Computer screens are everywhere and all around us in this day and age.

From your office PCs to your personal home computer and your TV – it seems we have made them a crucial part of our everyday life and need them as a basic necessity to function with the tech all around us for work, leisure, etc.

Screens and monitors are great and all, but the problematic thing about them with a lot of people is that they’re made of glass – highly reflective, shiny glass that is.

The average person, even avid users of tech, doesn’t spend that much time looking at a screen during the day, so even though they may have other issues related to prolonged use they wouldn’t have an issue with some shine.

For the people who have hobbies or jobs involving said prolonged use however, screen glares and reflections could be a big hassle when one has to look at a monitor for longer periods of time, for example:

• They could distort perceived images and colors, make them look different and render the monitor completely useless in direct sunlight or in a brightly lit room
• They could cause eye strain and irritation because of all the reflections and glare produced on the glass surface of the monitor
• The above mentioned eye strains and irritations may cause long-term issues connected to migraines and headaches, etc.

In short, highly reflective monitors are not as liked and as preferred as their matte counterparts by many people looking at screens for longer periods. (gamers, office workers, etc.)

But the thing is, you need a screen to function with a PC for whatever reason it may be.

The shine

So what’s the deal with all the shiny monitors then? Is it a conspiracy theory? Are companies purposefully making screens shiny to cause headaches, migraines, health issues and to distort images and colors? Not really.

The main purpose of all of those shiny screens is exactly to be as shiny and as reflective as possible so they look fancy, expensive and of pristine, premium quality.

The screens being shiny and not having any matte coating on top has its technical aspects as well, but the primary reason why you will barely find any matte screens in mainstream tech these days, especially with smartphones and touch screens all around us, is product image. After all, we all love good shiny, glossy gadgets don’t we?

Luckily for avid computer users, matte alternatives and anti-glare products exist to combat and offer competition to the sometimes painful to use shiny screens.

Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em? Here are some solutions to help with the gloss and shine of modern-day screens.

Anti-Glare Solutions: Filters

Anti-glare monitor filters are usually thin layers applied on top of the glass surface of the monitor to help prevent glare, shine, color shift, etc.

Older varieties of anti-glare filters were mesh filters giving the appearance of a nylon screen – although effective they caused severe degradation in image quality, so they weren’t quite the perfect solution and alternative.

Modern-day manufacturer of such filters however, offer a variety of anti-glare filter solutions for PC monitors, laptops and even smartphones.

Filters these days are manufactured from polycarbonate or acrylic plastic, giving the screen that matte finish without compensating with image quality or clarity.

The filters are thin and easy to use and apply. Some key features include:

• Light diffusion to help reduce glare
• Added layer of durable protection added to screen to protect it from dust and scratches
• Gives the monitor a clean matte surface that’s easily cleaned and that hides fingerprints

Anti-Glare Solutions: Monitors

Naturally there’s also always the alternative to purchase an anti-glare monitor or laptop.

As already mentioned these are usually targeted at audiences who spend a lot of time in front of a screen.

Majority of anti-glare laptops for example are either professional notebooks or gaming laptops.

The pros and cons of matte and glossy displays

In general, there has been a long-time discussion in the tech community about which type of monitor or screen is better.

While glossy screens may cause distortions due to reflections and glare, they have been reported to display images more clearly and colors like black deeper and more saturated, while their matte counterparts tend to water down colors and make images fuzzy sometimes.

While matte screens are better for tasks like gaming or office use, glossy screens, in a controlled environment and properly lit, can be very beneficial to tasks like graphic design or photography – duties requiring clarity of image.

Additionally, matte screens have been found to be less of fingerprint magnets than glossy ones.

The takeaway

So which one should you choose?

Seems like glossy screens, while producing images with better quality, colors and clarity, have the issue of being rendered unusable in any light condition other than perfect and are major fingerprint magnets, while matte screens combat those same issues, but can compensate by not delivering the best image quality.

In a perfect world there would be a matte screen that doesn’t cause any irritation through shine and glare, has a killer image quality and color accuracy, and is not a fingerprint magnet, and maybe someday we will have such a monitor, but until then we can only do as much as pick the best option for our specific needs.

Truth is, nobody can recommend the perfect monitor to anyone else but themselves, but it’s good to know that there are and will always be alternatives and solutions to possible issues along the way.

