high lux lcd displays free sample

All screens flicker to some degree — be they TV screens, car navigation displays, monitors, tablets, and yes, even smartphone displays. In this article, we will talk a little about what flicker is, what can cause it (on smartphones in particular), and how we at DXOMARK test for it, quantify it, and measure its impact on the end-user experience.

Given the ubiquity of smartphones, it is unfortunate that the flicker on their displays (especially OLED displays) is still an issue for many people. But wait! Why do they flicker? Well, let’s remember that smartphone display hardware is based on either LCD (liquid crystal display) or OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology. LCDs don’t emit their own light; rather, they are back-illuminated by a strip of LEDs whose light intensity is quite powerful so as to compensate for the brightness drop due to the low transmission rate of the LCD panel (caused mainly by the RGB color filter). By contrast, in an OLED display, every pixel is itself an OLED that produces its own light.

Since both LCDs and OLED smartphone displays are composed of light-emitting diodes, let’s describe how these diodes are driven. Because of a diode’s intrinsic physical properties, it cannot be dimmed by changing the intensity of the current (mA) without impacting the color of the light. So how do phone manufacturers dim displays? They make use of a technique called pulse-width modulation (PWM), which means that they turn the diodes off and on at varying rates. Because we normally should not be able to see this switching between off and on (in other words, the flicker!), our brains are fooled into perceiving the screen as simply dimmer overall (a phenomenon known as the “brain averaging effect”). How dim depends on how long the diodes are off versus how long they are on: the longer they’re off, the dimmer the screen will appear.

So both LCDs and OLED displays power their light sources differently, but both technologies are subject to flicker effect; however, it is usually more noticeable on OLED displays than on LCDs. For one thing, OLED displays and LCDs show PWM at different frequency ranges — the PWM of OLED displays range from ~50 to ~500 Hz, whereas the PWM of LCDs starts at around 1000 Hz or higher. Second, as the human eye may experience flicker sensitivity up to about 250 Hz (at least for most people), it should come as no surprise that OLED displays are more likely to cause eyestrain than LCDs.

So how does DXOMARK measure flicker? One major way is with a device called, appropriately enough, a flickermeter (specifically, a TRD-200 from Westar Display Technologies), whose sole purpose is to measure quick oscillations in brightness. Our engineers follow a strict protocol for measuring flicker on each smartphone display: all devices are individually tested using their default settings under the exact same dark (< 0.1 lux) ambient lighting conditions, and are placed at the same distance from the flickermeter. We chart the output on this graph (which we use to compare up to four phones in our display reviews; note that you can click on the name of a phone in the legend on the bottom of the graph to remove or redraw its results):

The first spike in our flicker graph appears at a phone’s listed refresh rate, but it is the highest spike — that is, the one that comes closest to or surpasses 0 dB — that is of interest to us in terms of flicker, as it indicates the PWM frequency; in this case, 241 Hz for the Samsung (S20), 362 Hz for the Huawei, 481 Hz for the OnePlus, and 240 Hz for the other Samsung (Note20). (Just in passing, you can nearly always ignore values below -40 (dB) on the graph, as they correspond to testing noise.)

In this second very slow-motion video, we included the Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G that has a refresh rate of 120 Hz; interestingly enough, however, its PWM frequency is 240 Hz (as the flicker graph above also showed). In the video of the Note20 Ultra 5G, you can see that it has one frame on (bright) to five frames off (dark); the P40 Pro ends up with one frame on to three frames off; and the Find X2 Pro varies between one frame on to two or three frames off. All this is to say that where flicker is concerned, even a phone with a fast refresh rate like the Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G can have a low PWM frequency and thus noticeable flicker under certain conditions. If you are sensitive to flicker, you will likely notice it on the Samsung devices at this brightness level and these PWM frequencies, but not on other devices with higher PWM frequencies.

