Ask HN: Eye strain and e-readers

2 points by stratos2 13 years ago | 3 comments

I've been wanting to get a kindle to read ebooks instead of hard copy for a while, but my eyes don't hold up for long when reading from any type of screen.

I know the kindle uses e-ink which i've read about , but I wanted to get the opinion of others that may experience eye strain when reading from devices, and if they've had success with any of these readers!

sixQuarks 13 years ago |

I had the same problem as you, I couldn't read on a computer for more than a 15 minutes at a time, my eyes would hurt so bad, get headaches, etc.

Then one day I was on a flight and flipping through SkyMall and saw an ad for "computer glasses" that got rid of eye strain. i was like "yeah, right". But I was desperate, so I bought a pair, and I gotta say, it's been one of the best purchases I've ever made. I no longer have eyestrain, can read for hours online.

Here is the brand of glasses I got: http://www.gunnars.com/

1123581321 13 years ago |

You will experience much less eyestrain on the Kindle because it does not have a refresh rate, and it is ink, not light, which is better for your eye.

However, despite the Kindle engineers' efforts, the text still appears to float a bit above the screen rather than appearing to be firmly printed on the device itself. So, you will experience some slight annoyance there.

shrughes 13 years ago |

Reading off of e-ink is like reading off of paper, as far as eye strain is concerned.

Incidentally, I've heard lots of good reports about the use of f.lux to minimize eye strain on screens, and experienced it myself. You might want to try that for when you need to use screens.