Whoopsie. Yep, either I did a miscalculation or the response times are even worse on 60 Hz. That said, I don't notice that much blur on 60 Hz though. I'm completely new to these kind of stuff, sadly.
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M3 worse pixel response times
- Thread starter juxr
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You will not notice the blurring after a while.
I should stop reading the forums, because then i would not been sensitive to this minor problems of this really perfect machines.
Now after getting a new MacBook i check response times with my camera and looking for moving UFOs, search for dust under the screen with a flashlight, hold my ear to the keyboard and search for coil whine, …
I am getting crazy 🤪
I should stop reading the forums, because then i would not been sensitive to this minor problems of this really perfect machines.
Now after getting a new MacBook i check response times with my camera and looking for moving UFOs, search for dust under the screen with a flashlight, hold my ear to the keyboard and search for coil whine, …
I am getting crazy 🤪
I know right!!
Fortunately I am not at the point where I would start searching for dust under the screen yet. Wow! It really gets crazy after some time. 😂😂
We indeed have amazing machines in our hands and indeed enjoy them as much as possible but, yeah that overthinking really gets us at the most unexpected times. 😵💫🥲
Yes it's definitely not the best response time and I also can see it. It's just not as bad as made out by the NotebookCheck review. Perhaps closer to 10-20ms than 100ms. I have a gaming monitor on my desktop PC with almost perfect 1ms response times, so I do notice it whenever I switch over to using my M3 MBP - but only when scrolling.
The good news is Apple will likely switch to OLED within a few years, and they will have perfect ~0ms response times.
mikethebigo
macrumors 68030
Resurrecting this thread because I've been feeling some extra angst about this since the unveiling of the OLED iPad Pros.
I have a 14" M3 MBP. For me, while the smearing you see when scrolling white text on a back background is suboptimal, what really bothers me is scrolling black text on a white background. The ghosting is pretty severe and changes the color and contrast of the text and honestly strains my eyes.
Using the ColorSync Utility, I've determined the model of my MBP's display is "0000A04E". I recently visited the Apple Store and ~75% of the 14" display models also had this model number (there was also one with 0000A04F). What's interesting is that I found a post in November of 2021, when the first 14/16" MBPs were released, from a user that claimed to have that display model number.
That means that across 3 generations - despite there being a significant flaw in the panel - the display panel used in a majority of systems today is the exact same as it was 3 years ago. I had hoped that Apple was iterating on this issue or somehow working to improve it, and I hoped that the M3 Pro displays having 20% higher SDR brightness meant there was some upgrade or change in the panel. But no, the model is identical to M1 machines.
I can't wait for the OLEDs to come to the MBPs for the improved "motion clarity" which they claimed in the recent keynote. But that's probably not for 1-2 years. I guess that's alright, but what really bums me out is that they've done nothing in the past 3 years to try to fix the issue with the current panels in the meantime.
I have a 14" M3 MBP. For me, while the smearing you see when scrolling white text on a back background is suboptimal, what really bothers me is scrolling black text on a white background. The ghosting is pretty severe and changes the color and contrast of the text and honestly strains my eyes.
Using the ColorSync Utility, I've determined the model of my MBP's display is "0000A04E". I recently visited the Apple Store and ~75% of the 14" display models also had this model number (there was also one with 0000A04F). What's interesting is that I found a post in November of 2021, when the first 14/16" MBPs were released, from a user that claimed to have that display model number.
That means that across 3 generations - despite there being a significant flaw in the panel - the display panel used in a majority of systems today is the exact same as it was 3 years ago. I had hoped that Apple was iterating on this issue or somehow working to improve it, and I hoped that the M3 Pro displays having 20% higher SDR brightness meant there was some upgrade or change in the panel. But no, the model is identical to M1 machines.
I can't wait for the OLEDs to come to the MBPs for the improved "motion clarity" which they claimed in the recent keynote. But that's probably not for 1-2 years. I guess that's alright, but what really bums me out is that they've done nothing in the past 3 years to try to fix the issue with the current panels in the meantime.
Yeah, I feel your pain. But what you're describing is the Apple way of doing things. Secret little cost-cutting compromises. Most reviewers don't notice them, so they get away with it. Apple's incredible marketing takes care of the rest.
I'm unsure if you're right about how you're discovering the model number, though. Have you tried using system_profiler at the command line? That's a dump of every bit of technical info about your Mac. It used to be the case that either Samsung or LG made the panels for MacBook Pros, so we should expect to see a mix of two different model numbers across several MacBook Pros.
mikethebigo
macrumors 68030
While prior displays were mostly LG or Samsung, my understanding is the MBP and 12.9 iPP Mini-LED displays are primarily made by Ennostar, a smaller Taiwanese company.
