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

[now i see it]

I'd take gray blacks over this weird effect

 

[NorthernSkyLights]

The day I get a iPad is the day it has OLED. For now I’ll enjoy my games on my iPhone. Perhaps in 2022 there do OLEDS for all iPads. One can only hope. It’s hard to go back with a IPS display after seeing how awesome OLED looks.

 

[Hori]

Ew.

What a garbage product. Over priced with a under powered toddler of a operating system.

 

[IceStormNG]

I'd take gray blacks over this weird effect

Gray blacks on regular LCDs are also only an issue in really dark environments. If your room is well lit, you don't notice it. The bloom is a bit more noticeable, but also hardly if in a well-lit room.

In really dark room, both are noticable. But the "gray" blacks look more consistent. It's a trade-off in both situations.

 

[jk1221]

I'd take gray blacks over this weird effect

I think this would be my personal conclusion too. Overall more uniform lower "blacky blacks" is less distracting than the weird blooming.

 

[MysteryMii215]

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.

The point is that people like to point out "no blooming" as an advantage of OLED, when this is not true.

 

[arvinsim]

Was really wanting the 12.9 for the mini-led screen.

But this issue killed my enthusiasim for it.

 

[dude-x]

This is not a big deal. MiniLED is still LED and it's not per-pixel like microLED. But it does look brighter and does have deeper contrast than LED. The blooming is to be expected in dark lighting, but dark lighting is not ergonomic unless you have accessibility issues.

I have a fancy LED LG monitor with lots of zones and the blooming isn't so bad, but you're definitely reminded that it's not OLED.

Reason why iPad has MiniLED because the screen is expected to have lots of static elements, and OLED would make burn in a lot more noticeable.

But iPad will be the first to get MicroLED (or maybe the watch will be first, but iPad will be second), and at that time, it will be the cheapest MicroLED display you can buy.

 

[IceStormNG]

LCD: "low" contrast (compared to the other)
LCD + FALD: Bloom, backlight "lag"
OLED: Possible burn in (pixel shift reduces that greatly, but still possible), color accuracy depending on brightness, degrades over time.

Pick your poison.

 

[Hyuga]

Some people in here obviously have not seen high end local dimming tv’s and how they behave.

future updates will likely fine tune it to slightly better but it cannot do miracles. Mine is arriving today and I cannot wait do some experiments.

I don’t think dimming is THAT bad if brightness isn’t high, but we will see..

 

[dude-x]

Lol even OLED has some degree of blooming

Light has properties of a wave so it "shine" but the pixels next to it are measurably near black.

 

[Td1970]

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.

Which is kinda sad from a 2 trillion dollar company.

 

[Wombert]

For those folks new to this phenomenon... it doesn't look even remotely as pronounced in real life as it does in these photos. Cameras tend to greatly exaggerate the effect; it's the same with black uniformity in backlights. When looked at with human eyes, it's much less noticeable, and always most pronounced when small bright elements are displayed on a black background.

This is an effect that's been known in the LCD TV world for years, where the same OLED-vs-LCD debate has been raging on, Mini LED backlight or not.

And FWIW, the reason Apple isn't using OLED is not just due to price, but also max brightness - unlike a TV, a tablet tends to be used in brighter environments, and OLED screens can't get nearly as bright as LED backlit LCDs without massive impacts on panel life or power consumption.

For the same reason, LED backlit TVs still handily beat OLEDs whenever daytime viewing or HDR brightness are important to buyers.

 

[IceStormNG]

Which is kinda sad from a 2 trillion dollar company.

No no.. that's HOW you become a 2 trillion dollar company.

 

[btrach144]

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.

Disagree. Scenes in movies where there are light posts have blooming.

also, others showed more real world examples of blooming.

 

[HerbertDerb]

I got today my 12.9" 2021. Yes, there is some blooming but those pictures make it seem 15x worse than it really is in IRL.
I tried to take picture but you really cant.


This video is in korean(?) (I don't speak or really understand that language at all. Sorry)
But it really shows the difference in real life and what overexposure in cameras can do.

