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Surface Pro Eye Strain and Headaches. Please help

Pjngo2003

New Member
Hi Everyone,

I just purchased a used surface pro 1 gen , i5/4gb/256gb. I had it for about 2 weeks. I like how it is small with a lot of power. I just upgraded to windows 10. However, I am getting headaches and eye strain. Can anyone help me or give me advice? Thank you...
 

garryknight

New Member
Take a five minute break every hour, or a fifteen minute break every few hours. And go outside where you can see more than a few feet in front of you. Drink plenty of water. All the usual stuff for people sitting in one position and using LCD screens for long periods of time.
 
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Pjngo2003

New Member
Take a five minute break every hour, or a fifteen minute break every few hours. And go outside where you can see more than a few feet in front of you. Drink plenty of water. All the usual stuff for people sitting in one position and using LCD screens for long periods of time.


I never had this problems with my 10 inch net book or my 15.6 laptop. I did read around that the surface pro uses a cheap screen.
 

leeshor

Well-Known Member
There should NOT be any flicker issues on the SP4. I've had my hands on quite a few and never saw that.
 

nnthemperor

Member
Hard the eye strain when I got my SP 3, but after changing doing to 200 and brightness of 40 everything has been ok. Oh, and I added a matte screen protector, glare is my eyes' worst enemy.

Sent from my SC-01F using Tapatalk
 
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Pjngo2003

New Member
Thank you for your info. I can not use it anymore. I been having a headache ever since I used the surface pro 1 gen. I am going to sell it back on ebay for 300.00.
 

ScottyS

Active Member
The Surface Pro does not have a "cheap screen" and reviews on technical LED web sites rated it as one of the best. However, there has been a lot of discussion (and controversy) regarding the mechanism of screen dimming (pulse width modulation) and eye strain. See the thread Surface Pro & Pro 2 Eye Strain as an example.
Do you get headache with screen brightness set at 100%?
 

jaekqubp

Member
I am prone to eyestrain and headaches, and had some issues using the Surface Pro for long periods of time, at first. I highly recommend reducing the screen resolution, downloading the Intel drivers and adjusting brightness and contrast. It helped me quite a bit.
Good luck.


PS: Feel free to PM for help, if needed.
Sent from my LGLS665 using Tapatalk
 

peteandpete

New Member
There should NOT be any flicker issues on the SP4. I've had my hands on quite a few and never saw that.
That is simply not true. I had to return my SP4 because i got bad eye strain. The PWM is so strong it is simply not acceptable and brightness above 50 % where the PWM turns off is too bright for most environments and takes too much battery!
There is a PWM ranking on the website notebookcheck and SP4's values are simply off the hook! Almost all other notebooks have 10 - 50 times less PWM, or non at all.
The second worst tested notebook had half the PWM of SP4 and after that 10 times less.
Microsoft really made an unacceptable Product, that makes costumers unhappy.
 

jnjroach

Administrator
Staff member
That is simply not true. I had to return my SP4 because i got bad eye strain. The PWM is so strong it is simply not acceptable and brightness above 50 % where the PWM turns off is too bright for most environments and takes too much battery!
There is a PWM ranking on the website notebookcheck and SP4's values are simply off the hook! Almost all other notebooks have 10 - 50 times less PWM, or non at all.
The second worst tested notebook had half the PWM of SP4 and after that 10 times less.
Microsoft really made an unacceptable Product, that makes costumers unhappy.
If you go back to Notebookcheck you'll see they updated that figure with this disclaimer:

"Thanks to a readers tip, who told us that he is suffering from problems caused by flickering / PWM, we looked at the Core i5 version again with the newest firmware and drivers. Now we could also measure flickering at 50 Hz below 50 percent brightness without a connected power adapter. Analyzing our readings, it does not seem to be classic PWM but some other form of flickering."
 

peteandpete

New Member
If you go back to Notebookcheck you'll see they updated that figure with this disclaimer:

"Thanks to a readers tip, who told us that he is suffering from problems caused by flickering / PWM, we looked at the Core i5 version again with the newest firmware and drivers. Now we could also measure flickering at 50 Hz below 50 percent brightness without a connected power adapter. Analyzing our readings, it does not seem to be classic PWM but some other form of flickering."
No, you seem to have misinterpreted that update!
You are refering to the review of the i5 model (that I too had) on the english site of notebookcheck.
I was originally talking about a PWM comparision of notebooks on the german site of notebookcheck. (PWM Ranking - Die augenfreundlichsten Displays). It is easly understandable for non german Readers as well, since it is only a Ranking and the surface 4 is on top (worst).
The very high PWM value of 10420 though does actually come from the review you mentioned, but is only in the longer original german review.
However if you read the original review or the translation carefully (I guess something got lost in translation or you should just emphazise the word "also" when reading - i made the letters bold in above quote "we could also measure") - it becomes much clearer that the reader's tip refers to an additional, different flickering problem on the surface.
My guess is it is the occasional very visible flickering you get. I also had this problem and actually could get rid of it by disabling Hyper - V.
However I still got bad eye strain from the surface 4 (the PWM), so I had to return it.
But I get that people can get confused over all the different flickering issues the surface displays.
I guess it is hard to relate how bad the effects of a PWM eye strain from severals hours on a display like the surface's are if you are not one of the affected individuals.
The only thing that - for me - is comparable to working on a surface is having to watch several hours of film on an active 3d television with shutter glasses.
 
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