really know what the problem exactly is, because I have these problems with two different Notebooks on two different external LG Monitors and the integrated Displays of the Notebooks. But I thinkt the problem is the Intel HD 4600. Maybe that there is something wrong with the driver.Do you have any ideas about this? Couse I can't purchase and send back new Notebooks all the time.

Sorry for my bad english

[PSobc2]

Hello

Kray_62 I am glad to hear that i could help you. But the fact is that i hope that Intel dev team will investigate the difference in drivers between AC Power plugged and unplugged in and make new drivers which are working with AC Power plugged in in same way like unplugged (to reduce eye strain to almost zero like you mentioned).

I think every Lenovo (and other manufactures) laptop will not cause strain with AC Power unplugged, not only your Thinkpad X1 Carbon.

I am trying to use my laptop at work in same way like you but it is not good workaround....because battery lifetime is decreasing very fast, and every few mouths battery change will be needed. Of course company can provide you new battery, but anyway it is a problem and unplugging battery power can not be main and final workaround for our problem, so i think Intel Dev team will create drivers which create image on battery plugged in in same way as unplugged, now it must be much much easier when we found what changes the drivers work to strain causing. I mean Windows and Linux version of drivers aswell (because for example me, and i assume many other people is working on Linux too).

I am still curios of other topic followers opinion and observations (regarding using Intel drivers with AC Power plugged in and off), if it helps them or not.

Kray_62, As far as i know you are working on this problem with Intel dev team in private messages way, did they refer in any way to this battery plugged in/out observations, and use this information to work on this problem? Any progress?

Greetings

[SMohd2]

kracjar20

Yeah the using the on-battery workaround is not meant to be a permanent solution. But honestly right now, I will take whatever that works. You are right, this will not work well on older laptops or laptops with average batteries.Hopefully intel dev team will find a solution before my laptop battery starts to drop in performance. Regarding the work i am doing with the intel dev team, so far nothing specific on AC vs on-battery.

MJA

When you test your Lenovo X1 Carbon laptop, which version of windows 10 are you using? Is it the latest one? If it the latest one (anniversary version or newer), then that might be the reason why you still get eye strain, as there has been reports that people get eye strain when they upgrade and use newer version of Windows 10. There are multiple causes of eye strain (e.g. PWM, graphics driver, AC power, windows 10, dithering etc), and to complicate it further, different people may be affected by different ones. Maybe the reason the AC vs on-battery workaround has no effect on you, is because there is still something else that is causing you the eye strain in that laptop (could be your Windows 10 version, or it could be other things such as temporal dithering).

[CNeub]

Hey Ronald_Intel

Attached the dxdiag of the newest "eyestrain" intel system I'm working on now.

If you need more information feel free to ask me at any time 😉

[bbook]

I guess I'm one of the "5%". I also experience significant eye strain when using my Dell XPS13. Disabling Intel graphics and using the generic built in driver eliminates the eye strain. I'm on my work computer with discrete graphics all day with no problems. It's very annoying, very painful - but at least I know I'm not suffering alone. Is there a driver for Intel HD 520 that people have found less painful; I'd like to try it.

[PSobc2]

Hi @benbook

Did you maybe try to use your Dell without AC Power connected and try if you have strain on new Intel drivers. Some of people (including me) it helps.

[SDmit4]

I've bought MacBook Pro 2017 13 inch with Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 half a year ago and since then I suffer from eye strain while using it. Could this issue be caused by Intel GPU? Any advice on how to solve this besides selling the laptop? Currently its in apple service center waiting for a display assemly replacement - I'll check it after that and will post an update.

Maybe there is some tips on how to investigate and determine whether its GPU or the display itself?

[TT7]

Hi Ronald,

Please find my DxDiag file attached.

Thanks!

[MJärv]

I have to point out that I tested the X1 2017 also for 3 weeks and it produced terrible eye strain both plugged and unplugged. I have tested countless devices and AC makes no difference at all, if the display is causing eye strain. I would be curious to understand if there would be any difference in the operation of a fully digital device based on the status of the charger connector. I would initially think that if the power option are configured correctly, the display would not know whether the power comes from the battery, or the battery that's connecter to the charger.

