TCL's NXTPAPER screen technology is meant to help reduce eye strain and fatigue.
Since I last spoke with Dr. Jennifer Tsai back in September, the founding partner and medical director of her New York-based optometry practice Line of Sight opened her second location inside the Equinox Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Dr. Tsai, who grew up in Virginia and became interested in studying optometry after a corneal ulcer and bilateral retinal tear almost cost her her vision, uses her practice to take a holistic approach to ocular health. Line of Sight, which began operation in 2020, offers services such as full-scope medical optometry, myopia management, and much more. The company even offers a curated collection of eyewear intended to, as Dr. Tsai told me last year, entice patients to wear instead of being “glasses they get and they sit there.”
I recently reconnected with Dr. Tsai via videoconference, in part because April was Women’s Eye Health and Safety Month and because she was excited to tell me all about her work with TCL in promoting its NXTPAPER technology. TCL describes it as a “full-color electronic paper display” designed to provide “elevated eye comfort and easier viewing.” First introduced in 2021, TCL boasts NXTPAPER as “a groundbreaking solution designed to address visual comfort challenges in our rapidly digitizing world, with a special focus on reducing blue light and minimizing glare.” The conceit behind the technology essentially is our constant interaction with computer screens does our eyes no favors.
NXTPAPER, named for its tactile, paper-like feel when reading and using a stylus, features an anti-glare surface, low blue light, and an adaptive color temperature. TCL currently uses the screen technology in its own lines of Android-based smartphones and tablets.
“I think [NXTPAPER] is great because the way [TCL] uses their software algorithms, It really optimizes display settings like brightness and color temperature,” Dr. Tsai said to me in extolling NXTPAPER’s virtues. “It can help to reduce blue light exposure, thereby making screen time more comfortable to look at. It also helps with reducing glare, but in terms of how the surface is treated on the tablet itself, for example, it has a nano material layer and adaptive brightness technology. All that really helps a lot because it enhances the viewing experience when you’re reading things for hours on end [by mimicking] what it’s like reading on printed paper. Because of how the screen is made, it helps minimize the glare, which helps with sensitivity when it comes to screen brightness.”
Dr. Tsai explained the allure of TCL’s work in developing NXTPAPER “naturally aligned” with her own work as an optometrist in terms of promoting positive ocular health. The company’s focus on comfort and ease-of-use, she said, “really stood out to me when I thought about the their product.” Dr. Tsai added she’s constantly helping patients with properly setting up their computers for maximum eye health, so the advent of NXTPAPER “goes hand-in-hand with suggesting something that I would personally use and recommend to my patients too.”
Dr. Tsai explained because people spend such “prolonged” hours staring at screens, it causes the eyes to become strained and fatigued more quickly. Moreover, she noted people’s so-called blink rate drops by 60% and as our tears rapidly evaporate, it causes irritation and discomfort. Things like viewing distance and font size are also factors, with Dr. Tsai saying our eyes are designed to look at objects from distance; when we look at near objects (like an iPhone’s screen) all day long, the muscle used to focus gets a workout. The issues are exacerbated with contacts.
“Finding technology to help combat those [health factors] enhances the experience overall,” Dr. Tsai said.
As a personal anecdote, as someone with low vision to the point I’m considered legally blind—which isn’t an official medical diagnosis but rather a threshold for eligibility towards receiving governmental services like Social Security—my screens, from the iPhone in my pocket to the iMac on my desk to the TCL TV in my living room, are all set to use maximum brightness. What’s more, I need to get so close to the screens to see that my face sometimes almost literally touches the glass. However terrible these conditions may be for eye strain and fatigue, already a concern because of my acuity, they are accommodations I must make in order to function. My eyesight is so bad the sheer fidelity of, say, the 4K panel on my iMac with which I’m writing this very story isn’t good enough to compensate for my vision. I need the crispness and brightness all the time. On a mobile device like my iPhone, iPad mini, or even Apple Watch, the obvious technical casualty is battery life. Again, though, these are sacrifices I need to make in the name of accessibility.
When asked what people can do to mitigate eye strain and fatigue from screens, Dr. Tsai was quick and unequivocal in offering her first tip: take regular breaks! She pointed to the “20–20–20 rule,” which refers to viewing something 20 feet away for 20 seconds every 20 minutes. This alleviates strain and fatigue. What Dr. Tsai tells her patients most often is simply to get up and do something else for a few minutes that doesn’t involve a screen. Look out the window. Go outside. Go to the bathroom. She said taking normal breaks in this manner “encourages your eyes to blink” while also encouraging them to “be in their resting state” by looking at things from distance. Elsewhere, Dr. Tsai suggested setting screen time limits on one’s devices, as well as larger text sizes to minimize squinting and refraining from screens at night before bedtime.
For her own self, Dr. Tsai makes a concerted effort to eat her own dog food—a Silicon Valley colloquialism for testing and using one’s software internally before sending it out to the wider world—by being conscious of wearing her glasses and by stepping away for her computer every hour. In addition, she uses the automatic dark mode feature on her iPhone and makes sure not to be on it right before bed. Dr. Tsai also likes using moisturizers such as cysteine, which she heartily recommends because she said it helps keep the eyes lubricated and sufficiently moistened.
In terms of feedback, Dr. Tsai said her patients are “proactive” in trying to limit screen time, telling me there’s a “general awareness” of eye strain and fatigue with the rise of AI technology and society’s nigh-incessant propensity to consume all things digital. In other words, Dr. Tsai said people come to her and ask for help in striking the right balance of screen time while protecting their eye health. A popular consultation, she said, is people coming into her office for dry eye and other regenerative treatment, which she told me is becoming more of a “maintenance” activity. These lifestyle changes are done in conjunction with the technical advice pertaining to computer setup and the like.
Looking towards the future, Dr. Tsai said she’s “hopeful” more technology like NXTPAPER will come to market. She believes more people will continue to prioritize eye health, saying it’s of high import because everyone knows screens are “something we’ll be using” in everyday life. TCL’s investment in NXTPAPER, Dr. Tsai said, is proof “there is an investment in technology in brands actually caring [to find] ways to make things more comfortable” for people’s eyeballs.
“What it comes down to, when we think about technology, it’s about the software and the hardware and what’s being built into that,” Dr. Tsai said. “I do think there’s going to be a shift in terms of more awareness [of screen time and visual health] and a conscious effort for that.”
