What's a good monitor for your eyes for text work (eye strain/fatigue and text clarity)?

[NewbieOneKenobi]

Just text, no graphics, no movies, no games, no nothing. Reading and writing all day long, with eyes tired from doing this every day. I'm aware of Dasung and Onyx, but they're outta my budget.

Said budget is more along the lines of Dell S27/P27, LG 27GP or BenQ EW2780Q (or some sort of Iiyama G-Master or Eizo FlexScan), unless the gain is really, really significant, then I can splurge more.

Obviously, needing this for text work, which means it might as well be monochrome, I'd rather avoid paying for stuff that's mostly useful for photo editing (gamuts, calibration, etc.).

For the same reason, I'm open to old (used) hardware if it fits the billet.

Size-wise, I don't know. If 27'' or larger, it would be replacing my current main driver (AOC Q3279VWFD8, which is 32'' 1440p 10bit 75Hz 5ms GTG but eye-straining BOE panel) and would be also used for gaming. If 24'' or less, it would simply be added as my primary workhorse (with the 32'' unit relegated to holding reference materials, Google, Wiki, mail, etc.).

Part of the problem is that while 27'' 4K sounds great for work — very crisp text, I guess, from the insane PPI? — my RTX 3070 wouldn't be ideal for 4K in modern AAA titles. And for gaming I suppose that although I don't care for high refresh rates (I prioritize resolution and ultra quality instead, as long as I get >45 fps average), I would like a fast response time and so on — something which doesn't matter for work. And, of course, the colours would matter. So I'm not decided between replacing my default monitor (the AOC) versus just adding a smaller monitor for work.

Adding on another, small monitor for work could be more economic, because I could buy a used office unit. But I don't how good those former high-end office monitors from 10–15 years ago are versus modern units. Again, the top priority is eye strain (reduction of) and text clarity, I don't care if the stuff's old enough to vote and drink, if it still does the job.

Thank you for your thoughts.

 

[NewbieOneKenobi]

slight Segway from hardware but for my work monitor I use f.lux to add an Amber hue automatically as it gets dark.

I find it helps a bunch with tiredness.

Thank you! I'd heard of it before but mostly ignored it, and now I've been using it for a week with good results.

I really don't understand why you are looking at such expensive monitors. More expensive doesn't equate to better on the eyes.

I don't crave to throw my money away if that's what you're worrying about! I'd be perfectly happy with a yellowed old 20ms TN with dog-bite marks on the bezel if it did the job well. But if I can get something 10% better for two hundred quid than for half hundred, I'm going to pay the difference.

I had a problem with my eyes for a few months and they used to get really tired, very quickly.

I found the secret there was the larger the text the better and to turn the brightness down! Use Windows Scaling. When you find something that's good you can calculate the ppi you need or the monitor you need combined with the scaling setting.

That worked for me too at some point. But after a while of it I had to put the Windows scaling back down along with the font in size in my text editor. I usually stick with 150%, but on some of the worst nights I've gone up to 200%. On the other hand, sometimes it feels like my eyes are begging me to take it down to 125%. With the font size, there's even more variance. So perhaps this is like 'active seating', perhaps you're supposed to be changing this back and forth rather than finding a 'set and forget' setting.

I've also been able to realize that I prefer different font sizes depending on the brightness and contrast.