Keep in mind that our engineers base their evaluations and the scores they assign to smartphone displays not only on the objective tests they perform with flickermeters and other instruments, but also on perceptual tests that they conduct after being specially trained to see flicker.

To further illustrate flicker, our engineers used a DSLR mounted on a translation rail and moved it quickly while it took a slow (1/10 second) shot of the three mounted smartphone displays shown below to imitate the effects of PWM. In the image of the Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G on the left, you can see each individual white dot; on the Huawei P40 Pro in the middle, the individual dots are much closer together, but are still largely discernible; in the image of the OnePlus 8 Pro, however, the dots look more like an almost continuous line. Unsurprisingly, flicker is stronger on the devices where the white dots are further from one another — that is, devices with a lower PWM frequency.

Let’s wrap things up by first repeating that flicker on smartphones is caused by the use of pulse-width modulation that turns light-emitting diodes off and on to control screen brightness levels. As we normally perceive flicker via our peripheral vision rather than via our “attending vision” (that is, what we specifically focus our eyes on), the small size of a smartphone screen makes it less likely that we will see flicker on it (unless we hold the phone very close to our eyes) than we might when viewing content on a laptop screen or monitor. When we do see flicker, however, it’s the PWM that is the culprit; and while flicker can be reduced on a phone with a higher refresh rate, you may sometimes see flicker on it anyway if the phone’s PWM is slow (as we saw with the Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G).

Finally, it’s also important to remember that some people are more sensitive to noticing flicker than others; in fact, even people who may not consciously perceive flicker may nonetheless be sensitive to it, winding up with headaches or eyestrain after overdoing their screen time. Such people could choose an OLED smartphone with an anti-flicker feature, or one with an LCD. As you can see in the table below, the last entry shows the data for the Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro; since it uses LCD technology, its PWM frequency is so high that it in essence eliminates the flicker issue.

To evaluate the performance of display devices, several metrics are commonly used, such as response time, CR, color gamut, panel flexibility, viewing angle, resolution density, peak brightness, lifetime, among others. Here we compare LCD and OLED devices based on these metrics one by one.

The last finding is somehow counter to the intuition that a LCD should have a more severe motion picture image blur, as its response time is approximately 1000 × slower than that of an OLED (ms vs. μs). To validate this prediction, Chen et al.

If we want to further suppress image blur to an unnoticeable level (MPRT<2 ms), decreasing the duty ratio (for LCDs, this is the on-time ratio of the backlight, called scanning backlight or blinking backlight) is mostly adopted

High CR is a critical requirement for achieving supreme image quality. OLEDs are emissive, so, in theory, their CR could approach infinity to one. However, this is true only under dark ambient conditions. In most cases, ambient light is inevitable. Therefore, for practical applications, a more meaningful parameter, called the ACR, should be considered

To investigate the ACR, we have to clarify the reflectance first. A large TV is often operated by remote control, so touchscreen functionality is not required. As a result, an anti-reflection coating is commonly adopted. Let us assume that the reflectance is 1.2% for both LCD and OLED TVs. For the peak brightness and CR, different TV makers have their own specifications. Here, without losing generality, let us use the following brands as examples for comparison: LCD peak brightness=1200 nits, LCD CR=5000:1 (Sony 75″ X940E LCD TV); OLED peak brightness=600 nits, and OLED CR=infinity (Sony 77″ A1E OLED TV). The obtained ACR for both LCD and OLED TVs is plotted in Figure 7a. As expected, OLEDs have a much higher ACR in the low illuminance region (dark room) but drop sharply as ambient light gets brighter. At 63 lux, OLEDs have the same ACR as LCDs. Beyond 63 lux, LCDs take over. In many countries, 60 lux is the typical lighting condition in a family living room. This implies that LCDs have a higher ACR when the ambient light is brighter than 60 lux, such as in office lighting (320–500 lux) and a living room with the window shades or curtain open. Please note that, in our simulation, we used the real peak brightness of LCDs (1200 nits) and OLEDs (600 nits). In most cases, the displayed contents could vary from black to white. If we consider a typical 50% average picture level (i.e., 600 nits for LCDs vs. 300 nits for OLEDs), then the crossover point drops to 31 lux (not shown here), and LCDs are even more favorable. This is because the on-state brightness plays an important role to the ACR, as Equation (2) shows.