[MBurl2]

It's all the same to me. If I can not stand some device, then it does not matter if it is plugged into AC or not. As for me, the main problem is LED backlit (I think). In addition to computer's or phone's displays, I have met with another LED lights hurting my eyes.

For example, a year ago, I bought an underwater light for my GoPro camera. After some time of using it failed so I reclaimed it. They replaced it with a new one. However, the new light was new improved model, with higher luminosity, using different LEDs. If I see its light for a while, it causes me eye strain. No Intel driver or AC plug there, of course.

[PSobc2]

Dear Intel team

Maybe could you give me a way to make Intel Drivers work on AC Power like not on AC Power ? It can solve 100% problem for me (because as i mentioned in previous posts i have problem only on AC power connected). I do not mean typical battery settings visible in performance settings or settings in Intel control panel...It must me something hidden...but i am 100% sure that after AC Power conection this graphic is starting to display image in different way..(causing strain). I need this "fix" for Windows and Linux aswell.

Thank you in advance.

[KChen83]

Hi all,

Has anyone tried the new AMD powered laptops? Namely, the Ideapad 720s, Acer Swift 3, and HP 15 x360. I am still using a 6-year-old SONY laptop since I couldn't find an Intel CPU laptop that wouldn't cause eye strain. I have tried and returned two Intel-based laptops (ASUS, Apple Macbook Pro) and pretty much gave up on Intel-based laptops.

I am planning to buy the Ideapad 720s with AMD mobile Ryzen that's Intel-free.

It will be great to hear from anyone on this discussion board who have tried these laptops.

Thanks,

[jve]

Hey

I was wondering actually the same thing about AMD. Please let us know if you do buy and test one.

Also, i was wondering, is there is a laptop without integrated graphics?

What about laptops with xeon processors for example?

And to add - I got myself an iPad 2017 because it has an apple graphic chip. It works! I don't have eyestrain. It is definitely not a solution for some havier work (for me at least - i need AutoCAD, SketchUp and Photoshop..) but for day to day things it is good. Sometimes my eyes do get a bit tired though. Probably from the LED. But it's only sometimes and far from any pain. Hope this helps someone

[MCras]

I have severe health issues caused by flickering light sources. Temporal dithering (FRC) causes headaches and persistant vision problems. Please produce a driver that allows for the dissabling of frc. I have very carefully documented my symptoms for 8 years, and there is an almost perfect coorelation of symptoms to the use of specific LED/LCD displays. An MRI reveiled several "areas of high signal" in the frontal cortex of my brain which I beleive to be the result of gamma flicker induced trauma. do not dismiss those suffering with health effects from flicker as simple "eye strain" the physiological effects of gamma flicker are well documented and pose a severe neurological risk for some individuals.

[DKour]

Dear Intel staff,

I have recently bought a new laptop / notebook and, by chance, discovered a very clear cut case of when the display does and when it does not gives me eye strain.

This is the model:

https://www.acer.com/ac/en/GB/content/model/NX.GGLEK.001 Aspire ES1-132 | Notebooks - Tech Specs & Reviews - Acer

The VGA driver approved by Acer and provided on their website, gives me no eye strain at all:

https://www.acer.com/ac/fr/BE/content/support-product/6975?b=1 Support technique

The generic VGA driver provided on your website by clicking on the "Downloads and Software" link on the page below gives me a lot of eye strain:

https://ark.intel.com/products/95598/Intel-Celeron-Processor-N3350-2M-Cache-up-to-2_4-GHz Intel® Celeron® Processor N3350 (2M Cache, up to 2.4 GHz) Product Specifications

The driver provided by Windows Update also gives me eye strain, even though a bit less than your generic driver.

If this is not just a matter of Acer modifying your driver also taking the screens they provide with their laptops into consideration, maybe you can reach out to them and see what they do to make it work so well.

