New monitor woe...

My old LCD gave up the ghost today, it was about 8 years old, so no surprise there. However, the new one I got, an Acer P186H, is giving me fits. I can only stand to use it for about 10-15 minutes at a time, tops, before my eyeballs feel like they are going to explode.

Is there anything that I can do, such as refresh rates to somehow counter this? It was the cheapest monitor at the store and if I can't get something done, I'm going to need to take it back and try the HP model that's $20 more.

Have you tried turning down the brightness? Many monitors come with the brightness cranked; see if turning it down relieves your eye strain.

Otherwise, what was the response time on the old monitor? (Your current model apparently has a 5ms response - not bad but I've seen as low as 3ms.) What's the maximum refresh on the new one? What's the difference in screen size between the old monitor and the new Acer?

No, I hadn't tried the brightness bit. I'll see how that works out.

Looking up my old monitor, it was a 45ms response time. Refresh seems to be limited to 60 and 75Hz, same as the old one. Screen size is about 1.5" wider, but it's also a widescreen model, more like a newer TV vs the old one's more squareish appearance. The old monitor is a MAG Innovision LT765S.

Are you running the new monitor at its native resolution? LCDs have a fixed pixel size, so if you run at anything other than native, it's going to be blurry (the monitor and/or videocard have to scale the image to match the native resolution).

Native rez on that Acer is 1366x768. Same rez panel used in 720p LCD TVs.

The P186H is their discount store special unit. At least it has a DVI and HDMI connector, a lot of cheap panels only have VGA.

No idea if this will help but here is the page where you can download the monitor drivers.

I've got it set at the 1366x768, with the Contrast and Brightness turned down to about 25 and the Focus turned down slightly. It's quite crisp, in terms of text, but the colors seem a bit washed out.

Still getting slight eye strain/headache, but I'm wondering if I've got it set too far back, or possibly too close.

Edit - As for price...*shrug*. There's only one place nearby where I can purchase a monitor and I had the choice of a $129, $149, $169, or $219. Failing that, I could drag out an even older CRT-type, but...eh.

I heard CRT's install cancer in your eyes with out your permission much like a Trojan for a computer!

If the new monitors resolution is higher while the frame isn't much bigger, you may need to let your eyes adjust. Keep the new monitors refresh rate at the highest allowed setting and use it in a well lit room (try to break the habit of watching porn in a dark room). Resting your eyes by looking elsewhere for a few minutes will help with the fatigue. Its always a good health practice to not stare at a computer screen for more then an hour at a time with out a break.

Like all bad things for your body, you'll adjust to it.
Low Response times and High refresh rates do help.

Woah.. 45ms response time is uber slow and what people would call "crappy" for an lcd. Standard time is 5ms mine is 2ms, maybe that has something to do with it but other than that.. Is it a lot bigger of a monitor in terms of screen size compared to your old one? When I got a new much larger monitor it did take adjusting. Hope ya get it fixed.

Well there really isn't an industry standard for reporting response time, it varies from manufacturer to manufacturer.

But you should be aware the 2 and 5ms times are the very best time and doesn't represent the mean time of the panel. A pixel may be able to go from any value to full off or full on in 5ms but going from 25% on to 75% on may be 25ms. 60Hz is 16-17ms BTW. On top of that they only can achieve those times by actually displaying the wrong data for a moment as the panel is actually over/under shooting the target value and then take a while to stabilize at the correct value. Example of what I'm talking about.

Then there's input lag for the whole display on top of that, time from frame data received to frame being displayed, that isn't discussed on the monitor's spec sheet. Example of input lag, last picture on page. Both monitors are being driven by the same card, the time displayed on both monitors should be identical.