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Would a 15" or 17" be better on my eyes

M

macguy360

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 23, 2011
836
512
I have owned an 11" macbook air for about 8 months now and at first it didnt seem to be an issue but after using it for long periods of time I realize that it strains my eyes to look at the screen, especially when typing or reading new articles.

Can anyone make a suggestion as to if a 15" or 17" macbook pro would be better for using for extended periods of time without putting strain on a person's eyes?
 
The 17" is pretty high resolution but has more physical size so you could increase the size of your fonts and windows to your specifications.
 
pretty sure any computer will strain your eyeballs after a while. while the screen gets bigger, and more fits on it, the text gets smaller (which i think you can adjust). go have a look for yourself. I would have walked away with a 17" if I had gone to the store.
 
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The 17 is 1920x1200 resolution. and the 15 comes in low res (1440x900) and hi res (1680x1050) versions
 
17 inch Macbook Pro is the best in my opinion

I would pick the 17 inch and I realized owning a 15inch macbook pro and 13 inch that the 17 is way superior to my preference and to me i felt less strain. I was first worried about buying a 17 inch but once i had both 15 17 and even 13inch, 17inch was the way to go!
 
Do not pick the 17" if you're prone to eyestrain. I had it and the fonts/menus were so tiny at that resolution, it drove me nuts. I had to switch back to the 15", which is the sweet spot in terms of size for me.

The standard 15" (1440x900) is probably what you want. It's a regular size resolution on a bigger screen, so you get more space than an 11" without everything being tiny. I read a lot of scripts, and the constant zooming was not fun.

Yes, you can zoom in pages and fonts on a high res 17", but some things you cannot, and if you have eyesight issues it will matter.
 
If cost doesn't matter, I would go for the MBP that has HR screen. With that said, I have owned both 15" MBP and now a 17" MBP. My 15" wasn't HR so the resolution was okay. It looked like my previous black macbook that I had. Now, the 17" comes standard with HR and it's a great screen. It looked like the HDTV on my TV. There was blur when I played a movie and the blacks were solid and colors weren't washed out. It's not really fair to compare the 15" MBP to this one since it wasn't HR but the difference was night and day. Movie overall looked washed out. Blacks weren't solid at well and colors were almost washed out.

As for as the "small" issue regarding the HR in the 17", I don't understand it really. Maybe because I have 20/20. The size of everything was pretty much similar to my 15" MBP, just a little bigger. Sites had more white space to center the content. However, I have always found a fix for sizing. Safari, you can make text bigger. Dock, you can make bigger. Desktop, you can make bigger. And I think pretty much all have their own text size. Especially Preview, when I crop something small enough and use "actual size" it really is the actual size of the physical product.

But, it's your money. This is just an advice, the same one I took for my current 17" MBP
 
As an example, I went from an 11" Air straight to a 17" anti glare MBP.

With the 11", I was suffering all manner of eye pain and reading problems. Since moving to the Pro, which has the same pixel density, I've not had any problems. I think it's likely due to the vastly superior contrast on the Pro. I found when using the Air that I was straining a lot and the screen showed issues that weren't fixable by changing color profiles.
 
17” is better. You can adjust the font size by reducing the screen resolution. The font will be bigger than on 15” or 11” at the same resolution.
 
The 17" isn't that much faster, these days with quad cores in them they all run quickly. I got rid of my 17" antiglare MBP and got the hires 15" instead. Much easier on the eyes. I can't stand that standard 1440x900 resolution of the 15" as it is like a Lego computer, the resolution is just too low.
 
i get eyestrain on my 15" 1440x900 after a while, i get it on my 24" Samsung external display also

I think eyestrain has to do with your eyes more than what your looking at or a combination or both
 
iisforiphone said:
i get eyestrain on my 15" 1440x900 after a while, i get it on my 24" Samsung external display also

I think eyestrain has to do with your eyes more than what your looking at or a combination or both
Click to expand...

This isn't necessarily true, even people with very good eyesight can suffer from eyestrain after prolonged computer/TV use.

I read a very good article that explained that a large number of people use monitors that are set too high, and as a result, their eyes become exhausted more quickly because the eyelid muscles are having to put more work into staying fully open.

There's also glare and resolution and countless other factors, of course. But taking heed of the above advice certainly has made an appreciable difference to how I feel after using my computer for a few hours.

I'd also strongly recommend anyone who uses their computer after dark to install f.lux, it's a truly brilliant little application that changes your monitor colour-temperature to suit your environment better, so that your eyes are not being constantly blasted by blue light, regardless of the time of day.

I've also installed it on my jailbroken iPhone, and the best thing is, it's free!
 
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