Apple Says iPad Pro's XDR Display Designed to Minimize Blooming, but Some Users Still Notice the Effect

[MacRumors]

Some users are noticing more blooming on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro's Liquid Retina XDR mini-LED display than expected, despite Apple's claims that the effect is minimized.

According to recently published Apple Support documents, the iPad Pro's Liquid Retina XDR display is designed to improve on "the trade-offs of typical local dimming systems, where the extreme brightness of LEDs might cause a slight blooming effect," suggesting that the effect should be minimized.

The Liquid Retina XDR display improves upon the trade-offs of typical local dimming systems, where the extreme brightness of LEDs might cause a slight blooming effect because the LED zones are larger than the LCD pixel size. This display is designed to deliver crisp front-of-screen performance with its incredibly small custom mini-LED design, industry leading mini-LED density, large number of individually controlled local dimming zones, and custom optical films that shape the light while maintaining image fidelity and extreme brightness and contrast.

In spite of this, some iPad Pro owners are noticing more blooming than expected and highlighting their experience on social media.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1396138340450177027

Thanks to the adoption of mini-LED display technology, the iPad Pro features 2,500 local dimming zones. Local dimming allows some areas of an LED screen to dim almost off for darker, truer blacks, while preserving the bright parts of the screen. The technology can increase the contrast ratio of images significantly and enable the intense highlights of HDR content.

On a display with local dimming, if a zone is lit up and an adjacent zone is not, there may be an artifact toward the part of the screen that becomes brighter than its neighboring zone called "blooming."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1395217045885657092

OLED displays, such as those used on the iPhone 12 lineup, do not need local dimming since they are able to turn off individual pixels to achieve true blacks, all with no blooming effect. Local dimming can be a way to get near-OLED levels of picture quality, but it struggles to achieve the same level of contrast.

Blooming on the new 12.9-inch iPad Pro is therefore to be expected to some extent, but users seem to be divided about how bad the effect actually is.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1395784220270907400

Some MacRumors Editors experienced blooming with the 12.9-inch iPad Pro's XDR display, but others found that blooming was not noticeable at all.

Where blooming is visible, especially on HDR content with isolated bright shapes on a black background, it is most prominent on the iPad Pro when viewing the display from an off-axis angle and in a darkened environment. That being said, MacRumors Editors believe that the effect of blooming on the iPad Pro looks less severe in person than it does in images, likely due to exposure and image processing.

Although mini-LED display technology is expected to come to new MacBook Pro models later this year, other rumors suggest that the company is looking to use OLED displays for iPad and MacBook devices from 2022.

Article Link: Apple Says iPad Pro's XDR Display Designed to Minimize Blooming, but Some Users Still Notice the Effect

 

[mozumder]

I don't know why Apple just didn't use OLED in the first place for the iPads..

 

[Kylo83]

Mines going back, this tech is not great

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

Lawsuit coming soon... SMH

 

[ThisBougieLife]

Looks bad but white text against a black background frazzles my eyes anyway. (I hate looking at the Wikipedia app on dark mode). I’m sure OLED will be coming to the iPad eventually.

 

[IceStormNG]

I don't know why Apple just didn't use OLED in the first place for the iPads..

Money.
OLED is way more expensive especially on larger panels. miniLED is a regular LCD panel with FALD backlight. It's much cheaper than good quality OLED panels.

 

[jk1221]

Such a magical display!

It is really no better than the old displays other than the odd left field use case. Its a tiny step forward, really sideways as they wot stick with this tech, but not enough to justify the increased cost. Or buy a new ipad for it

 

[anthogag]

Are you people sure this isn't BS from android fanboys and girls? The tiny backlights are very tiny. To bleed like these pictures show into the blackness is strange.

 

[dumiku]

Don't worry it is just a trial🙂

 

[DNichter]

I don't think I could deal with this. I am happy with my 2018 Pro and will upgrade when they move to OLED. To see this on such an expensive machine is a disappointment.

