How notebook makers take care of the user's vision

by Jack Johnson Designer

Taking care of your eyesight is a hot topic for any representative of an IT profession, from the system admin to the designer, from the programmer to the mobile developer. Sitting in front of the monitor for a long time leads at best to dry and itchy eyes, and at worst to myopia and irrevocably ruined vision. The problem of protecting your eyes from screen radiation is almost as old as the first computer monitor: if you remember, the earliest PCs had special screens that were hung over the monitor to protect your eyes and reduce the risk of visual impairment. The next evolutionary step was computer glasses, which served the same purpose as the screen protector. Now we are at the third stage, so today computer manufacturers are developing special protective technologies and solutions for eyesight, saving you from having to buy glasses or a special screen. We have collected for you the basic about what these technologies are and how they work.

Problems and Solutions

First, let's get a handle on the causes of the problems. When you look at the monitor, your eyes are in a constant tension: it is caused by the flickering backlighting of the monitor, too strong brightness and improperly selected contrast. A separate topic is the blue light from the monitor, which also adversely affects your eyesight. So what are the manufacturers are doing to protect you from this?

Flicker

Let's start with flicker as advise. The principle of brightness adjustment in LCD monitors is based on a rapid switching on / off backlighting of the screen, for this responsible system PWM (pulse width modulation). In other words, if the brightness in your monitor is set not to 100%, but to a lower value, the PWM regulator will unnoticeably for you quickly switch the backlighting, providing the desired brightness — it is flicker. Manufacturers' response to this problem was the invention of Flicker-free technology, in which the backlight is regulated by a constant current rather than by a flickering PWM controller. The absence of constant pulse switching does not strain the eyes and significantly reduces the level of fatigue when working at the computer. This technology is available today in a huge number of models of many manufacturers - pay attention to its presence when you choose a monitor or laptop.

Improperly chosen brightness

In addition to flicker, the brightness itself can be a problem — or too high, or not enough. Some manufacturers, along with Flicker free technology, offer special solutions for automatic brightness control: a sensor analyzes the ambient light level and adjusts the brightness value independently so that the user does not strain his eyes. There is no universal designation for this technology - each company calls it its own way. For example, Acer's technology for automatically adjusting brightness is called LightSense where similar examples can be found in other manufacturers.

Blue Spectrum

The visible spectrum of blue is the widest among all colors. Without going into anatomic details, let's just say that prolonged exposure to the visible spectrum has a negative impact on the retina — it can lead to complications or serious illnesses. The task of a quality monitor is to reduce such impact. To do this, a variety of technologies are used, the principle of which comes down to one to filter out the lower part of the blue light spectrum. But this solution will inevitably lead to distortion of colors on the screen, right? It's true — so manufacturers of monitors and laptops create special modes, depending on the type of viewed content, in order to minimize color distortion. Some technologies "eat up" part of the spectrum better, others worse: BenQ Low Blue Light and Acer BlueLightShield Pro (a third less active blue, while maintaining color accuracy) are among decent technologies.

Color temperature

In addition to the automatic brightness adjustment we talked about above, there are also technologies for automatic color temperature adjustment. Such solutions are less popular, not all manufacturers have them, although the principle is the same as in the case with brightness: a special sensor in the monitor analyzes the intensity of ambient light and according to this adjusts - but not the brightness level, but the color temperature: makes it warmer or cooler for minimum eye strain and comfortable viewing content. If this feature is important for you, when choosing a monitor, look for the technology with the English word color in its name (ColorSense etc.) Every manufacturer has its own name for this technology.

Thanks to the CLLAX - Business Software Reviews for writing this article