(Credit: Cole Kan; PCMag Composite, Lenovo)
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If you’ve spent any long periods of time looking at a screen before bedtime in the past decade—that’s pretty much everyone—you’ve probably at least considered turning on its low blue light mode to avoid a sleepless night.
But most of those low-blue-light modes still let a considerable amount of blue light through, potentially keeping you up at night. Lenovo just introduced a novel solution to the problem, which it says can cut blue light emission down to just 1% of the total spectrum.
Lenovo NaturaSynth, unveiled Thursday at the IFA trade show in Berlin, is a proof-of-concept computer monitor that uses specialized hardware to filter out blue light. It’s not available in any consumer product just yet, but the company is touting it as a breakthrough compared with existing blue light reduction methods.
One of the most well-known of these methods comes from Eyesafe, a firm that certifies displays from a wide variety of manufacturers—including Lenovo—based on how much blue light they filter out. The current strictest Eyesafe requirements for LCDs allow no more than 20% of blue light to be emitted at the 435nm-to-440-nm wavelength, which contains the most blue. NaturaSynth, by comparison, lets no more than 1% of blue light to filter through, according to Lenovo.
This achievement comes at no additional cost to image quality, says George Toh, vice president and general manager for the visuals business in Lenovo’s Intelligent Devices Group.
“The colors look the same as a regular monitor,” Toh says. But when you view the image through a blue filter, as depicted in the image up top, the monitor “shows almost nothing.”
To help achieve the reduction to 1%, Lenovo is harnessing the power of polarization. Instead of horizontal polarization, which your glasses lenses might include to filter out glare, NaturaSynth instead harnesses circular polarization, often used for 3D screens. (By making light waves rotate like a corkscrew, circular polarization lets you view 3D content without losing depth effects when you tilt your head.)
Should You Be Worried About Blue Light?
While screen technology that cuts blue light down to 1% is impressive compared with current technology, blue light in general isn’t conclusively bad for your health. In fact, you really can’t avoid it if you want to stay healthy: The American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) notes that sunlight—from that giant glowing orb that sustains all life—is the largest source of blue light.
So, Lenovo’s NaturaSynth concept aims to solve the same problem that existing low-blue-light technology does: eliminating disruptions to your circadian rhythm that prevent normal sleep and wake cycles. Studies have conclusively shown that blue light exposure late at night can make it harder to get to sleep, according to the AAO.
While the NaturaSynth concept may or may not make it into production, you can reduce blue light to get a better night’s sleep right now. Simple no-cost steps include turning on Night Shift, while buying blue light glasses is a relatively inexpensive alternative to investing in a costly new eye-friendly display that NaturaSynth may one day make obsolete.