Glossy or matte, users should pick the monitor they think suits them best and doesn’t compensate with ease of use, their user experience or their health.

There is also another solution to eye pain.

Whether your screen is matte or glossy with Iris you will protect your eyes from harmful effects of the computer. Read more in these articles:

Iris – Program to protect the eyes from the harmful rays of the monitors

14 tips to make your monitor healthier for your eyes

What is the best monitor settings for eyes?

3 Simple Ways to Test if your Monitor is Good for your Eyes and Health

Best Monitor Brightness and Contrast Settings for Eyes

Adjuѕt Monitor Cоlоr Temperature

Author: Yasen Nedelchev

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As you can guess that’s a lot of screen time given that we are awake for about 12-14 hours a day.

A lot of people are forced to this due to their office work, others have jobs like graphic design and programming that are impossible without a digital device.

It’s been researched time and time again how digital devices and staring at screens affects our health, but what is absolutely clear is that they do – and not in the best way.

This is why if we can’t avoid staying away from screens we should do our best to make our digital devices healthy enough for prolonged use.

If you’re using a PC you can’t go without a monitor, obviously, but in this day and age you’ll go to a store and there will be thousands of different types to choose from.

How do you know which one is the best one?

Well here are some tips on how to choose the best monitor for your health.

Beginner mistakes

When you go to look around you’ll find there are various specifications that discern the different types of monitors like screen size, screen type, contrast ratio, update frequency, color depth, power usage, response time, etc.

Most of these, however, means nothing to the average user.

Here are some frequent mistakes you might want to avoid when first looking for a monitor:

• Buying the cheapest one
• Buying the most expensive one
• Buying a tiny one
• Buying a monitor that’s too huge
• Buying from a sketchy place
• Buying an incompatible monitor to the rest of your PC
• Not knowing what you’re gonna use the PC for
• Not shopping in person and only looking online

Tips for picking out the best monitor

Use

First, you should decide what you’ll be using your PC for in order to pick out the right monitor for you.

Will it be a home PC for general use, are you an avid gamer or a professional graphic designer or architect?

Will you be using it to work from home?

This is very important not only to the specifics we’ll mention later but for size and placement as well.

If you have a tiny desk or table and won’t be using the PC a lot then don’t buy a huge monitor that will take up all your space and just have an empty desktop blaring light at you.

Budget

Next thing you should pay attention to is your budget.

How much are you willing to spend overall on the PC and separately on the monitor.

Don’t have a specific price set, but a range. For example – I’ll look for a monitor between 100-200$.

Also, be prepared if you have a lot of preferences and need a really good monitor for constant use that it won’t come cheap.

Specifics

Now for the more precise things. If you want a fairly good picture, vivid colors and overall good look get a monitor with a higher resolution.

For refresh rate remember – the higher it is the better.

Also, this reduces the flicker rate and makes for a smoother picture.

Why reducing the flicker rate is important – learn here: What I need to know about PWM flicker.

Should you buy a curved monitor – depends, they’re usually very big and very expensive, so if you’re looking for something simple, avoid them.

Look at the LCD panel – for gaming monitors, it’s best to get a TN panel monitor. VA and IPS are best for general use. Check out the differences in this article.

Consider getting a flicker-free monitor to reduce eye strain and pain. You can also read our article “14 tips to make your monitor healthier for your eyes“

If you don’t need to work with exact and vivid colors consider blue light filtering. There are different blue light filters and you can try ours for FREE – download Iris.

Follow these tips when looking out for a monitor in order to get the best for your needs.

Check out this article for the best 2019 computer monitors.

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Well yes, yes you can.

Let me tell you a story of an 18-year-old kid who had perfect eyesight and was an amazing athlete all his life.

One day he wanted to become the best programmer and started working more than 14 hours every day in front of two old monitors in bad lighting.

Just after six months, he started feeling dryness, light sensitivity, and eye pain. He tried medication which only made things worse and eventually had to get 1.5 diopter glasses.

After this, he started researching why PCs make our eyesight worse and how to deal with the issues. That kid later became the creator and CEO of Iris – software for eye health in front of the computer.

Today Iris, which began as the dream of a boy to improve his health, is used by more than 2 million people in more than 180 countries all over the world.

Some time ago Daniel, the creator of Iris, passed his medical exam and found out his diopter had gone down to 0.25.

