No, CCFL flicker's not it. My old screen was CCFL as well, and like I said, no problem. I did run it on 10% backlight, which was most likely less bright than 0% at the new one. At full backlight (or even anything above 50%) my eyes stung after a day of staring into it.
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you are sitting in front of a bigger monitor at the same distance.
Yes, and pretty close too. The monitor's about 50 cm from the front edge of my desk, eye distance ~70 cm (or about 20"/28"). I can't put it any farther, as I have a small room where the only spot I can have it is in front of a window, so no wall mount (I do have blinds on the window, and the screen's always been there, so that's not the cause either), and a small table, and can't well fit a bigger one.
Sparkliness: visible clearly on white, kind of pesky, but my eyes hurt from gaming too, even in games with only a minimum of white. Disappears at about 50% grey (e.g. the "grey, 50%" page background in MS Office), though I know the sparkly coating is always there even if you can't see the effect.
I use a 6500K sRGB preset color setting that's pretty warm and easy on the eyes. I've lowered contrast to 50%, brightness is at 0%, software at default (except nVidia control panel gamma at 0.92 instead of 1.0).
If I decided to get a different screen, do you think I'd have this problem on every IPS? Or on every sparkly-coated screen? Or is it the high brightness?
Also, when I put up a black screen, the panel has a rather strong bleed of glow when viewed from an angle - I believe this is what is referred to as "IPS glow". I understand that it's a limitation of the technology that cannot be adjusted away, except that it decreases in magnitude with overall brightness of the display. I found that in order not to see the glow head-on, I'd have to be about 40-50 cm farther away from the screen than I normally am - an impossibility given my available space. Could this be the source of my problem?
Re: brightness setting: I've tuned it down quite a bit, so much so that most of my black depth went down the drain, and still it's kind of uncomfortable to look at. Again, I suspect the glow a bit. Maybe glow+sparkles? That'd mean no IPS for me, or a much bigger table, or a much smaller screen, though...
BTW, I'm new here, how do I give you the "best post" award? -Thanks