Calculated ACR as a function of different ambient light conditions for LCD and OLED TVs. Here we assume that the LCD peak brightness is 1200 nits and OLED peak brightness is 600 nits, with a surface reflectance of 1.2% for both the LCD and OLED. (a) LCD CR: 5000:1, OLED CR: infinity; (b) LCD CR: 20 000:1, OLED CR: infinity.

Recently, an LCD panel with an in-cell polarizer was proposed to decouple the depolarization effect of the LC layer and color filtersFigure 7b. Now, the crossover point takes place at 16 lux, which continues to favor LCDs.

For mobile displays, such as smartphones, touch functionality is required. Thus the outer surface is often subject to fingerprints, grease and other contaminants. Therefore, only a simple grade AR coating is used, and the total surface reflectance amounts to ~4.4%. Let us use the FFS LCD as an example for comparison with an OLED. The following parameters are used in our simulations: the LCD peak brightness is 600 nits and CR is 2000:1, while the OLED peak brightness is 500 nits and CR is infinity. Figure 8a depicts the calculated results, where the intersection occurs at 107 lux, which corresponds to a very dark overcast day. If the newly proposed structure with an in-cell polarizer is used, the FFS LCD could attain a 3000:1 CRFigure 8b), corresponding to an office building hallway or restroom lighting. For reference, a typical office light is in the range of 320–500 luxFigure 8 depicts, OLEDs have a superior ACR under dark ambient conditions, but this advantage gradually diminishes as the ambient light increases. This was indeed experimentally confirmed by LG Display

Calculated ACR as a function of different ambient light conditions for LCD and OLED smartphones. Reflectance is assumed to be 4.4% for both LCD and OLED. (a) LCD CR: 2000:1, OLED CR: infinity; (b) LCD CR: 3000:1, OLED CR: infinity. (LCD peak brightness: 600 nits; OLED peak brightness: 500 nits).

For conventional LCDs employing a WLED backlight, the yellow spectrum generated by YAG (yttrium aluminum garnet) phosphor is too broad to become highly saturated RGB primary colors, as shown in Figure 9aTable 2. The first choice is the RG-phosphor-converted WLEDFigure 9b, the red and green emission spectra are well separated; still, the green spectrum (generated by β-sialon:Eu2+ phosphor) is fairly broad and red spectrum (generated by K2SiF6:Mn4+ (potassium silicofluoride, KSF) phosphor) is not deep enough, leading to 70%–80% Rec. 2020, depending on the color filters used.

A QD-enhanced backlight (e.g., quantum dot enhancement film, QDEF) offers another option for a wide color gamutFigure 9c), so that high purity RGB colors can be realized and a color gamut of ~90% Rec. 2020 can be achieved. One safety concern is that some high-performance QDs contain the heavy metal Cd. To be compatible with the restriction of hazardous substances, the maximum cadmium content should be under 100 ppm in any consumer electronic product

Recently, a new LED technology, called the Vivid Color LED, was demonstratedFigure 9d), which leads to an unprecedented color gamut (~98% Rec. 2020) together with specially designed color filters. Such a color gamut is comparable to that of laser-lit displays but without laser speckles. Moreover, the Vivid Color LED is heavy-metal free and shows good thermal stability. If the efficiency and cost can be further improved, it would be a perfect candidate for an LCD backlight.

As mentioned earlier, TFT LCDs are a fairly mature technology. They can be operated for >10 years without noticeable performance degradation. However, OLEDs are more sensitive to moisture and oxygen than LCDs. Thus their lifetime, especially for blue OLEDs, is still an issue. For mobile displays, this is not a critical issue because the expected usage of a smartphone is approximately 2–3 years. However, for large TVs, a lifetime of >30 000 h (>10 years) has become the normal expectation for consumers.

