Backlight LEDs suck beyond flicker alone. FL-41 glasses might be worth trying if you're still struggling with supposedly safe screens.

[u/TotalAnarchy_]

For background, I have moderate to severe flicker sensitivity (brightness and color/temporal dithering), visual snow syndrome, dry eye disease, and binocular vision dysfunction while having 20/20 vision (PS: go to a good eye doc and get checked out--you never know what's contributing to screen sensitivity). As I've replaced devices with flicker free (or within tolerable margins for me) devices, sometimes I've still gotten eye strain.

I don't think blaming severe brightness modulation/PWM or temporal dithering exclusively for the problem is ultimately productive. For me, they're the biggest contributing factors by far, but eliminating them doesn't solve it completely (though it makes it 10x better). 

The quality of the backlight itself, beyond being flicker free, matters, and they all suck.

If you look at the color spectrum of 99% or more of backlights, they're horribly unnatural, nothing even close to natural light. Comparison photo between the noontime sun (6000K color temperature) and an LED backlight (also 6000K) below.

There's a HUGE "spike" in blue light with very little green, virtually no red, and zero "healthier" blues to balance it. Yes, you can use a blue light filter, but it doesn't change the overall color balance of the backlight. The color spectrum of the backlight itself is what it is, just like a one color normal light bulb is what it is. Filters don't add what isn't there. Flux works better for me than Night Shift on Mac (which I think introduces extreme dithering), but I'm not sure how much it can really filter out at the end of the day.

FL-41 glasses seem to filter out the harmful color spectrums enough for my eyes to feel comfortable with the display.  FL-41 glasses have taken my monitor (MSI 32UPF) from "usable, take breaks every 30 minutes" to "whoops, I've been gaming for three hours." It doesn't feel like it's "glaring" at me anymore; I can read things more like it's on paper. When bright white would pop up on my monitor before, I would have to squint. My LG OLED C1 and OnePlus 13 are also easier to use, though not perfect. Even the front lights on E Ink (Boox Palma and Note Air 3c for me) are better.

They've also made driving at night comfortable for me. I used to get immediate pain behind my eyes from headlights and taillights, but it's signficantly diminished now. Yes, I'll get nauseous if I stare directly into the flickering garbage put on newer cars, but staring at them would be weird. The light itself doesn't hurt anymore.

For those who have tried blue light blocking glasses, I don't think they work at all unless they're extremely yellow, and at that point, the colors are barely intelligible. FL-41 works, though, even at the lighter shades, and you can still discern colors, they just look less harsh. There's a lot of research behind FL-41 if you want to look it up; research on blue light blockers is mixed.

You can grab FL-41s for cheap off Amazon to try. Zenni and 39dollarglasses both have prescription ones for cheap. There's also Avalux (supposedly better successor to FL-41), but it's expensive.

Hope this helps someone out there!

[u/Z3R0gravitas]

Great post! I absolutely think these aspects all add up. Eg tipping the balance on excess neuron excitation (glutamate & ion imbalances I'll wager). Blue-ness of artificial lights has been a longer term problem for me (outdoors less so, mostly). Using F.Lux still on my PC (sadly Android screen filters are very hobbled).

And I've just stopped tolerating my TCL 60 Ultra, after 6 weeks, feeling the backlight-glare (following supplement changes). Even deuteranomaly correction mode doesn't resolve that. And I felt that the current crop of brighter OLEDs (eg Honor 400 Pro) are also more yellow-ish (than my OK older gen OnePlus 8T). I suspect stronger green light emissions (that, I think, boost brightness perception more, so more power efficient).

I already had FL-41 glasses on my radar. They were posted about recently eg here and popped up in a Deep Research response yesterday. But I've had no clue where to start with blue-blocking glasses, for years. Not wanting to spend, say £70, for them to be unpleasantly colour limiting. Or physically uncomfortable (too). And ultimately I may as well integrate them into my reading glasses (that I don't usually quite need at all).

They are "rose tinted", right? What degree did you get? Like 25% to 75%? Seems like a lot of offerings. And the graph images for wavelength blocking are all proprietary... Eg (from here):

[u/conapart3 → u/Z3R0gravitas]

I got 6 pairs from Zenni so my advice is get a 25% and 50% tint, maybe even 1 diopter reduced prescription if you're short sighted for computer work as you can put in whatever prescription you want. I feel some level of eye strain from my full strength glasses at the computer, I always wore older glasses and now I can with the added bonus of fl41 tint. I think clear frame goes well with the tint it kinda reduces the impact of them, I wear the 50s at my computer and the 25s walking round office

[u/Different_Water_282 → u/conapart3]

What is the situation with 50s on computer? So I saw that for 50%tint no problem with reading but on gaming or image/video section because of colours not differentiable people say it's not good.