Nausea, motion sickness, lightheadedness - UX303LB fHD screen

Hello there

I just bought an ASUS UX303LB yesterday on a portuguese store. It's an i7 5500u, 256gb SSD, 8gb RAM, fHD 1900x1080 screen. The main reason I bought it was because I needed a very light laptop that would handle photo editing, with an almost 100% sRGB coverage IPS panel.

I tried it for the first time yesterday and, to my great surprise, a few minutes after using it, started feeling a light but disturbing sensation of nausea, as well as lightheadedness/motion sickness. I thought it would be related with the very high resolution for such a small screen, even though it was set at the beginning for 150% scaling. I changed every setting I could remeber, and the feeling persisted. Besides that, it's as if fonts are never really focused. All of this is subtle, yet very uncomfortable.

I've been using both an Apple Cinema 30 and a cheap budget 17 inch samsung laptop (TN Panel) and never felt something like this.

Today I tried the UX303 again, and the symptoms persist. I did some online research and, to my surprise, found dozens of not very clear topics about it, ranging from 2008 macbooks to modern laptops. Most of them mention a problem related with LED and PWM (pulse width modulation) luminosity adjustment. PWM is supposed to kick in at lower brightness levels, but it depends on the specific panel. With my UX303 I feel the same symptoms be it at the lowest brightness or all the way up to 75% brightness. Some people end up using their laptop always at 100% but that would ruin both photo editing and my retina.

I'm very concerned with this because:

- There seem to be many variables involved, very difficult to isolate

- I seized a special deal for this laptop and, if I return it, I'll loose the deal

- It's virtually impossible to check which panels have strong PWM, and there are no longer panels with the good old classic CCFL lighting.

- It's not easy to find a very light laptop with almost 100% sRGB coverage, full HD, with a processor that can handle photoshop, easily upgradable RAM and display port out.

Any help will be very welcome!

Thanks

 

Turn off auto dim and make sure the LCD is set to 60Hz.

 

Hi! THank you for your suggestion but I already tried that, with no success

 

Is the screen set to max brightness? You may be sensitive to the pwm management of the back light.

 

eyeglass? the screen glossy or matte? touch screen with extra glass on top?

I had similar problems with some screens I used.

 

Yes, also think pwm is the culprit here. And it's in effect all the time, even at full brightness.

Your panel uses max. 2KHz refresh rate, at 75% that would be slightly above 1.5KHz:

Spoiler: N133HSE-EA3 - pwm refresh rate

You'll need a panel that uses 4, 5, 10 or even 20KHz for the upper range. These do exist, question is whether you want to buy a new laptop in the hope that is features a high pwm panel or source a replacement panel for the UX303 instead.

 

Whoa, now this is a very helpful message! Where did you find these values?

From what I've read, these are actually quite high refresh rates. Most forum threads I read mention that it's between 60 and 200hz that things get nasty, and above 1 KHz is kind of a safe zone. From the table you posted, minimum brightness will be 190Hz and maximum will be 2KHz? How many cd/m2 does the minimum correspond to? I usually edit photos around 120cd/m2, depending on ambient light.

It's not easy to find a laptop with this weight, cpu, srgb coverage and displayport out. I don't think replacing the laptop is a feasible possibility. How would one source a replacement panel for a laptop? Never heard of it, pardon my ignorance.

Final question: Do you think my eyes will get used to it?

Thank you!

 

I don't know that it's your eyes as much as it is your brain if it's just a response to the frequency. 2000 does seem high though for it to affect someone, usually strobe effects are what cause it below 200.

 

This sort of thing is mostly subconscious, we are amazingly sensitive to motion and light. As for the panel its not really going to be the best first project.

 

Google-fu; search panel id + "pdf". That is not always possible; sometimes the spec. sheet is on commercial sites (few $'s for the pdf).

Not really, but for most people they are sufficient. Tendency is going (back) towards higher values; TN's were higher, the first laptop IPS screens rather low. Same reason you want to avoid cheap (low frequency) ballasts in fluorescent tubes, especially in an office; most won't notice, but a few do and for them the effect isn't pretty.

Yes.

Average cd/m2 at 2KHz is ~340, so (190/2000)*340=32cd/m2 and (120/340)*2000=706Hz. It is that simple, though susceptibility is something else; you might notice even higher frequencies, yet fail to pick up lower ones. Safest course is 'higher = better'.

Need same interface specifics as the old one. Guess you won't replace it yourself, but you could or have a repair shop do it for you.

No. Barring a brain transplant, that is ...

Main thing is to find out is what frequencies the Apple monitor and Samsung TN use. Run MonInfo on both and search for the panel's specifications. Using those values you can narrow the list of compatible panels or reverse look-up the panel and find a laptop that has it standard. There are other laptops that will easily surpass the UX303LB on most fronts, especially its cpu is rather underpowered. Though an 8-bit panel, price and, most of all, weight are a different matter (if 0.5kg+ is a problem, that is).

Hmm ... either return the laptop now (and loose the deal) or ask the shop if they're willing to swap in a new panel for free if you supply the panel. Will not be easy to find one though; there's not that many 8-bit panels in laptops, let alone on a ~13". Almost everything is 6-bit and, worse, the laptop's connector will have to do 8-bit as well. Yet, clearly, keeping it as is is not an option.

 

The op's old monitors probably use CCFL backlights.

Sent from my 306SH

 

Just as I predicted, both my Apple Cinema and cheap Samsung laptop screens are CCFL.