 

[anthogag]

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.

I have the 4th gen 12.9" iPad Pro and I didn't notice "blooming" until today's article. Perhaps also because I hardly ever see the really strong contrast of white text on a black background. I use my iPad like a normal person. I don't seek-out problems like worst-case blooming of white on black.

 

[dude-x]

Which is kinda sad from a 2 trillion dollar company.

The new iPad is the cheapest MiniLED display you can buy...

 

[IceStormNG]

I have the 4th gen 12.9" iPad Pro and I didn't notice "blooming" until today's article. Perhaps also because I hardly ever see the really strong contrast of white text on a black background. I use my iPad like a normal person. I don't look seek-out problems like worst-case blooming of white on black.

The 4th gen has no FALD and therefore no Bloom. The 5th gen is the new M1 iPad.

 

[nvmls]

Guys what's the point, you are still gonna buy it.

 

[adriantepes]

I dont mind blooming but I am really dissapointed that the brightness is capped at 600 nits according to some reviews. This was going to be my perfect "reading articles outside in the sun" device where 1000 nits would be great.

 

[Td1970]

No no.. that's HOW you become a 2 trillion dollar company.

By giving the customer less?

 

[Dainin]

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.

It is WORSE than these photos show. Multiple times I’ve attempted to capture what I’m seeing on camera but my iphone can’t effectively capture it due to the contrast of the scene. It looks HORRIBLE compared to a standard LCD since the bloom is so pronounced. On top of that, when watching Netflix at night the blooming goes into the dark bars above and below the film are constantly changing causing a huge distraction.

This may be the first iPad I return, having owned every single generation since release.

 

[w5jck]

I'm not going to defend the new screens on the newest iPad Pros, mainly because I have not seen nor used one yet. They are way out of my price range. I had to save a long while to get up the money for my iPad Air 2020! However, I will point out a few things.

First, user photographs of other device screens are never going to look the same to us as the photographed device screen's actual screen does to the user who photographed it. There are simply too many variables including type of camera used, type of processing performed on the images, type of color format and space used, and the wide variety of screens we the viewers will use to look at them. So wait and look at an actual iPad Pro M1 before you decide one way or the other.

Second, high contrast will look bad to most of us regardless of screen type or device it is viewed on. Our eyes can adjust to the difference between bright white and dark black, but it takes time for our brains to process the information. Here is the thing, read a few lines of bright white text on a dark black background, then look away. You will most likely get the so-called "mini blinds" effect where for a while you see blurry dark lines in front of you. So don't ever expect bright white on dark black to look good, period. But if blooming does occur with darker grays and colors contrasted with brightly lit areas of the screen, then that can definitely be an issue worth noting.

Blooming is a big topic on looking for new 4K HDR TVs as so many of the new TVs still experience it to one degree or another. Clearly it is not that easy to get rid of in an affordable manner else more TV manufacturers would have done so by now, at least on their TVs costing $800 or more. Companies like Apple and others will try to use fancy tech names to convince us their screens are better than the competitions's screens, but those tech buzz words are often just BS jargon for "we tried to make it a little less terrible." It is the high tech industry's version of the home health industry's "snake oil."

 

[hammie14]

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.

Totally agree, yes there is a tiny bit in a really dark room is looking at white text on a black background, but its really not a problem for me. All these images and people saying that the new iPad is crap, I’m guessing most of them don’t even own the new iPad and just going on the BS they see on this forum!

It is WORSE than these photos show. Multiple times I’ve attempted to capture what I’m seeing on camera but my iphone can’t effectively capture it due to the dimness of the scene. It looks HORRIBLE compared to a standard LCD since the bloom is so pronounced. On top of that, when watching Netflix at night the blooming goes into the dark bars above and below the film are constantly changing causing a huge distraction.

This may be the first iPad I return, having owned every single generation since release.

Definitely not seeing this on my ipad, on Netflix of a night time I see it blooming on the title of the show but this is only there for a few seconds, I have not seen anything bleed into the black bars.