I'm glad that this is bringing attention to flicker sensitivity.
Here are some other things that people are sensitive to:
- CRI on white LEDs (and flourencents).
CRI is how clean the spectrum is in comparison to the sun or a incandescent bulb, where the specturm is completely even. There are some CRI >=95 LEDs that are fine for most people however.
- Motion blur
Motion blur on LCDs (such as ~50% of Nintendo Switch 2s) can hurt eyes trying to keep track of what is going on.
On the other end is motion stutter on OLEDs. Because of sample-and-hold, the blur goes away but the image stutters on slow moving scenes instead. If your eyes are sensitive to PWM (mine are) it's quite annoying to watch OLED movement as well.
Is that what I'm seeing on my LG C series? Every so often when I'm watching streaming video, and the scene changes, the action seems to skip frames for maybe a quarter of a second. It happens rarely enough that I haven't narrowed it down to the TV, the attached Chromecast, the streaming app, or the content.
The only setting I recall changing on the TV is the one that stops the soap-opera effect.
I think you're seeing telecine judder. The video's framerate doesn't find the diplay's refresh rate, and the TV doesn't handle it well. This is why my old Pioreer Kuro switched to 48hz on 24fps content, and it was amazing.
+1 on the attention. There are probably so many humans around the world (I'd estimate in the millions easily, assuming this affects even 1% of the population) who get eye strain and headaches from their oled devices (or even "modern" LEDs! Brake lights are terrible!) but never realize the cause.
Btw for anyone wondering, recent "Chinese" phones appear to do a damn good job. I have a recent BBK device, and I run eye comfort mode on 24/7, and despite being hyper sensitive to pwm (my previous oled phone was bad), this is quite comfortable.
When I was a kid I learned that the CRT screen refresh rate must be set to at least 60Hz otherwise it looks like crap and is pain to look at. My cousin had his set to some lower value and would claim not so see any issue. His father said "I don't know how these damn kids stare all day long at the screen, I stare half an hour and I get a headache!" because you're one setting away from not having the headache but you won't let me change it because reasons.
My parents have a plasma TV and I can clearly see it flicker, although it doesn't cause any pain.
OLED doesn't bother me much (I'm fine with iPhone's OLED screen even at 60FPS mode), but my eyes hate low CRI, flickery LEDs.
Bottom of the barrel, eye searing cool white LEDs with bad CRI and flicker control makes my life really harder. Low quality florescent bulbs also create eye strain for me.
The best solution I have found is 90CRI, dimmable Philips LED bulbs. They grow warmer as you dim them, and they create a very comfortable environment for me. Also, a big Bauhaus branch in my city uses mixed temperature LEDs to tune resulting color and temperature. Since ceilings are so high, you don't see the lamps and feels like you're walking under sunlight. It's that good, kudos to them.
Brake lights could be terrible but headlights are much worse because they are always on at night, they got brighter and are pointed to cars coming into the other direction. Furthermore for some reason it seems that newer cars point their lights almost horizontally. It's as bad also when a car is following me. I never switched my mirror in the low reflection position as often as in the last few years.
Agreed. A couple years ago I got a fancy 4k LG OLED monitor (32GS95UE-B, with the improved subpixel layout), and had to return it two days later. My eyes were literally red from strain, which is how I learned I'm likely PWM flicker sensitive (and that too has only a slight 240hz flicker according to rtings).
Now I go purely for IPS and make sure it's flicker-free. I'm really glad the new MBP screens are an extra and not the new default yet.
Also flicker on bad LED lighting. A lot of bad LED lighting flickers at ~60Hz. In rooms lit by that, you can wave your hand or a thin object back and forth, and if you look carefully, you can perceive a "shutter" effect where you're only seeing the snapshots of its position where the light is on.
The thing that makes that so insidious is that not everybody can easily perceive that.
(The reason why such flicker is common in cheap LED bulbs: they turn AC into DC using a half-wave rectifier, which just chops off half the AC wave. This is also why you can still see the effect in rooms lit by multiple lights, because the flicker is in sync, synchronized to the incoming AC.)
If you are building a space for other people and you are responsible for the lighting, please check for this. If you can't perceive it yourself, find someone who can.
> In rooms lit by that, you can wave your hand or a thin object back and forth, and if you look carefully, you can perceive a "shutter" effect where you're only seeing the snapshots of its position where the light is on.
Heh, this is how I test these lamps as well. Also my camera has anti-flicker shutter which can detect it to thwart it by syncing the shutter release with flicker itself. It shows a warning when it detects is, as well.
> Also my camera has anti-flicker shutter which can detect it to thwart it by syncing the shutter release with flicker itself. It shows a warning when it detects is, as well.
Nice! Which cameras do this? And I wonder, how cheaply could a sensor be made to do this, that shows on the screen "there's flicker at 60Hz / 120Hz / 480Hz", if it didn't also need to be a great camera (e.g. it only captured at 480p)?
Mine is a Sony A7-III, the setting is called Anti-flicker shoot. I believe many modern mirrorless systems have the capability.
However, I wouldn't say "oh that's easy", because A7-III has two realtime DSPs, and one of them is directly responsible for things like real-time focusing, face/object/eye recognition and real time tracking, etc. So, I believe that DSP is handling the flicker detection as well.