Replacing the panel of my Asus is out of the question. Not only would I void warranty, I doubt there is anyone doing that type of service in Portugal.

I don't find the CPU to be underpowered at all. I think people overestimate photoshop's cpu needs for photo editing. I've opened 20 24 megapixel images, still with the 8gb RAM, two of the images with 1.6 GB size due to having several layers, and didn't notice any slowdown in performance. Besides that, I realized it's actually quite feasible to do proper preliminary editing on a small screen like this.

Returning to the PWM problem... I've been spending about 30 minutes-one hour everyday with the screen, and the experience today is much less aversive than the experience 5 days ago. No nausea any longer and just a very slight motion sickness. Moving my eyes quickly among white backgrounds with lots of text seems to trigger the slight motion sickness more. There's also the problem of fonts being considerably less well defined in Google Chrome, when compared to Internet Explorer, even after disabling the high PPI scaling in Chrome's properties.

Most reports about people not tolerating monitores with PWM end up without a follow-up, because they return their laptops during the 15-30 day test period. Still, I've read many reports of people stating eye strain, dizziness, etc, after changing for the first time to a full HD screen, and then these symptoms went away. I wonder if they eye can adjust to the PWM frequency with time?

 

I suspect you can get used to it, it would be a hard shift going from model CCFL to modern LED backlight. However each person will vary.

 

For me, the nausea/motion sickness don't really have much to do with ccfl or led.
I used to have a low end 768p tn laptop on side with a dell u2212hm, both led, 1 glossy(the laptop) the other matte, both are "fine". Swap to a fhd wide gamut glossy on laptop, ding ding. bad bad sickness.

I recently broke the screen on my venue8 tablet. Bought another brand as replacement, with gap between touch glass/screen, nausea in less than a minute.
Bought another venue tablet, find to have a different panel compare to my original one and I am having slight problem with it.

Is it solely pwm? i really don't know~

 

Do you wear glasses?

 

Not the eye, though your brain can accommodate to a new 'normal'. But don't think that's a solution; even if you don't consciously experience it, the strain is there nonetheless.

Mind that CCFL vs. LED doesn't matter; both use pwm frequency control of the backlight. A ccfl is, really, nothing more than a regular fluorescent tube, only miniaturised. If you'd look up those ccfl panels you'll likely find they ran at higher frequencies. Only technology that's different is ye old tube cannon; when people talk of 75Hz minimum that applies to crt only because it has no backlight; the image is all there is. With lcd there's hardly an image at all; almost invisible when the backlight's off or defective. You can run lcd's refresh rate at 75-120Hz which means exactly that; it'll update each pixel more often; red<->green<->blue, yet at 60Hz it'd stay at red, green or blue all the time prior to the refresh, unlike the crt, which lights->dims with each cycle. This light<->dim is the real issue, which is allocated to the backlight with lcds.

Now, this is a list of 13.0-14.2" FHD panels using 8-bit colour (high gamut), 12 in total: Panelook Advanced Search. If you'd Google these for high pwm models, then it's possible to search NotebookCheck or Ebay for that specific panel, either can tell which model laptops they're used in.

 

Yes I do. I do actually have an unusual combination of an eye with myopia and the other with hypermetropia, as well as astigmatism on both. It's nothing severe (max 1 diopter), I use them for computer work and driving. Do you think this can be related, even considering I don't feel this problem with my other screens?

 

Are your other screens as dense in pixels as this one? Maybe a slight mis match could cause this.

 

My othere screens have significantly less pixel density than this one! The Samsung laptop is a 17.3 inch screen with 1600x900 pixels. The Apple Cinema 30 is a 30 inch with 2660x1600 pixels.

How could this be related with me wearing glasses and my eye sight problems?

 

It's all about vision. Well, it's half about vision; the other half is the vestibules in your ears. Motion sickness and simulator sickness happen when the eyes and ears disagree. Your eyes always disagree with each other. My eyes disagree with each other, too: differently myopic and different astigmatisms.

I think you mentioned that quickly scanning across the screen induces nausea. This sometimes happens to me if I sit too close to the screen. Have you tried changing your viewing distance? Increasing the viewing distance will reduce your eye movement. It also gets more of the area around the screen into your primary vision field. This does help me with some nausea-inducing games and videos; it might help you as well.

 

Well, this is a small compact 13.3 inch ultrabook, so the whole monitor is in my primary vision field. Putting it further away from me would keep me from being able to reach the keyboard.

After spending some hours with the screen it doesn't create any concrete nausea, but there's still motion sickness which is mostly triggered with quick eye movements around the screen.

 

Hmm. Perhaps the screen is too small for your eyes? But now I'm just guessing.

 

Too bad many screens use PWM to decrease the backlight.

My Asus 551JM with Samsung SDC324C IPS panel doesn't use PWM, or at least not until very low brightness, and it's a pleasure to work with. No/little eye strain even for long periods of work. Same with my Dell 27" IPS desktop LCD.

 

It would be odd for a display to use a mixture of PWM/voltage adjustment, it's likely just a high enough frequency that you don't notice.

 

Tonight, I was just setting up some old 14" machines for my mom. They are all matte, pwm, 1 ccfl , 1led 900p. They all kind of make me sick(slightly), except this one 800 p and it seem "better" .

I guess high dpi does make a difference, maybe it is the scaling? i don't really know.

 

It could be a combination of factors, the human brain is an odd thing.