Which brand has the dimmest LED backlight monitor?

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im1knight

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Sep 1, 2011
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Hi all, I know LED monitors are known for their bright pictures, and some people love them, but i HATE overly bright screens. I have recently purchased an Acer 21.5" LED backlight LCD, and man this thing's brightness is way off the scale. I put the brightness at 0, and it still hurts my eyes. I have to go into the graphics card settings to adjust that brightness down, and even after i did that, it's still too bright. My eyes gets tired very soon, and reading website pages or anything with a white background become a chore. (I have a floater in my eye, it gets really annoying when i'm looking at bright white)

I want to know which brand out there (if there are any) that have the dimmest LED backlight. My previous monitor was 19" a HP LCD, non LED, and with brightness at 5, it was perfect. The only reason why i went with LEDs is they virtually produce no heat, and their power draw is minimal, and not to mention the traditional CCFL LCDs are becoming less and less common in the 1080p monitors..and they actually costs more than LED ones in some cases.

I'm pretty sure there are some LED monitors that lets you adjust the brightness way down, this Acer simply isn't letting me turning it down enough...worse case scenario..I guess i have to pay more for an old CCFL LCD...

thanks in advance.
 
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Why not just get a monitor with an adjustable backlight? With many of them the back adjusts with the brightness control, with others it's separate.

I've never seen one that doesn't let you turn it down(but I've never had an acer).
 
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mine did allow me to turn it down, I'm saying even with the brightness at 0, it's still way too bright. I'm looking for one that can make me turn it down further. Sadly most monitors don't list the minimum brightness in their spec sheet...
 
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Ah, yes that's an issue. I was think about writing in open letter to monitor manufacturers about what people would really like to have in the spec sheet. Things like, does the panel have a glossy or matte finish, input lag, etc...

They are a lot of cases where there's a sweet spot (not too high, and not too low.) Those tend not to make it onto the spec sheet.

The only thing I can thing of to add is that CCFL's often hum when you turn down their backlight so you might want to look for a dim LED.
 
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Also u can fine tune your screen using the video driver utility.

That will give u more choices.

Generally, if u buy cheapest monitor, u will not get the range for fine tuning.

Best way is the upper middle price range.

All the monitors have brightness/contrast feature. It just might not be listed : )

 
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It looks like that on my PC (I have ATI/AMD GPU).

20120126191947.png
 
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Whenever you have the choice, it's far better to dim the back light then it is to adjust the brightness.

When you adjust the brightness digitally you are using some of it's bit depth. If you digitally adjust an 8-bit monitor to 50% brightness, it is now a 7-bit monitor. If you do that on a TN panel you're down to 5 bits. This holds true for almost any adjustment you make to a monitor, put it to far from neutral and you lose bit depth.

Newer monitors that use 12 bit internal processing and that can display 10 bits of information aren't really affected by this in a noticeable way.
 
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I use a GTX 560Ti, and i did try the nvidia control already, however lowing the brightness that way resulted in heavy image quality loss, so now i put it back to the default 50%

I just tried the calibrate display thing, never knew it existed xD. My brightness according to the calibration is actually at the right amount with brightness all the way at zero(however i got better results from my old CCFL LCD with a dimmer screen), while my gamma was way too high. Now i adjusted it, and it appears warmer now. But my eyes still hurt when I'm looking at a white background.

When i was using my CCFL LCD, i had the brightness at 0 and contrast 50, and it was very comfortable to my eyes, now with this LED, brightness of 0 equals to about ~75 on my old CCFL LCD..so its not surprising my eyes hate it. Or maybe I was just setting my brightness too low before. I'll give my eyes a week to get used to it, if the light still hurts my eyes after a week, i'm returning this to newegg....

This 21.5" monitor I got on sale, it was originally $169. Got it for $119. So I guess it is a bit on the low cost end. Been using HP and Dell monitors before, and they served me well, but their LED monitors are just too expensive i think.

I thought the difference between cheap and expensive LED monitors are just the cheap ones tend to flicker when the brightness is low? Are you sure the more expensive ones will allow me to turn down the backlight further?
 
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I know this is MAJOR thread necromancy, but I can't seem to privately message im1knight. I have major light sensitivity and am going to try to purchase an LCD display soon. Buuuut, I need to know which one will be the dimmest and like im1knight found, that's not obvious from specs.

im1knight, did you ever find one that's comfortable for you to use?
 
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It's weird that you cannot private message me...But oh well.
Anyways, in the end I did return the Acer monitor, and purchased an ASUS one instead. It is slightly more expensive, and have a thicker profile, but it is indeed better than the Acer one, although still on the bright side, as long as there is adequate lighting in the room, it does not hurt. And to help the situation I turned the color mode to warm. Helps significantly.
However, I have purchased a new HP laptop since this post, and that came with a LED screen as well, you can clearly see the LED flicker when aiming a digital camera at it. But it for some reason does not hurt my eye at all no matter what brightness I put it on or lighting conditions. And the color is actually very cold (putting it next to a normal screen you can see it's significantly bluer), but it can be dimmed quiet significantly.
Also at my university, all the computers are Dell All in Ones with LED display, those computer screen also does not hurt my eye at all, even though the computer lab may get dark after a while.
So my conclusion is, from my personal experience, Dell and HP monitors work the best for me. They are more expensive than Acer or ASUS, or Viewsonic, or whatever other cheaper brands are out there and are rarely on sale, but I do believe it's worth the extra price tag, as they simply does not hurt my eye or gives me a headache. But I have not tried a separate monitor from HP or Dell, as the ones I have used are all built in types, so I guess the best way to do this is still to buy the monitor at a local store, and return it if you cannot accept the brightness. Extra bit of tax is better than the back and forth shipping fee.
However if you are sensitive to flickers in the backlight, then a LED screen of any brand would not work for you, as they will all flicker unless they are put on full brightness. But i doubt there are many monitors out there left that are not LED these days so...
 
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Thanks so much! I have an LED backlit MacBookPro right now and that dims to an acceptable level when I change the color tone to warm and put a 'privacy' anti-glare cover over the screen.

I appreciate the help. Off I go to investigate the offerings from those brands!
 
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