MrGimper
macrumors G3
I have a 16" M3 Max and the display information taken from BetterDisplay is:
Vendor ID 610 (APP)
Model ID A051
MrGimper
macrumors G3
Yes, same here. But I would like it to be more obviously a high refresh-rate monitor, really. I mean, you really notice how much better it is than a 60Hz monitor. But if you look at high refresh-rate gaming monitors then they are something else. I'm the kind of person who can tell within seconds the difference between 30 and 50/60FPS video, for example. Some people just have eyes that can tell.
There's also a weird thing I get when I'm viewing something like an image, and it disappears showing a white background. I get a very quick black ghosting effect. I've noticed this on the 14in MBP that my employer provided me, too, so I was reassured it wasn't a fault.
MrGimper
macrumors G3
I think that's the key thing... knowing it's a "feature" rather than a fault.
I recall opening my launch day M1 12.9 iPad Pro and immediately seeing the "shadow" around the perimeter of the screen. But, once I knew it was a "feature" of mini-LED, all was good.
Late to the party but, writing here from a M3 14" MBP (16/512) that I bought last week.
This is my first Apple device, let alone a computer, and I'm currently very satisfied with it. Well of course, except the pixel response times.
HOWTO: Pursuit Camera With Motion Tests - Blur Busters
Introduction Written by Mark D. Rejhon. Updated 2017. Pursuit camera are used by display manufacturers for display testing (e.g. MotionMaster, and other MPRT pursuit cameras). This is a camera that follows on-screen motion. These cameras are extremely accurate at measuring motion blur & other...blurbusters.com
Notice that it says, on the website:
"Set the camera exposure to 4 times the length of the monitor refresh. For 120Hz, use a 1/30sec camera exposure."
Which I did on my smartphone and oh dear God:
View attachment 2330812
And another one with 1920 pixels per sec instead of 960 pixels per sec:
View attachment 2330813
I could count around 8 UFOs here, which amounts to 8/120 = 67ms response time. Pretty much in line with what Notebookcheck has said, sadly.
It's a bummer because this machine gives me almost EVERYTHING I could've asked for in a laptop. Would I return it just because of this? No. But I also wonder who the hell at Apple thought this would be OK because it's clearly not for such an expensive device. I don't game on this machine and the smearing is noticeable even in daily use cases as basic as just scrolling text or moving windows around. Switching spaces is even worse because it's horizontal movement rather than vertical movement.
And guess what? It's completely fine when I set the display to 60 Hz instead of ProMotion:
View attachment 2330816
7/60 = 12 ms response time. Pretty much in line with many other displays in the market and in fact it's even better than M2 MBA, which has 25 ms response time:
Apple MacBook Air M2 Entry Review – A very good, but too expensive daily MacBook
Notebookcheck reviews the new Apple MacBook Air M2 Midnight in the base-level spec with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD storage.www.notebookcheck.net
It REALLY is a bummer.
In the end, I REALLY hope that this is something they can fix with a software update but this is a display panel so... not going to get my hopes up too much.
The more recent intel laptops faired a bit better.
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Notebookcheck.com reviews the flagship model of the MacBook Pro 16, Apple's latest multimedia laptop. The machine comes with an AMD Radeon Pro 5500M GPU and an Intel Core i9-9880H CPU, along with 16 GB of DDR4-2666 RAM and a 1 TB SSD. Read on to find out why have awarded the MacBook Pro 16 top...
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EDS66
macrumors regular
I just sold my M3Max 48GB model and got the M4Max 48GB model. Subjectively the response time seems better on the M4Max model. Fast scrolling of white text on black background, moving open finder windows quickly, etc shows virtually no ghosting. I am really pleased.
mikethebigo
macrumors 68030
EDS66
macrumors regular
Like I said, it's subjective. But it's definitely not worse. The worst one was 2019 16 inch Intel MacBook pro. Smearing of icons when a finder window was moved around quickly was horrible.
Did you see above how you can use BetterDisplay to find the monitor vendor and model?
On my 16in M1 Max, this is
Vendor ID 610 (APP)
Model ID A051
And somebody says it's the same on the 16in M3 Max, too.
Be prepared for it to be the same on your new M4 Max, too.
The NBR link I posted right above your first post showed they (2019 machines) were significantly better. I had one of those machines at the same time as two M1 Pros (14" and 16") and did not notice such a difference. It was less smooth being at 60hz though.
I imagine the performance probably shifts a bit due to panel manufacturer and I seriously doubt there was any specced improvement between M1 -> M4, but by luck of the draw you might get a performance deviation +- 20% or so.
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I think somebody established that, unlike with previous MacBook models, there's only one panel manufacturer for the range. So the experience should be pretty uniform.
EDS66
macrumors regular
I don't know.. the Intel machine I had was horrible. Smearing all over the place. Even color would shift -- white text on black background would smear and appear bluish when scrolling.
I've owned M1 Max 16, M3 Max 16 and now M4 Max 16. And all of them have been great. I think M4Max is better because I see absolutely no smearing when watching a fast-paced high bit-rate movie with a lot of action. And again, all this is subjective.