M4 MacBook Pro Uses Quantum Dot Display Technology

[foliovision]

I'm simply unable to due to the issues caused by Temporal Light Modulation, PWM and Pulse Amplitude Modulation - to me, all MacBook Pro displays since at least the M series have led to bad eyestrain within minutes of use, and an inability to focus properly, especially on text. It looks like everything is under water, text is blurry and seems to float around, and the display seems too dark to me even at full blast.

My issues aren't anywhere near as bad as yours, but with my M1 MBP 16", after working on it for 1.5 or 2 hours, I would get a headache. It wasn't an issue where I turned it on and disliked the screen or colours. No, it looked great to me.

I have no such issues with my LCD panels where I often work eight to twelve hours in a day. Even less eye strain since I installed BetterDisplay and turned off GPU dithering. Nor do I ever have issues with my MBP 17" with matte display. I ended up selling off the M1 MBP and would have to buy a 15" MBP with LCD display if I wanted to get back to portable computing (for now, I'll just take the 17" on the road with its limitations).

I face issues with OLED iPhones as well. The 14 Pro Max gave me all kinds of issues, a crossgrade to a 13 Pro was much better. This was before I knew much about PWM on iPhones. Turns out the 13 Pro has double the refresh rate (480Hz vs 240Hz). I don't tempt fate with iPhone screens and use them for short stints (mostly under 10 minutes).

Similarly, the M1 iPad Pro was a complete disaster. I use my iPad Pro 12.9" for a lot of passive content consumption, reading. The M1 iPad Pro display looked amazing with absolute blacks but headaches would start within forty minutes and then persist from the OLED dithering. I stuck with my 2018 iPad Pro 12.9 with LED display. I can read for hours and hours on that iPad with no issues. Great device.

In short, Apple is prioritising flashy technology over customer health. Not everybody feels these effects, but for those of us who do, it's worth keeping close track of screen display technology and choosing hardware accordingly.*

* Due to screen lmitations and privacy issues with iPhones/iOS, I tried a Google Pixel Pro 8 with GrapheneOS. The screen caused me such eye strain, that I double downed on my commitment to the 13 Pro for the next couple of years. There's no interesting phone for a photographer which has eye-friendly technology right now and can accept a privacy-oriented OS (LineageOS).

 

[Blur Busters]

I face issues with OLED iPhones as well. The 14 Pro Max gave me all kinds of issues, a crossgrade to a 13 Pro was much better. This was before I knew much about PWM on iPhones. Turns out the 13 Pro has double the refresh rate (480Hz vs 240Hz). I don't tempt fate with iPhone screens and use them for short stints (mostly under 10 minutes).

How is your experience with external 240Hz-480Hz desktop OLEDs connected to a Mac?

Do they improve/worsen your eyestrain? The desktop OLEDs (like LG 240-480Hz screens) don't use PWM dimming, and their brightness dip is 5% (minor dimming) rather than 100% (full off-to-black) caused by pixel-reset refresh cycle logic instead of brightness dimming logic.

(I often use one connected to my MacBook during TestUFO development. I have a Thunderbolt cable for KVM+E to switch between my PC and Mac with my gaming monitors via a single cable hotplug.)

It would be interesting to know more data from end users, since I run into users who get "eyestrain from all OLEDs" versus "Less eyestrain on high-Hz desktop OLEDs than LCDs" versus "I get eyestrain on iPhone OLEDs but not desktop high-Hz OLEDs" versus strange eyestrain-experience patterns.

There's over 100+ ergonomic problems that affect <1% of population, and the trigger has not consistently always been PWM (unlike the PWM assumers, which are generally only right part of the time); one users' eyestrain disappeared when they went to a desktop 240Hz OLED that used Gorilla Glass instead of the usual antiglare filters; but this did not consistently solve other peoples' eyestrain problem.

A major problem of those "1% causes" is we have tons of legitimate issues mixed in with assumed issues, simultaneously in the noise of true science & tinfoil hat stuff going on in all the online medias. (I try to get signal out of the noise). But I'm starting to begin more research into display-ergonomics, and will probably be writing a white paper about the various kinds of display flickers (PWM and non-PWM). I already wrote one ("The Stroboscopic Effect of Finite Refresh Rates"), but that is more visual rather than health related; though stroboscopics are a known trigger at frequencies beyond flicker fusion.

Screens are imperfect windows of real life...

 

[foliovision]

How is your experience with external 240Hz-480Hz desktop OLEDs connected to a Mac?

Based on my experience with phones and tablets, and the M1 16", I haven't attempted to bring OLED to the desktop. I'm turning off FRC, graphic card dithering, anything which flickers. It seems I'm sensitive to flicker (doesn't have to PWM). FRC is the most sinister as it means that even a monitor which doesn't flicker does. I prefer straight IPS LCD panels, and find the contrast ratio enough and the blacks dark enough.

