Laptop Display query

Hello guys,
Just a general question - do the premium (e.g. IPS / high-gamut) display make any difference to the eye sights int the longer run? e.g. do they wear your eyes out more, or do they help reduce the strain?

(I suspect the panels themselves do not make much difference - though indirectly they might help, because you won't need as high brightness of the older TN panels / and more likely to be in have postures when using them?)

Be interested to know

 

Well this depends on how much time you spend in front of the display your eyes do get tired eventually and need to rest. With CRT you got tired eyes plus radiation from the tube and that cause more eye and headache problems but LCD/IPS was to eliminate this problem. But too much display time will strain your eyes regardless and one should take time to relax and stay away from the screen also to much late night and eyes will keep the rest of your body awake causing unrelax sleep causing to other health problems as well. So everything affects in one way or another it's knowing how to manage it that will prevent eye strain causing problem down the line for your health.

 

I would imagine the settings would be more important than the panel itself, and how much time you spend staring at it. Screen color temp is a big one, I use f.lux to tone down color temp and it helps on both my TN and IPS screens. (Note, don't use that if you're doing something that requires high color accuracy, it will make your screen orange-ish at low values)

 

Avoid laptops that use PWM (pulse-width modulation) to control brightness of the display. They can cause eye strain and headaches for some users.

 

Not exactly true. The last CRTs had ZERO radiation in front and little in the back. You would get radiation if you are in office environment where your colleague is sitting on the opposite side, so the backs of the monitors are blasting radiation at each other. It's not the face though. With high refresh rate there was no strain as well.

This. No matter the technology, too much focusing on a single point is among the main reasons for eyestrain.

The very reason for eye strain. Just like low-refresh-rate CRTs, low-refresh-rate PWM backlights are causing eyestrain and headaches. It is considered that anything above 1500Hz is safe on the eyes. Good luck finding PWM-free displays, they are RARE even on desktops.

I think that they are better on the eyes. At least the older premium panels, since they were indeed premium. For the new ones, it's a bit of a gamble. The main thing you have too look at, as you have probably realized by now, is the refresh-rate of the back-light. And to answer your question fully, I think that you are interested more about the colors. The colors can burn your eyes, if you use a high-gamut display in sRGB space (what most of the web is), colors would look overly saturated. You need a color-space selection software. The thing is most of the recent "high-gamut" displays cover sRGB only, so no need for software. It's a bit more complicated than that, but I hope that you get the general idea.

 

I own 2 laptops, and supposedly neither uses PWM. Just lucky I guess.

 

How do you know? Which models are they?

 

I remember seeing a list awhile ago (maybe 6 months). Not sure how current it was, nor do I recall where. Wish I would have bookmarked it.

 

Yes, non-PWM screens are not that hard to find. Prad and notebookcheck.com give refresh rate data for stand-alone monitors and laptops respectively. There could be others.

http://www.prad.de/en/monitore/reviews.html
http://www.notebookcheck.com/

 

Having review sites state the PWM frequency helps, but it doesn't automagically mean that there are A TON of PWM-free displays/monitors. There are a couple of Bulgarian sites that did PWM tests before Notebookcheck, not sure about Prad, since I'm not very frequent there. That was what I implied with my previous post - just look for anything that's above 1500Hz. BTW the 8740w has PWM-free standard displays and the DreamColor works ~1200Hz.

 

There needs to be a 'panelboss' type site for quick comparisons.

 

haha.. we so need something simular for TVs.. shopping TVs on the net is still god awful. Every 6 weeks stores have a new model and thus never any reviews on what your shopping for.