Power consumption is equally important as other metrics. For LCDs, power consumption consists of two parts: the backlight and driving electronics. The ratio between these two depends on the display size and resolution density. For a 55″ 4K LCD TV, the backlight occupies approximately 90% of the total power consumption. To make full use of the backlight, a dual brightness enhancement film is commonly embedded to recycle mismatched polarized light

The power efficiency of an OLED is generally limited by the extraction efficiency (ηext~20%). To improve the power efficiency, multiple approaches can be used, such as a microlens array, a corrugated structure with a high refractive index substrateFigure 11 shows the power efficiencies of white, green, red and blue phosphorescent as well as blue fluorescent/TTF OLEDs over time. For OLEDs with fluorescent emitters in the 1980s and 1990s, the power efficiency was limited by the IQE, typically <10 lm W−1(Refs. 41, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118). With the incorporation of phosphorescent emitters in the ~2000 s, the power efficiency was significantly improved owing to the materials and device engineering−1 was demonstrated in 2011 (Ref. 127), which showed a >100 × improvement compared with that of the basic two-layer device proposed in 1987 (1.5 lm W−1 in Ref. 41). A white OLED with a power efficiency >100 lm W−1 was also demonstrated, which was comparable to the power efficiency of a LCD backlight. For red and blue OLEDs, their power efficiencies are generally lower than that of the green OLED due to their lower photopic sensitivity function, and there is a tradeoff between color saturation and power efficiency. Note, we separated the performances of blue phosphorescent and fluorescent/TTF OLEDs. For the blue phosphorescent OLEDs, although the power efficiency can be as high as ~80 lm W−1, the operation lifetime is short and color is sky-blue. For display applications, the blue TTF OLED is the favored choice, with an acceptable lifetime and color but a much lower power efficiency (16 lm W−1) than its phosphorescent counterpartFigure 11 shows.

To compare the power consumption of LCDs and OLEDs with the same resolution density, the displayed contents should be considered as well. In general, OLEDs are more efficient than LCDs for displaying dark images because black pixels consume little power for an emissive display, while LCDs are more efficient than OLEDs at displaying bright images. Currently, a ~65% average picture level is the intersection point between RGB OLEDs and LCDs

Flexible displays have a long history and have been attempted by many companies, but this technology has only recently begun to see commercial implementations for consumer electronics

In addition to the aforementioned six display metrics, other parameters are equally important. For example, high-resolution density has become a standard for all high-end display devices. Currently, LCD is taking the lead in consumer electronic products. Eight-hundred ppi or even >1000 ppi LCDs have already been demonstrated and commercialized, such as in the Sony 5.5″ 4k Smartphone Xperia Z5 Premium. The resolution of RGB OLEDs is limited by the physical dimension of the fine-pitch shadow mask. To compete with LCDs, most OLED displays use the PenTile RGB subpixel matrix scheme

The viewing angle is another important property that defines the viewing experience at large oblique angles, which is quite critical for multi-viewer applications. OLEDs are self-emissive and have an angular distribution that is much broader than that of LCDs. For instance, at a 30° viewing angle, the OLED brightness only decreases by 30%, whereas the LCD brightness decrease exceeds 50%. To widen an LCD’s viewing angle, three options can be used. (1) Remove the brightness-enhancement film in the backlight system. The tradeoff is decreased on-axis brightness

In addition to brightness, color, grayscale and the CR also vary with the viewing angle, known as color shift and gamma shift. In these aspects, LCDs and OLEDs have different mechanisms. For LCDs, they are induced by the anisotropic property of the LC material, which could be compensated for with uniaxial or biaxial films

Cost is another key factor for consumers. LCDs have been the topic of extensive investigation and investment, whereas OLED technology is emerging and its fabrication yield and capability are still far behind LCDs. As a result, the price of OLEDs is about twice as high as that of LCDs, especially for large displays. As more investment is made in OLEDs and more advanced fabrication technology is developed, such as ink-jet printing