...and A7-III is the "entry level" member of its generation. higher end models have more computing power than that.
[−]dreamcompiler · 2026-11-15 Sun 17:28 UTC ·
link
The power supply is the weak point in LED room lighting. The best power supply for LEDs is switch-mode PWM, high frequency, and with thermal management designed by an engineer who understands therodynamics.
Unfortunately all those things are expensive so you rarely find such bulbs in the cheap bin at Home Depot.
Bulbs are actually a very bad form factor for LEDs, because they concentrate two heat-generating components - the PSU and LEDs - into a small chassis. LED tape with a separate power supply is probably the best solution that's not a full-custom DC light fixture.
> If you can't perceive it yourself, find someone who can.
Or just use your phone’s slo-mo feature to take a 240 FPS video (which then gets played back at 30 FPS). 60 Hz flicker becomes extremely visible. More than once I’ve noticed the strobe effect and then confirmed it this way.
I was building a lego set with my son several years ago and at some point (after the sun went down) realized I could no longer distinguish between the green and grey pieces, though it had been obvious under natural light. It was a striking demonstration of CRI.
Color rendering with LEDs is so terrible. And buying proper lights is either close to illegal (e.g. halogens) for efficiency reasons, or high quality LEDs are almost impossible to buy - "call us for quote" and similar nonsense.
The absolutely worst were the default indoor lights in Australia. There must have been some giant shipment of worst possible lights that they purchased to light up every bathroom in the country.
This world wide transition to cheap LEDs stole a lot of joy from the world.
Here are some other things that people are sensitive to: - CRI on white LEDs (and flourencents). CRI is how clean the spectrum is in comparison to the sun or a incandescent bulb, where the specturm is completely even. There are some CRI >=95 LEDs that are fine for most people however.
- Motion blur Motion blur on LCDs (such as ~50% of Nintendo Switch 2s) can hurt eyes trying to keep track of what is going on.
The only setting I recall changing on the TV is the one that stops the soap-opera effect.
OLED sample-and-hold causes blur.
Btw for anyone wondering, recent "Chinese" phones appear to do a damn good job. I have a recent BBK device, and I run eye comfort mode on 24/7, and despite being hyper sensitive to pwm (my previous oled phone was bad), this is quite comfortable.
My parents have a plasma TV and I can clearly see it flicker, although it doesn't cause any pain.
Bottom of the barrel, eye searing cool white LEDs with bad CRI and flicker control makes my life really harder. Low quality florescent bulbs also create eye strain for me.
The best solution I have found is 90CRI, dimmable Philips LED bulbs. They grow warmer as you dim them, and they create a very comfortable environment for me. Also, a big Bauhaus branch in my city uses mixed temperature LEDs to tune resulting color and temperature. Since ceilings are so high, you don't see the lamps and feels like you're walking under sunlight. It's that good, kudos to them.
Now I go purely for IPS and make sure it's flicker-free. I'm really glad the new MBP screens are an extra and not the new default yet.
The thing that makes that so insidious is that not everybody can easily perceive that.
(The reason why such flicker is common in cheap LED bulbs: they turn AC into DC using a half-wave rectifier, which just chops off half the AC wave. This is also why you can still see the effect in rooms lit by multiple lights, because the flicker is in sync, synchronized to the incoming AC.)
If you are building a space for other people and you are responsible for the lighting, please check for this. If you can't perceive it yourself, find someone who can.
Heh, this is how I test these lamps as well. Also my camera has anti-flicker shutter which can detect it to thwart it by syncing the shutter release with flicker itself. It shows a warning when it detects is, as well.
Nice! Which cameras do this? And I wonder, how cheaply could a sensor be made to do this, that shows on the screen "there's flicker at 60Hz / 120Hz / 480Hz", if it didn't also need to be a great camera (e.g. it only captured at 480p)?
However, I wouldn't say "oh that's easy", because A7-III has two realtime DSPs, and one of them is directly responsible for things like real-time focusing, face/object/eye recognition and real time tracking, etc. So, I believe that DSP is handling the flicker detection as well.
...and A7-III is the "entry level" member of its generation. higher end models have more computing power than that.
Unfortunately all those things are expensive so you rarely find such bulbs in the cheap bin at Home Depot.
Or just use your phone’s slo-mo feature to take a 240 FPS video (which then gets played back at 30 FPS). 60 Hz flicker becomes extremely visible. More than once I’ve noticed the strobe effect and then confirmed it this way.
PHILIPS LED A19 Ultra Definition Soft White Light Bulbs, 4-Pack 800 Lumen, 2700K, Dimmable, Flicker-Free, 60 W Equivalent, CRI95 True Colors, EyeComfort Technology
https://www.amazon.com/LED-Definition-Flicker-Free-Equivalen...
I also have some 75 W and 100 W equivalents, but they get pretty pricey, at least in Bezosland.
The absolutely worst were the default indoor lights in Australia. There must have been some giant shipment of worst possible lights that they purchased to light up every bathroom in the country.
This world wide transition to cheap LEDs stole a lot of joy from the world.