You might be up working late on your computer but your eyes are strained by white light.
What is Blue Light?
Blue light is a higher visual type of light on the wavelength of visible light. The interesting part about this is that it's just under the spectrum before your looking at UV light that can be extremely damaging to stare at think about the purple UV light that the police use to look for remanence of body fluids.
Looking at Red light isn't harmful at all because of how the red light is a long wavelength and isn't normally visible because of it being in the Infrared category vs Blue and Purple being a very short wavelength and can be harmful.
Blue light blocking?
When were talking about computers and mobile devices then you going to want to know what Display Panel type your using.
LED is about a light emitting diode. So there's many layers than goes into how you view an LED/ IPS panel. LCD's are also very similar to LED's.
LED panels to make them function correctly requires there to be a backlight that is driving the panel. If an LED panel doesn't have a backlight then you would only be able to use that device in direct sunlight for best visible conditions. The term and the functionality for the blue light does come from this backlight panel that's involved in the process of how the panel works. It's a high voltage component that is designed for a high output of light.
The other version of display panel technology is OLED this version of display tech doesn't require a backlight to function at all. There are many different display technologies in our world but for simplicity I'm only talking about two of them that are pretty common.
Segment Display - Think calculator
CRT - Old technology also used for TV's
LED/ LCD - Think thin panel/ Laptops, Smart phones, Modern TV's, Computer Monitors
IPS - This is just a color enhancement with the product your buying, if it doesn't say IPS along with it being a LED/LCD Monitor for an example your not going to get the enhanced colors that IPS gives you this is for people who want good color representation with the work that they do on their computer
Micro-LED - This is a newer emerging technology and is still in a few products currently, this is about having let's say 1,000 different backlight adjustable zones, the goals for this technology is to have better pixel density along with emulating OLED without the down sides of screen burn-in and how every pixel is able to emit its own light, It still has a lot of work to improve and be better than it currently is, If you had a black background with a small white object that's maybe 50 pixels large on a 1920 by 1080p canvas then you might be able to see the different zones that will turn on and off the different lighting zones as you move this white circle around the screen but this isn't all that great because there still have been issues with how there has been this glowy light leak around how it looks when viewing it, So this has been a technology that has come to one of Apple's Macbook Pro devices and iPad respectively so far, as a lets see how it goes type of approach along with how long it has been in development for. It has the potential to make a dent in products that may use OLED panels for there displays.
TN Panel - Terrible color representation wider viewing angles off axis, typically these are for gaming monitors for people who don't care about color accuracy and may want a 200-hertz display thats it dont use it for content creation if you care about picking and viewing accurate colors while using your computer
VA Panel - VA stands for Vertical Alignment this is used for most TV's great contrast ratio terrible response times for responsive work, this slow response rate can be about 4 to 11 milliseconds totally fine for movie and TV watching content, not ideal for use as a computer monitor
OLED - Paper thin panel like a few sheets a paper, smartphones, TV, Computer monitors
AMOLED - This is an incremental upgrade to normal OLED think brighter colors, Higher dynamic range, This is like IPS for LED Displays. Normal OLED is fine but AMOLED is an improvement upon that basis for what OLED is
Super AMOLED - This is just Samsung's exclusive version (marketing terminology its still AMOLED) of there OLED technology and manufacturing only found in Samsung and Apple devices (Apple buys screens from Samsung to put in there most luxurious devices, Samsung holds the cards of there absolute best screen technology to themselves and their devices and reportedly doesn't share or let others use it, think there samsung galaxy flagship devices)
QLED - The Q in QLED means Quantum Light Emitting Diode, The Quantum part of QLED is branding a display with adding photo-emissive particles with in the screen panel that allows you to have OLED quality displays with the benefits of having a wide color gamut high contrast ratio matching OLED with deep black rich color marketed as "perfect black" unlike how LED/ LCD panels have a light glow tint cause the the light to ever so much leak through the panel trying to display black in a particular part where black is being shown on the display not representative in a deep rich black color representation as it should be without any leakage of the backlight behind it
QD-LED - QD-LED means Quantum Dot Light Emitting Diode is appenly still in active development and only in Labs for scientist it seems
The amount of research on these displays and the different technology is crazy, I am trying to help make sense of all of this. I am just want to make this about how there's a major difference between LED/ LCD and OLED. OLED doesn't have to deal with blue light hardly at all, whereas LED/ LCD displays emit blue light but not at the levels that the previous technology was producing with CRT computer monitors were there is a major improvement in that regard.