[TYama28]

Hello,

Posting my case for reference. I evaded eye strain issue by switching OS from Win10 to Win7. Here is the the configurations I tried:

# 1: Win10, X1Carbon2016 WQHD (2560x1440) panel (default)

# 2: Win10, X1C FHD (1920x1080) panel

# 3: Win7, X1C FHD (1920x1080) panel

The default panel has PWM issue (# 1); I decided to replace it to some lower resolution, PWM free panel. However, # 2 still caused eye strain. I read this topic:

http://annystudio.com/misc/anti-aliased-fonts-hurt/

Some other article says Win10 has newer font rendering engine, which uses subpixel font, and subpixel font can cause eye strain to some (5%?) people; I decided to go back to Win7 (# 3). Now my eye strain was gone. I can use my laptop for months.

This is just my case but supposedly many people in this thread use Win10. I wonder if anyone suffering eye strain tries other OSes, such as Win7, Ubuntu. Ubuntu can boot from USB memory; can be easier to test without causing any effect to the current HDD content.

[JJTL]

Greetings.

I don't have eye strain, per se with Intel graphics but I have eye strain from other causes (PWM) and I have some guidance that might be helpful.

- Windows 10 build 1607 and later may do a form of dithering on it's own, unconfirmed. Sadly affects AMD and Nvidia cards too. So that might be a false positive with your testing.

- Has anyone tried a video capture card of a display output to check if it's possible to spot temporal dithering that way? All the display output sees is a monitor plugged in, and it would still probably dither so this might be a good test. Would have to be a uncompressed/lossless capture card to avoid compression artifacts.

There's a third-party program named dithering.exe and although I don't have a laptop with integrated Intel graphics I briefly tried it on my brothers HP Zbook with hybrid Intel/NVidia Quadro graphics, it did work to disable the dithering (visible stripes on internal LCD)

https://ledstrain.org/d/152-temporal-dithering-sensitivity-my-solution https://ledstrain.org/d/152-temporal-dithering-sensitivity-my-solution

Also igfxtweak as well. These techniques look so generic an OS X and/or Linux port might be possible in the future.

(No warranties implied or given, obviously, use at your own risk)

Be well

JTL

[KChen83]

Hi,

I have been using the Lenovo 720s AMD 2500U laptop for two weeks now and glad to report that eye strain is down significantly versus my previous experience with Intel-based laptop (ASUS and Macbook Pro). My new Lenovo 720s laptop (720S-13ARR) is connected to my existing two Samsung external monitors at home and work. To be clear, I did not experience any eye strain with laptop's screen (both intel and amd) but only with external monitors connected to new Intel integrated graphics. While this has worked for me, it might not work for everyone experiencing eye strains. It's worth the try if everything else fails for you and you can return the laptop if AMD doesn't work for you as well.

By the way, if you are getting the 720s that only comes with USB-C port for connecting external monitor, you would need to buy a Lenovo branded USB-C to HDMI adapter. I have tried 5 different USB C to HDMI adapters that all failed to work because Lenovo apparently implemented their own USB-C standard. This is a bit annoying given Lenovo charges more for their adapter than 3rd party ones.

Good luck everyone,

Kevin

[fhach]

Thank you all for the wonderful work you're doing. I have recently discovered this thread, suffering from similar issues. I had kinda given up and turned instead to text to speech for reading docs and writing (dragon + jaws + J-say) but can't do everything I need with it.

I recently came across laptops with E ink, like http://www.dasung.com/english/ or http://www.onyx-international.com/. Has anyone tried these? And if so could you report your impressions / eye strain?

[jve]

ah thank you for these links! really interesting!

it's a shame they don't display color 😕

[jve]

ok..p.s. i ate my words.. sort of

found this - https://www.eink.com/product.html?type=productdetail&id=27 https://www.eink.com/product.html?type=productdetail&id=27

but how am i suppose to use it? build my own monitor? eh if i could

[fhach]

Both the Dasung paperlike pro and the onyx boox max2 can be used as secondary monitors for a pc. Based on several reviews I've read the Dasung seems to be the better option for use as a monitor as it has option to clear ghosting and less time lag. As I use my computer mostly for reading, writing and internet browsing, and not for playing videos it should be fine. I also don't really need colours for that type of work. I'll buy a dasung over the coming days to use as a secondary monitor and will report how it works.