Light can be measured in different ways. One unit of measurement is called a lux, which describes how much light falls on a certain area. (This is different from a unit of lumens, which tells you the total amount of light emitted by a light source.) The number of lux gets smaller as you get farther away from a light source. This makes sense if you think about it: a light bulb looks much dimmer if you are standing 100 feet away from it instead of up close—even though it is still emitting the same total amount of light in lumens. Typical outdoor lux levels can range from less than 1/1,000 lux on a dark night to more than 30,000 lux in direct sunlight!

This is where a smartphone comes in handy. There have long been stand-alone lux meters (for use in photography, for example), devices with a light sensor and a screen that would display light levels in lux units. Current smartphones and tablets, however, generally contain built-in light sensors that are used to automatically adjust screen brightness based on light levels (for example, making the screen brighter and easier to see if you"re using the device in direct sunlight but dimming the screen in darker environments so it"s not too bright for your eyes). Many phones can run apps that will display the light reading in lux units. To learn more about light levels in the world around you, find a smartphone or tablet and start measuring!

Ask an adult to help you search for a "lux meter" or "light meter" app on a smartphone or tablet. There are many free options available (note that some apps might have ads or in-app purchases enabled).

Get to know your lux meter app. Some apps will just display a number on the screen, whereas others will display a meter or a graph. Some will also let you record data. Make sure the app is working: move your phone from a dark room to a bright room, or hold it close to a light bulb (bulbs are also hot as well as bright, so be careful here), and you should see the numbers fluctuate.

Locate the light sensor on your device. It is usually near the top on the front of the phone (the side with the screen). You can do this by running your fingertip over the surface of the phone while your lux meter app is open. When your finger covers the light sensor the reading should drop. Make sure you do not accidentally cover the sensor while doing the activity.

Note: Some apps might display light levels in other units, such as "EV," which stands for "exposure value" and is used in photography to measure the amount of light hitting a camera. The concepts explained in this activity still apply, and you can still compare different light sources or how light levels change with distance from a light source. The numbers you measure in EV, however, will not be the same that you would measure in lux.

Test how lux readings change with distance from a fixed light source. For example, stand directly under a ceiling light, hold your phone with the screen facing up, and move the phone up and down. Alternatively hold the phone sideways and aim it toward a floor lamp as you walk closer to and farther away from the lamp. How do the readings change with distance?

You probably noticed how dramatically lux change with distance from a light source. You might only read a few tens or hundreds of lux when you are across the room from a light bulb, but if you hold your phone right up to the bulb, the reading could be in the thousands or even tens of thousands. This is because of a mathematical relationship called the inverse square law. As the light expands outward from the source, the amount of light hitting each area drops off very rapidly. The sun is so far away you might find it surprising that lux readings in direct sunlight are so high (in the tens of thousands of lux). This gives us a sense of just how very bright the sun itself is!

Having a unit of measurement and a device to measure it can be useful for determining and comparing different environments more specifically. You might find, for example, that a specific range of lux is the most comfortable for you to read a book. These measurements can be used for designing buildings, such as schools, to ensure there is the right amount of light for different areas and activities.

Depending on your phone or the app you used the range of values you were able to measure might have been limited. Some apps, for example, might not display decimal readings, making it difficult to measure light levels below 1 lux (in other words, even if the real reading is 0.4 lux, the app would display 0 lux). This would be most common in very dark locations, such as inside a closet or outside at night. The maximum reading could also be limited by the app or the phone"s or tablet"s hardware. You might, for example, only see a reading of 10,000 lux outside in direct sunlight—even if you expected a reading of 30,000 lux or more. This is useful to remember when using any measuring device. Just as the length of a ruler can"t reflect the full length of a soccer field—or a kitchen thermometer couldn"t tell us the temperature of the sun"s surface—many digital measuring tools aren"t able to provide a complete range of possible measurements.