Not going to cover much of the other display technologies much more than I have already done above, maybe another time, this is just about LED Vs. OLED.
OLED panels are very thin, and flexible. This Organic Light Emitting Diode is able to independently turn off pixels when there is pure black shown, or be partially off when gray is shown. Every individual pixel emits its own light.
The comparison with LED/ LCD / IPS displays is that when you're displaying black color space that individual pixel isn't totally off. IPS is just a higher color standard within LED displays. so typically when you're looking at a computer monitor that you might buy or a laptop that is listed with it having an LED IPS display it just means that the color accuracy of the colors that you're looking at and how they're represented are more accurate than they would be if they weren't. Think of a little bit richer color with the vibrancy being increased.
OLED panels are very cool but have a negative side effect to how they operate for whenever there is a static image or element on screen for a long period of time this terminology is called "Burn In".
With and OLED panel overtime the effective brightness that you might be used to won't be as bright as it once was if you are using max brightness all the time. It is ideal to use max brightness for a short period of time. to reduce the lost of brightness that you will lose overtime just effectively don't use a high brightness within with an OLED panel for long periods of time. This can help your OLED to stay bright when you need it to.
Example of screen burn-in as shown above
OLED panels are very rich in color and completely makes the viewing of normal LED panels put to shame. Along with the fact that OLED displays are great for viewing while standing outside in bright UV light something that LED/ LCD panels cannot achieve.
Normal generic LED/ LCD panels never have to deal with burn in at all.
When it comes to computer monitors, TVs, smartphones there is an absolute vast amount of different shapes and sizes when it comes to the functionality of a display.
I am so happy that we no longer have to deal with 30 pound behemoths when it comes to using display technology.
I have visually felt this stimulus with a old CRT display versus LED display. when using a CRT display I used to remember how there was this pain of how the CRT makes me want to close my eyes. Whereas with the LED panel display that there's absolutely none of that eye strain involved when viewing it. When CRT displays where the normal thing it never occurred to me, but when you shift into modern times it's not even that relevant anymore.
The invention of software screensavers came from CRT's and could also leave an impression on the fluorescent screen that a was built with in the display. LED displays don't need to make use of screensavers at all. OLED does definitely need use of changing up the of the display and can make great use of screensavers once again.
Color Temperature
Color temperature is very easy to explain.
There are cool tones that represent a blue tint to them and then there are warmer tones that represent a warmer orange tint.
Depending on how you're looking at it you could say that a cool tint is artificial where the warmer tint of light is maybe more organic in nature.
Orange glass scam
There's been this whole thing about how you need a special set of glasses to block blue light produced from your screen that your computer or phone screen produces.
If you're using a OLED panel then there isn't a backlight that is being driven to shine blue light into your eye retinas.
LED panels do operate with driving a large backlight to produce backlight that is on the blue light UV spectrum. You can just dim the display if you're in a dark environment.
There are newer reports by scientists that talk about how orange tinted glasses don't help with reducing blue light at all. Using software to add a orange tint to the display in software is the same as displaying the panel normally.
I feel that if you understand the difference between all the different screen technologies used then you would be safe all on it's own. I like OLED a lot for the fact that the clarity of what you're viewing is phenomenal and there is very little emission of blue light associated with OLED compared to LED display technology.
Older people eyes
People who are older can't see darker tones as easily so using dark mode isn't always the greatest way for other people to interact with products and devices. Most older people don't tend to always use their computer late at night so this isn't totally an issue.
Summary & Tools
Tools you can use.
Using Dark mode
I love dark mode everything should be dark mode! But there are tools for this.
Windows
Flux - https://justgetflux.com/
You can also use Dark theme within Microsoft Windows but its not very solid or as system wide as how Apple has developed and made there operating system. Task manager still doesn't have dark mode in Windows 10 and its exclusive to Windows 11.
Android
Just dig into your settings to look for dark mode.
You can mess with adding an orange tint but it messes with making white have an orange tint if your not used to it.
Not great for color accurate work or viewing.
MacOS
You can also you Flux here as well.
Use dark mode as well.
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