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External Monitor Screen Burn

X

Xil3

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 4, 2007
190
101
London
I have 2 external monitors connected to my 2021 MBP 14' - it has been working fine for the past few days, but just today I noticed that on one of the monitors, it looks like it has an image kinda burnt into the screen; but you can only see it when the screen is a bit darker. For example, if I have Netflix playing a movie, I can make out a slight image that is 'burnt' into the background. I tried different dark sites and I saw the same.

Tried restarting the MBP, thinking it's just a weird bug, but the exact same burnt image is still there, on the exact same external monitor. I started worrying that it might be the monitor itself; so I connected it to my Windows desktop, and it worked fine. Ran all the same tests to see if I can replicate it, but nothing.

Now, this burnt in image thing, also flickers a bit. I'm honestly not sure what is going on. If I watch Netflix on my other monitor, it looks fine. Even the built in screen on the MBP seems fine. It's just the one monitor.

Thoughts?
 
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Based on my testing, I'm positive that this is coming from the MBP somehow, just not sure why it would be doing that.
 
Looks like it may have been the cable; but not sure how it was retaining a burnt image after reboot. I just swapped cables and it seems fine.
 
I ran into the same problem with the M1 Mac mini & two 4K Dell monitors, which would also frequently blackout without warning. The burn-in would usually appear after displaying pages with black backgrounds & randomly resolve itself over time. As for the blackouts, VRR would reduce but not eliminate them versus constant 60 hz. My Dell XPS runs the same displays & cables just fine, while my 2014 MBP 15 runs both monitors without a hitch via Mini DisplayPort.

The new MBP 16 fares even worse than the Mac mini, with even more frequent blackouts & VRR not making a difference versus 60 hz. Swapping cables didn't work either. Rtings says Dell display drivers have Mac compatibility issues, but I don't have a different 4K display to isolate the problem, unfortunately.
 
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