help! Kindle=Red eyes

[soulfuldog]

Originally Posted by graycyn

Also, bought a Kindle Keyboard cheap recently for testing epub conversions, I notice that it has a more obnoxious e-ink flash than any of my Sony readers, that alone made my eyes more tired while I was checking my conversions.

It's funny, I was just thinking that except in reverse. I've found the flash on my PRS 350 very distracting compared to my Kindle Keyboard this week. I've no idea if one is any 'better' than the other and just figure my eyes are more accustomed to the Kindle so I don't notice it the same, whereas I use the 350 less often so the flash irritates me a little at times.

[pietro]

Scientific studies say backlit or e-ink does not make a difference in terms of eye strain.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22762257

You should see an ophtalmologist.

[hola!claude]

e-ink and backlit lcd are the same in terms of eye strain....
this is not the topic that I'm talking about
But
all the people here would disagree about this claim,

AND

one study does not give you the right to say that this claim is "scientific".

What kind of light do you prefer to read on the kindle?

[krazy4katz]

Originally Posted by pietro

Scientific studies say backlit or e-ink does not make a difference in terms of eye strain.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22762257

You should see an ophtalmologist.

Just for fun, I put on my science hat and checked the paper (I have access through work). The 2 devices they are using are the Sony PRS 600 and the Apple iPad (1st generation). I only looked at Figure 1 (because the rest of the paper contains tables and they bore me). Particularly for General Fatigue, but also slightly for visual fatigue, the LCD device was subjectively worse for all trials. However, the differences were not statistically significant. HOWEVER, they only had 10 participants (5 male, 5 female, all right-handed). I would be very interested to see the statistics on a larger population, for example 100 people. The measurements of reading speed look very similar for the 2 devices.

k4k

ETA: Of course I should have said that statistically significant does not necessarily mean biologically relevant. In other words, some differences don't matter much.

[pidgeon92]

Originally Posted by hola!claude

What kind of light do you prefer to read on the kindle?

I've owned many Kindles, and many external lights. By far my favorite is the integrated light of the Kindle Paperwhite. Both my former K3 and K Touch had the Amazon covers with integrated lights, and those were fine. The Octovo Solis for the K2 was my favorite non-integrated light for any of the units. It was specific to the K2 in that it fit snugly at the top of the unit. It didn't fit any other Kindles properly. I'm not sure Octovo is even in business anymore.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by krazy4katz

Just for fun, I put on my science hat and checked the paper (I have access through work). The 2 devices they are using are the Sony PRS 600 and the Apple iPad (1st generation). I only looked at Figure 1 (because the rest of the paper contains tables and they bore me). Particularly for General Fatigue, but also slightly for visual fatigue, the LCD device was subjectively worse for all trials. However, the differences were not statistically significant. HOWEVER, they only had 10 participants (5 male, 5 female, all right-handed). I would be very interested to see the statistics on a larger population, for example 100 people.

While you're science-hatting, if you have time would you mind checking the paper for any declaration of funding, sponsorship, and donations? Cheers. (Eta: or just PMing me a copy!)

[krazy4katz]

Hi Meera,

The work was performed at the Institute for Research in Open-, Distance- and eLearning, Swiss Distance University of Applied Sciences, Brig, Switzerland, and GfK Switzerland AG, SirValUse, Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. I don't know what the second one is -- maybe a company? No funding is listed -- just an acknowledgment of the Swiss Distance University of Applied Sciences (Fernfachhochschule Schweiz, FFHS).

Best wishes,

k4k

[meeera]

GfK Switzerland AG is a market research institute, which suggests that business did have its fingers in this study to some extent. Hm.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by meeera

GfK Switzerland AG is a market research institute, which suggests that business did have its fingers in this study to some extent. Hm.

That doesn't surprise me at all, given the results and basing them on 10 individuals. That is probably 10 that are used to reading electronic devices all day long. It doesn't mean anything other than: If you look long enough and pick the right people, you can "prove" anything. Beeing able to validate it by testing the results by repeating the exact same test on 100 randomly picked strangers off the street might be difficult. The methods used might have been scientific, but the small group makes it hard to take this paper serious.

If I find 10 chain-smokers that are 90+ years old, does that mean that smoking might not be all that dangerous? I think not.

[pietro]

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to open a can of worm and upset all those who believe that e-ink is better for their eyes! It's just that I am a scientist and normally search for evidence on pubmed rather than reporting what happened to me, to my mother or looking in a blog...
My fault, I misunderstood the question of the first post - I had thought he feared that e-ink might bothers his eyes and I pointed out that the only scientific study in biomedical journals I could find says e-ink is as safe as backlit for your eyes.
I own an e-ink reader myself. Not because I think that backlit devices give me red eyes (I stare most of the day to a computer and have no problems at all with it) but simply because I find it more similar to paper, that is it looks nicer.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

That doesn't surprise me at all, given the results and basing them on 10 individuals. That is probably 10 that are used to reading electronic devices all day long. It doesn't mean anything other than: If you look long enough and pick the right people, you can "prove" anything.

And design the study to tweak things...

I am not saying this study was designed that way. But if I personally wanted to demonstrate no significant difference when a real difference exists, as well as keeping the sample size low, I'd do things like set up older e-ink devices under sub-optimal lighting in an imperfect font, and compare that to brand new retina-screen tablets with the most readable fonts and the brightness, backgrounds and contrast tweaked just perfect. And then write the methodology section carefully to conceal most of this.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by meeera

And design the study to tweak things...

I am not saying this study was designed that way.

I did not try to imply that the study was fixed, or that the results are wrong. Simply that generalizing based on 10 people might be a mistake. For what the study researched (which one is better for reading long-term: backlit lcd or eink) the indifference might as well have been the truth. How much of that tiredness is attributed to the act of reading and what part is the technologies fault might be interesting to know though. They could (maybe should?) have used reading on paper as baseline - and compare from there. How long did they read? Maybe that time was not long enough for differences to show up.

What did they try to show? It is either:
a) eink is just as bad as lcd
or
b) lcd is not any worse than eink