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I have a new T410 laptop and ever since I've been using it, I've discovered that my eyes don't stress as much when I adjust the brightness to my environmental lighting. For example, during the day, I can push my brightness to near maximum but as the day shifts into night, I tend to decrease the brightness to match my environment.

Should the brightness of the LCD match my environmental lighting (or is less brightness just less intensive on my eyes)?

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up vote 4 down vote accepted

Yep. Your LCD brightness should match your environment. Good question!

Adjust the display settings on your computer so the brightness of the screen is about the same as your work environment.

As a test, try looking at the white background of this web page. If it looks like a light source, it's too bright. If it seems dull and gray, it may be too dark.

Also, adjust the screen settings so there is high contrast between the characters and background, and make sure the text size and color are optimized for comfort.

More info here: http://www.allaboutvision.com/cvs/irritated.htm

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One common requirement for monitor ergonomics standards (such as TCO'03) is a very wide brightness adjustment range, in order to allow the monitor to fit in a wide range of environmental brightnesses. This means that the highest brightness on LCD displays is often VERY bright. You definitely shouldn't just be setting it to 100% like a lot of people do - turn it down until it doesn't seem 'too bright' immediately after you've been looking elsewhere in the room for a while. –  jcrawfordor May 23 '11 at 5:44
Why won't you tell us what the article says? One-link answers are nice, but they kind of defeat the purpose of a Question/Answer site. –  slhck May 23 '11 at 8:17
@slhck Noted. Thanks! –  evan.bovie May 23 '11 at 19:27
Nice, thank you! –  slhck May 23 '11 at 19:35
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Try this, it automatically adjusts the brightness of the computer screen based on the time of day.

f.lux...makes the color of your computer's display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day.



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