D-Lux has the capabilities to run up to 100 dpi (dots per inch) on four color process printing. 4 Color Process is the best way to achieve a wide color gamut by printing only 4 colors, cyan (blue), magenta (red), yellow and black.

This study did not show any significant difference in image quality between a standard 2-MP color LCD display and a medical-grade 2-MP monochrome LCD display, neither using the contrast-detail phantom nor in the visual grading study. Our findings are in accordance with several studies that have shown similar performances for color and monochrome displays in a variety of clinical tasks such as brain CT,,2 was acceptable provided that the ambient illuminance was low.

The main purpose of calibrating a monitor according to DICOM part 14 is to obtain similar image presentation on all displays. A calibration distributes the total contrast of the display equally across the entire grayscale and objects will thus be presented with the same contrast regardless of whether they are present in bright or dark parts of the image. When the task is to find known objects in an image, such as targets in a contrast-detail phantom, the window/level controls can be used to optimize image contrast. The display’s contrast characteristics becomes less important and the noise properties become more important—noise from the image detector and noise from the image display. However, this does not mean that calibrating a display is meaningless. Clinical images have little resemblance to images of a contrast-detail phantom in that pathology might be present also in the bright or dark parts of the image. A consistent display of images is even more important when, for example, a current image is compared to a previous image on another display. Any differences between the images should be caused by the imaged object and not by the displays.

The main advantage of medical-grade monochrome displays is their high luminance, which makes it easier to see the entire grayscale from black to white in an image. In a recent report,

The major drawback of color displays is their lower maximum luminance—143 cd/m2 in our study compared to 295 cd/m2 for the monochrome display. A low luminance has been stated to increase the time for diagnosis.

The tests with the contrast-detail phantom showed very small differences in image quality between the two types of displays. There was in fact a larger difference in image quality between the flat-panel detector and the storage phosphor plates (Fig. 2). It might thus be more appropriate to choose a better (more expensive) imaging system such as a flat-panel detector and use (cheaper) color displays than the opposite. Irrespective of the detector being used, there was a large interobserver variability, similar to what has been reported previously.2.

The higher ambient illuminance setting resulted in slightly poorer lesion detection on the 2-MP color display, but resulted in no difference with the 2-MP monochrome display. It is known that ambient illuminance should be low as ambient light elevates the black level of the display,

The visual grading study using clinical images showed significantly higher image quality for the 2-MP monochrome display for reproduction of pedicles and intervertebral joints; and lower for reproduction of spinous and transverse processes. Overall, there was no significant difference between the displays in the visual grading part of the study.

Free adjustment of window width and level was allowed in our study, as that is the way radiologists work in everyday practice. Windowing is easily performed by moving the computer mouse. If this type of image processing is not done, the full potential of digital imaging is not used. We consider image adjustment and manipulation to be a natural part in reading a digital image, and indeed a necessity to view all information in the image, and consequently a comparison between monochrome and color displays without the use of free adjustment of window and level was not included in this study. This is probably one reason why the 2-MP color display performed so well. All information in the image could be placed in the middle (gray) area of the contrast span where the two display types were almost equal. A drawback is that the user’s performance efficiency might be reduced.

To let all PACS stations in a radiology department have the capability to display all types of images, it is necessary to equip them with display units that are able to display also images with color information such as Doppler ultrasound, 3D volume rendered CT images, PET images, and SPECT images. It is costly to furnish an entire radiology department with the more expensive monochrome displays, and color displays might also, for economic reasons, be a better alternative. The new users of digital radiological image information, the clinicians, usually opt for color displays, which may be a conscious cost-saving decision or simply the effect of old habits.

