It doesn't need to use PWM dimming because it's an LCD display.
Are you 100% sure it doesn't use dithering? Even my lowly iPhone SE 2022 seems to use it. I don't own a tablet but everyone I have tried in store causes problems. The last one that worked for me was the 9th gen iPad.
Most of Apple”s LCD displays use PWM dimming of the
— backlight —. All the displays that are “XDR” use thousands of LED backlights that are dimmed to different levels with PWM. And of course they use temporal dithering too, so it’s absolute chaos with everything flickering at different frequencies.
I didn’t personally test for temporal dithering on the iPad but search results said no.
It may be that some dithering is still there (even the iPhone 6S uses some) but it’s not as aggressive as what’s used on the P3 enhanced displays.
Also, using Low Power mode on the SE3 gimps the GPU - so dithering is greatly reduced if not eliminated on that phone which has helped people. Low Power mode can be used on iPad too — likely with the same benefits.
I didn’t need to use it since the display doesn’t bother me, but the option is there.
I have set the iPad display settings to the usual eyestrain relief settings:
Reduce White Point,
Reduce transparency
Reduce Motion
And I set a color filter in accessibility settings to grayscale, then slid the slider all the way to the left (minimum) so that it barely is noticeable.
Dong that takes away the typical super punchy, over saturated annoying colors and icon colors that are a hallmark of iOS/iPadOS.
Display is much calmer to look at with slightly subdued colors using that filter setting.
