Laptop displays performance: Compliance assessment with visual ergonomics requirements

The use of display devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops is now massive and continuous in everyday life. It, therefore, becomes increasingly important to be aware of the performance of these devices, not only in terms of the tasks to be performed but also in terms of interaction with humans and therefore knows any possible effect on the ergonomics of vision. Following previous research activities conducted by the authors on the assessment of the visual ergonomics at video display terminal workstations, the aim of this study is to evaluate the ergonomics of human-system interaction of laptop displays. In details, a sample of 57 laptop displays is analyzed in accordance with the requirements of the EN ISO 9241-3xx series of international standards related to the display luminance, luminance ratio, contrast non-uniformity. An extensive luminance measurement campaign was carried out using a special pattern that allowed to measure the luminance in 13 different areas of the displays. The results obtained with this activity showed a great luminance variability between different displays. Almost all the displays are able to emit high levels of display luminance, and almost all the displays meet the requirement of contrast non-uniformity. However, several devices did not meet the recommended values of luminance ratio. Furthermore, the authors created a simplified graph to allow a rapid evaluation of the performance of the displays. This method could be periodically used in practice in order to evaluate the residual performance level.