Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I suspect that many of us here work on backlit LCD screens all day. I certainly do.
|
I can easily spend an hour or two at a time watching a Netflix movie but I can't read a book for an hour on my phone. I can even surf the web for an hour although that will make my eyes start to water.
With my phone I usually am fine for 10 or 15 minutes, sometimes 20 minutes, and then my eyes start to water. If I keep going I get eyestrain and headaches and eventually blurred vision. And that takes less than an hour.
I think there's a lot of difference in watching a video and reading a book. Even reading web pages isn't the same as reading a book because I'll read a bit, look something up, go back to reading, etc, and my eyes get a break. With a book, with only occasional exceptions, I'm constantly staring into the light.
I'm just guessing that's the difference but it seems to fit the patterns that I find.
It's not at all unusual for me to read an hour or two on my phone in a day, 10 or 15 minutes at a time. But I can't do it a lot longer.
This was also true when I was working as a programmer. I could work all day long, sitting at the computer, screen in front of me. But I couldn't read a long user manual on the screen. For that I'd print it out.
Something I just remembered, in the early days of CRT screens with white text on a black background I didn't have a lot of problem reading. That might be because there weren't many computer based manuals in those days but I don't recall eyestrain until the green text on black backgrounds came along. Then it became a constant issue for me. That was solved to some extent with amber screens when they became available but it was still a bit of an issue. With LCD screens it got better.
I have some very nice modern tablets such as the Galaxy Tab S but reading on them is no better than reading on my phone, at least in terms of eye strain. It's too big to be comfortable anyway, of course.
Still, reading on my phone in shorter sessions isn't a bad thing. I can stop for 10 minutes and then go back to reading and I'm fine for another 10 or 15 minutes. Not ideal but not so bad.
Barry