 

[baryon]

This is the issue with local dimming. It's not great in a dark room because you can really tell the difference between "black with no backlight" and "black with backlight". Though no screen is ideal in a dark room, which is why even in professional color grading studios you have some dim lights all around the walls. Your eyes will adjust to a brighter environment and won't be so sensitive to the slight differences between dark shades. It's also not great for graphics or anything with very defined contours like text. It's best for films and photos. Usually on a studio monitor you'd never view interface or text, you'd only get a video signal straight to the monitor, so this issue hardly ever shows up. Not sure why Apple thought this tech would be suited for an iPad or any consumer device. It's fine for the Apple Pro display XDR because you're expected to use it mostly on video in a controlled environment. But not sure it's best for a device that displays a ton of graphics and text and is bound to be viewed in every random environment imaginable.

 

[albert421]

Lol even OLED has some degree of blooming

 

[MrGimper]

No such issues here, but then I’ve been running 14.6 RC since mine came out of the box. I can’t get noticeable blooming on anything other than maybe the battery/Wi-fi indicators when at 100% brightness in a pitch black room, white on black. Display is better in every way.

 

[jk1221]

Are you people sure this isn't BS from android fanboys and girls? The tiny backlights are very tiny. To bleed like these pictures show into the blackness is strange.

And "de Nile" is a river in Egypt.

It is well documented on these Apple-centric forums and Apple just said it is normal because the dimming zones are bigger than the pixels.

12.9 2021 owners - returning device for blooming and/or edge shadowing?

poll time

forums.macrumors.com

iPad Pro Blooming discussion [merged]

There is a reason there are such conflicting reports of blooming and it’s because the local dimming is only working for certain apps. And the local dimming does not work for menu overlays which is why you get blooming from that. It is the exact same way on my Sony Z9D TV which has 800 dimming...

forums.macrumors.com

iPad Pro Blooming discussion [merged]

There is a reason there are such conflicting reports of blooming and it’s because the local dimming is only working for certain apps. And the local dimming does not work for menu overlays which is why you get blooming from that. It is the exact same way on my Sony Z9D TV which has 800 dimming...

forums.macrumors.com

That doesn't mean it is acceptable on an $1100+ device, but expected.

 

[xxray]

And some of you still kept proclaiming that mini-LED > OLED.

 

[ian87w]

Bloom-gate?

 

[zorinlynx]

Are the MiniLED backlight "pixels" either fully on or fully off?

I wonder how this will affect white on black terminal windows if this tech comes to new iMacs or Macbooks. I use those all the time. If setting the background color to a very dark grey solves the issue it won't be as big a deal.

 

[Rogifan]

Every time a new Apple product comes out there is some gate that supposedly is the worst thing ever. How many people are noticing this using the iPad as they normally would? And is this a hardware issue or something that can be adjusted/minimized via a software update?

 

[the future]

The picture in this article is such absolute BS. The display never looks nearly like this IRL. This looks like a severly overexposed image someone took to make the iPad look bad.

And yes, I do have the new 12.9 with me since friday. The screen is absolutely awesome and I see a very clear difference to my old 12.9 (2018), and not just with HDR content.

 

[Vangeli]

…the previous iPad Pros were LCD? I thought they were OLED.

Welp.

 

[locovaca]

You’re looking at it wrong.

 

[ThisBougieLife]

Lol even OLED has some degree of blooming

Meh, some, but it's really minimal on my iPhone 11 Pro. Even using it at night in the dark and looking at the Apple logo against a black background, it's nothing like what's being shown in these photos.

 

[Mcckoe]

all those photos shown, are examples of the display running outside of the new API directive for min-LED… even the startup logo hasn’t been updated yet. Give it a few updates and that blooming will be for the most part gone. The edge dimming on the other hand is just part of the display tech. Overall Mini-LED is a good tech, this blooming is a solvable ”color recalibration” issue.

 

[IceStormNG]

…the previous iPad Pros were LCD? I thought they were OLED.

Welp.

miniLED is also just LCD with a different back light.

Only some more expensive iPhone variants use OLED. Even the Pro XDR display (the 5-6k$ thing) does bloom because of the limitation of FALD.

 

[Somian]

Wow. I was considering to add the 13“ iPad Pro to the household, but this is a deal-braker (although expected.)

Local Dimming is the first thing I turn off on a TV that has this feature. I was looking forward to a beefy iPad, but until it’s possible to turn local dimming off, it won’t be that one. (Currently using a first-generation 13“ iPad Pro with no local dimming and it’s a Great device).