The spatial resolution of the displays was not evaluated specifically in this study because the two displays used in the majority of tests had the same resolution. When used without magnification, the 3-MP monochrome display showed a trend toward higher image quality compared to the 2-MP color display. This is not surprising because the images were scaled to fit the display in that particular test. None of the displays managed to show all of the five megapixels that the test image consisted of, but the 3-MP display did show a larger proportion of the image information than the 2-MP displays.

This depends on the chart that was measured. The explanation in the first paragraph sums it up pretty well: If you have calibrated and profiled your display, and want to check how well the profile fits a set of measurements (profile accuracy), or if you want to know if your display has drifted and needs to be re-calibrated/re-profiled, you select a chart containing RGB numbers for the verification. Note that directly after profiling, accuracy can be expected to be high if the profile characterizes the display well, which will usually be the case if the display behaviour is not very non-linear, in which case creating a LUT profile instead of a “Curves + matrix” one, or increasing the number of measured patches for LUT profiles, can help.

If you want to know how well your profile can simulate another colorspace (softproofing), select a reference file containing L*a*b* or XYZ values, like one of the Fogra Media Wedge subsets, or a combination of a simulation profile and testchart. Be warned though, only wide-gamut displays will handle a larger offset printing colorspace like FOGRA39 or similar well enough.

Unfortunately, sometimes the brightest that Automatic brightness will go just isn’t bright enough, which is why you’ll want to know how to push your screen brightness as high as it will go.

If you’re using an external monitor, use the controls on the display to find the brightness settings. Then push that setting as high as it will go, or to your desired brightness level. This setting is independent of anything brightness setting that’s software-based.

You can take manual control of your computer’s brightness through your operating system, but only if your display supports it. In most cases, this is only true for integrated laptop displays.

Many displays now have various features that help improve motion clarity or smoothness. Unfortunately, some of these features also hurt brightness. Chief among these is BFI or Black Frame Insertion.

This technology inserts a completely black frame between every true frame of the content. Why? The idea is to simulate the pulse and fade of CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) screens. Flat panel displays (such as LCD and OLED) suffer from smeary motion thanks to their “sample and hold” nature. They hold the entire image perfectly until the next frame is due and switch instantly. How we perceive motion and track movement over the screen creates blur, and BFI is an effective way to create crisp motion on flat panels.

This does significantly reduce power consumption, but the resulting image can be dim and have a bit of flicker. The maximum brightness level in these eco modes is much lower than the standard power option. More importantly, the minimum brightness may be very low indeed. On some TVs and monitors, you can tweak the minimum brightness in the displays system preferences, so you may want to keep eco mode but let the screen get a little brighter than the default setting.

Some third-party apps you can download and install can help you find more brightness or otherwise help optimize how color, brightness, and contrast display on your screen. TheF.lux app is possible the best example of this and you can download it for free. The app is quite versatile, but its main use is to cut down on the amount of blue light in your image, synced to the time of day, which can supposedly reduce eye strain and help with sleep.

While you won’t set your monitor on fire by running it in “torch mode” for a little while, maxing out the brightness can have long-term effects on your screen. First, if you’re using an OLED, you only want to run at high brightness levels for very short amounts. OLED image retention is still a problem and happens more easily at maximum or high brightness levels.

If you’re using an LED LCD, there’s no real concern about image retention. However, increasing the brightness too much will make your contrast much worse and can reveal “backlight bleed” on your monitor, where the edges of the screen don’t seal well with the bezel.

Winky Lux uses the highest quality ingredients available. Products are free of nasties and irritants. Our founder Natalie has extremely sensitive skin and personally tests everything before it"s available for sale. That said, everyone"s skin is very different so please discontinue any product that irritates you immediately and contact a doctor as soon as possible.

All makeup products expire unless they are made of twinkies (which you shouldn"t put on your face). Please reference the product box for expiration dates. Typically Winky Lux products have a two-year shelf life.

While we tend to use mostly natural food flavors for sensory experience (example: natural vanilla in glosses) we do use fragrance in some products. Feel free to email us at winky@winkylux.com and we can elaborate based on the particular product.

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