That can happen to you too if you follow the following tips to health proof your monitor:

Monitor position

It’s really important to know how to position your monitor according to the light source in your room.

Most often that light source is sunlight coming through a window.

Remember that when using a computer the window should always be on your left or on your right – meaning on your side.

If it’s behind you, you will see reflection and the so called double image which is bad for your eyes because they can’t focus correctly.

If it’s in front of you will be staring directly in the light which can greatly damage your eyes.

Blue light

Blue light is a part of the light spectrum which has the shortest wavelength, but the highest amount of energy.

Because of that a lot of studies suggest that over time, prolonged exposure to blue light can cause long-term damage like cataract, astigmatism and blindness.

All digital devices today emit blue light and the more we stare at them the worse.

However, there are ways to block harmful blue light from your screen and one of those ways is Sleep type in Iris – it blocks all blue light emitted from your monitor and, as the name suggests, helps you sleep better.

PWM Flicker

Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) is a method to reduce the energy usage and brightness of your monitor by turning the screen ON and OFF at high frequency.

It’s the cheapest way to make brightness control for monitors and that’s why 99% of modern monitors use PWM.

The bad thing about this is that our iris’ open and close all the time and this is the main reason why we feel eye pain and headaches.

You can reduce PWM by putting your monitor’s built-in brightness on max setting and then adjusting the brightness from the Iris app.

Subpixel Flicker

LCD displays are made up of small elements called Liquid17 Crystals (LCD – Liquid crystal display).

When we use our monitors the picture emitted constantly changes and when the colors are different the liquid crystal rotates a lot.

This rotation causes the light to turn off and on again in a small fraction of the second when the colors change too much.

And this ON and OFF of the light when the liquid crystals rotate is what we call subpixel flicker.

The bad thing about subpixel flicker is that you start to feel eye pain and headaches from this constant change of the light emitted from the monitor pixels.

Use Iris Sleep or Biohacker type to reduce subpixel flickering.

Font smoothing

Modern operating systems use a technique called subpixel anti-aliasing to make the fonts on your screen a lot more beautiful and smoother.

Or eyes, however, need sharper edges to be able to focus better and when the fonts are smoother that causes eye strain and blurry vision and can be difficult to read a long text.

Disabling font smoothing and subpixel anti-aliasing will help reduce your eye strain in front of the PC.

You can do this from your operating system settings or by using the Iris Fonts Menu in Advanced view.

Matte monitor

If you have a choice get a matte screen over a glossy one.

You can also get a matte overlay for your screen.

Matte screens have anti-reflection coating and reduce the double image and reflections glossy screen cause.

Prescription glasses

If you’re feeling even the lightest eye pain and strain often don’t hesitate to visit a doctor even for a check-up.

Sometimes even a small diopter like 0.5 can reduce your pain by great lengths and improve your vision in front of the PC.

Anti-reflective coating

If you’re wearing glasses, even if they aren’t prescription, get anti-reflective coating for them or your monitor.

It helps reduce reflections that strain the eyes and makes the image more clear.

Brightness

You should always try to match the brightness of your screen to the light in your surroundings.

The basic rule is to look at your device from afar – if it looks like a light source in the room then it’s too bright.

Also, remember to never make it too dark as that puts a strain on the eyes.

Normal brightness is between 20 and 80% depending on how bright your environment is.

Dark themes

To lower your brightness further and avoid eye strain you should use dark themes in the websites and apps you visit often.

A lot of popular sites like Youtube, 9GAG and Reddit have a dark theme, there are also dark themes for apps like Messenger.

Dark themes, especially at night help match brightness.

Blinking

When staring at a screen for a long time it’s been proven we start blinking less often.

You should try to keep the blinking rate constant or take breaks in which to blink avidly.

Blinking helps keep your eyes moist and keeps dust and dirt away.

Yawning

Yawning just like blinking is a way to moisten your eyes and take a tiny break from fixating on the screen all day.

You should avoid using fake tears and other such substances for keeping eyes watery.

Breaks

It’s very important to take breaks.

Not only for your eyes but for your back, neck and also mental health.

We here at Iris follow the 20-20-20 rule – every 20 minutes for 20 seconds look at an object 20 feet away (approx. 7 meters).

Also try to stand up from your desk from time to time and stretch.

This will relax your eyes and make you feel way better.

