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1. Currently, I use it for writing code and reading papers. However, I still want the monitor to be a good enough drop-in monitor for things I need to occasiona
by chaoxu 8y ago
1. Currently, I use it for writing code and reading papers.
However, I still want the monitor to be a good enough drop-in monitor for things I need to occasionally do. For example, I need to switch to a browser window to check what was that error I'm getting.
2. Visual snow syndrome: Many had their first experience of visual snow after staring into the screen for too long. People who believe in that is the cause of visual snow would want a screen that does not emit light.
- cedex12 8y agoHow well does it fare for those tasks (code and papers)? I'd very much like to have such a screen but the price tags of what I've seen so far is probihitive…
- mrob 8y agoWhat exactly about emitted light is a problem? Light doesn't carry a memory of how it was generated, so it must be some difference in some measurable property, e.g. brightness/contrast/color spectrum/flicker/polarization, or the way these change at different viewing angles. If you know which attributes are important then you might be able to match them with an emissive display.
- ben_w 8y agoEmissive displays don’t generally match the brightness of their surroundings; even with automatic adjustment, most are physically incapable of being as bright as a newspaper in daylight, and many cannot be as dim as a newspaper lit only by one of those small book-reading lights without being switched off entirely. There’s also the spikey spectrum, which looks the same consciously but I’ve seen claims [1] that is messes with our circadian rhythm. [1] I lack the skill to tell if this is real science or neo-mystic woo.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoI found this command that works, so far, on all my Linux laptops, to give much greater control over backlight intensity. sudo su -c "echo 200 >/sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness" Replace 200 with another number for different brightness. Haven't found a Windows nor MacOS equivalent though. I've used it a fair bit in conjunction with Redshift to get a screen that's reasonable for reading ebooks in low light. I'd buy an e-ink laptop tomorrow if there was one.
- orbital-decay 8y ago>Emissive displays don’t generally match the brightness of their surroundings How so? You can set any brightness you want to match the environment. Usage under direct sunlight is one edge case e-paper is clearly better at, and any usage with poor environmental lighting is detrimental to your eyes itself, regardless of technology. I'm really sceptical about the entire "E Ink is better for your eyes" thing until I see some serious studies. People managed to ruin their eyesight centuries before computer screens. There's just too many factors at play here, from genetics to typography.
- jtc331 8y agoIt’s not that they don’t auto adjust. It’s that they’re physically incapable of the range of light intensity we encounter in a normal day. For example, full afternoon sunlight is something like 150,000 lux, but normal house lighting is ~200(in a good scenario as high as 500-1000). The same is true on the other end of the scale.
- Avamander 8y agoI think most people are forgetting that LED backlights are controlled usually using PWM which flickers, fast, but still flickers. I haven't found any research about how it might affect humans. I suspect it would be better if no-flicker current-controlled LED backlight was used instead of PWM.
- dbuder 8y agoLED backlights are current controlled. LEDs don't like having current through them all the time and that's why they are PWM controlled unless it's a crap consumer product.
- diffeomorphism 8y agoAccording to notebookcheck only about half the devices they tested use PWM: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Why-Pulse-Width-Modulation-PWM-is-such-a-headache.270240.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Why-Pulse-Width-Modulation-PWM... It seems to be well known that it for low frequency PWM it causes headaches for some people, so I would expect that there is at least some research in that direction. That said, it seems to only be a problem for few people and only for very low frequencies.
- bonzini 8y agoStaring directly at a light source strains the eyes more than watching reflected light.
- mrob 8y agoBy what mechanism of action? It can't possibly be true in general: e.g. staring at the reflection of the sun in a mirror strains the eyes more than staring at a candle.
- bonzini 8y agoA reflection of the sun on a mirror is a reflection of a very strong light source through a perfectly reflective medium.. A book or an e-ink screen is still ultimately sunlight, but it has scattered (which is reflection too) while passing through the atmosphere many times before reaching what you are looking at.
- Avamander 8y agoCould this be some unknown effect of polarized light vs. non-polarized?
- enriquto 8y agoSo it's a question of total light intensity, not of being reflected or "direct" (whatever that means).
- hestipod 8y agoI don't think so myself because I don't have pain in full sunlight reading print or E-Ink which is much brighter "nits" than an LED backlight produces ....but even low settings on an LED backlit computer hurt. There is in my opinion a difference between looking into a light source and looking at things that are visible due to reflected light like E-Ink, paper, the objects around us even if I cannot quantify it with scientific explanation.
- Tharkun 8y agoI was under the impression that Visual Snow was a symptop of anxiety?
- abledon 8y agoanxiety is a symptom of an underlying nervous system dis-order. so staring at a screen for long periods of time is hard on an organisms nervous system (to remain in place for so long without movement). So visual snow and anxiety both stem from the underlying structure being at dis-ease.
- hestipod 8y agoVisual snow could also be to to flickering from PWM, or more likely temporal/spatial dithering (a leading theory in LED LCD based eyestrain but as yet unproven as the cause). Even a white background on a monitor, even a static image, isn't just static white...it's constant flickering of pixels to make a certain "white" and to smooth moving images as well. Whatever the ultimate cause it's not normal or healthy to stare at emitted light most of the day and most of us do...add flickering and other visual tricks displays use and it's no wonder eyestrain exists. Nobody would stare at a 300 nit lightbulb for hours and call that reasonable, but that's what backlit LCD displays are. I didn't have a problem for most of my life, and still don't with books under proper lighting, but now I have a severe one with LCDs that and cannot find a definitive answer or fix and frankly it's crushing a last chance I have to be somewhat independent and survive.
- enriquto 8y ago> I use it for writing code and reading papers. Does it look good with white text on black background ?
- chaoxu 8y agoIt does not look good, and black causes ghosting.
- tigershark 8y agoVisual snow was a thing years before computer monitor existed.