Eye position

Apart from placing your desk and monitor in a certain way in your room you should make sure your monitor is positioned at the right place on your desk itself.

It should be lower than your eyes because your eyes are more relaxed when looking downwards.

Basically, the upper corner of your screen should be on the level of your eyes.

Your screen should also be an outstretched arm away from where you’re sitting.

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There is no doubt about the fact that technology has taken over the world and therefore, the internet has taken over the world.

Right now, more than half of the world’s population owns a mobile phone and a laptop or a computer which is great.

However, there are always some drawbacks to these digital devices and where we all discuss the benefits and blessings of technology, we should also talk about the disadvantages with which it comes.

One of the biggest disadvantages of these digital devices is that they are continuously damaging our eyes causing various stabbing pain in the eye.

Yes, you read it right and the worst part is that people with nearsightedness and farsightedness are growing rapidly in number.

As a result, people now have to rely on contact lenses and glasses in order to see clearly and honestly this isn’t something that can be called or considered “healthy”.

Every day we read several blogs and articles where people are discussing different ways to lose weight and maintain a healthy body but then think about it yourself, will be you be a healthy person if you aren’t able to have a proper eye health?

The Unhealthy Truth About Your Computer Screen

The screen of your monitor and your phone is continuously emitting blue light.

According to resources about the technology of blue light by Wikipedia, that light is so far the most dangerous thing for your eyes as it can cause eye pain and redness.

If you observe a little, you will see that most of the people in your circle who wear glasses and lenses are the ones who use laptops and phones 24/7.

Well, the message is pretty clear that the harmful blue light coming out of your screen is not at all healthy and the sooner you realize it, the better it will be for you.

Another disturbing fact is that people are now rapidly falling victim to different ocular diseases and things are getting worse with the passage of time.

For this reason, it is high time that we start thinking about our eye health too because again, there is no point of looking slim and trim when you cannot even see the things around you clearly.

Furthermore, you should be thinking about how to treat eye muscle pain of yours.

What To Do About The Blue Light Harm?

Now, we will obviously never ask you to stop using all your digital devices because it is but a fact that these devices have now become an integral part of our lives and we just cannot live without them.

However, thanks to technology again that we do have some alternatives that can make these screens healthier for our eyes.

Yes, you read it right, right now if you search on the internet, you will see that there are a lot of applications and blue light filter software out there that can help bock the dangerous blue light coming out of your screen.

One of the best screen brightness dimmer software for your eyes is Iris. The software comes with the sole purpose of protecting your eyes from being damaged by the different reasons for eye pain.

The thing is that our eyes are the most sensitive part of our body and therefore, it is quite important for us to take care of them or else we can even up losing our vision forever.

Right now, a lot of people in the world are using Iris on their phones and their laptops because this software is pretty effective in adjusting your screen brightness.

With it, you will never feel any strain or stress on your eyes and above everything, you will be able to sleep well.

So, without wasting any further time, download this blue light screen filter app software and install it on your screen right at the moment and we assure you that you will never be disappointed with the results.

It’s the best software for those who really care about their vision.

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• Introduction
• Flicker Free Database
• Hybrid Backlight Dimming
• Other Honourable Mentions

Introduction

For many people, finding a monitor without Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) backlight dimming is now a key consideration. We thought it would be useful to compile a resource confirming all the flicker-free monitors we have tested, along with any others which we know of from other sources. Below is a table we will keep as up to date as possible, although note that it may not be exhaustive. If you know of any other screens which are confirmed as flicker free, please email or tweet us the details and links to the tests and we will get them added.

Keep in mind the varying testing methods used by different sites linked below and some possible margin for error. Those using oscilloscopes (TFTCentral and Prad.de) should be completely accurate, but those using camera based methods may be subject to some error for high frequency PWM.

Flicker Free Database

Models confirmed as being flicker free, without the use of Pulse Width Modulation for backlight dimming are shown below, along with some reported to be PWM but as yet, not 100% confirmed by reliable sources:

Hybrid Backlight Dimming

Below are a list of models which are flicker free for part of their brightness adjustment range, but do use some form of PWM for other parts of the adjustment range.

Other Honourable Mentions

Below are some additional monitors which may be flicker free. This includes monitors which some reviews have tested to be PWM free, while other reviews suggest otherwise.

You can find the original article at TFT Central

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