I followed someone's advice now on Font Smoothing Adjuster and am enjoying the crisp text very much. Turning off font smoothing doesn't help for non-standard resolutions on 4K (i.e. 2560 x 1440), it's very useful for full retina though.

 

[JSENNY25]

Hi Folks,

Not that it matters, but I ended up with the M4 Pro with the M4 Pro Processor.... 24/512.

Amazon has it on sale today for 1799 and Best Buy matched it even though the listed price was 1839 with a $39 dollar coupon.

I guess looking at it that way, I paid 1699 for the M3 pro and a $100 more for all that the M4 pro has to offer.

Still a little wary because the base M4 is going to fit my needs, but between it not being available locally, my online order being stuck in 'pending pickup' for five days, and my own impatience...I pulled the trigger lol.

My only observation is that if no one told me about the screen- I am pretty certain I would have noticed the difference! I have a window in my room so there are times it is pretty bright in here. The screen is great!

 

[NTH]

The dude nuked that post and his past ones too! I guess PWM isn't a big deal after all. Phew. I was worried.

Actually there is another who is affected... and according to a new study MANY people are affected by PWM. So, please dont be so quick to judge. I just bought a Macbook pro M4 16" hoping I could use it without problems. I have a Macbook pro 15" mid 2014 and can use it all day with no burning eyes, migraines etc. The new M4 has such harsh whites now matter how much you play with the display settings. After an hour it starts getting painful. It is too bad the PWM poster was bullied so much that he deleted the comments. I was actually interested in what he had to say. https://www.yahoo.com/tech/research-confirms-samsung-google-apple-184537896.html

 

[john123]

Actually there is another who is affected... and according to a new study MANY people are affected by PWM. So, please dont be so quick to judge. I just bought a Macbook pro M4 16" hoping I could use it without problems. I have a Macbook pro 15" mid 2014 and can use it all day with no burning eyes, migraines etc. The new M4 has such harsh whites now matter how much you play with the display settings. After an hour it starts getting painful. It is too bad the PWM poster was bullied so much that he deleted the comments. I was actually interested in what he had to say. https://www.yahoo.com/tech/research-confirms-samsung-google-apple-184537896.html

I imagine he’ll be back. Probably will create a new account. We’ll know because it’ll say “macrumors newbie.”

 

[Blur Busters]

Actually there is another who is affected... and according to a new study MANY people are affected by PWM.

This is correct, whether lighting industry or screen industry.

I'm lucky in that myself, "I can detect PWM indirectly but I am not eyestrained by it". There's a kind of a continuum;

Things that is roughly analogous in a scale:

(MIN)
"I can't see it at all"
"I don't notice it unless I am looking HARD for it while rolling my eyes quick"
"I see it now that I know how to look for it" (like being taught about 3:2 pulldown)
"I see it and am mildly annoyed by it"
"I get minor headaches after a while for some strange reason"
"I get head splitting migraines"
"I'm going to start a holy war over this"
(MAX)

Old lighting industry scientific studies analyzed flicker in fluorescent lights, and found that people could see stroboscopics to the thousands of Hz:

(Page 6 of old lighting industry blind study paper, part of why electronic fluorescent light ballasts kind of standardized at 20,000Hz in the era before LED became common)

In other words, when intentionally pushed a human to look for it, most of population could detect it but wasn't bothered. They manifest itself as stroboscopic stepping effects (motion blurs become a serrated-knife effect):

This was from an old 120Hz CCFL early gaming monitor from year 2012 (ASUS VG278H) with a 360Hz PWM, so everytime things went 120fps, you had triple duplicate images (and because of LCD GtG was slower than a refresh cycle, you had duplicate images on the ghost trail, for a total of six or more duplicate images).

If you remember the old days (retro), this is roughly analoguous to CRT/plasma 30fps at 60Hz, but can be (indirectly) detected at higher rates at rates higher than flicker fusion threshold because your eyes defacto does a long exposure over the stroboscopid period.

So, thusly, scientifically during eyetrack vectors different from screen-motion vectors, you end up seeing duplicate images at 500Hz PWM, even if your flicker fusion threshold is only 85Hz.

And it mis-matches real-life (displays are imperfect windows of real life), because it's not a continuous motion blur like real life, because the PWM "chops" up motion blur, when eyetracking moving objects (or a panning map, or a scrolling browser page, etc).

Most people aren't bothered by this, but it nauseas and/or motionsicks and/or headaches and/or distracts a small percentage of human population, kind of like a vertigo-disconnect effect.

So even if true full-on PWM headaches affect only 1% of population (even if more than 50% of population can see PWM effects, but aren't headached by it, such as ability to see double images during CRT 30fps at 60Hz), that's still 1M people complaining out of 100M people market.

PWM-free is kind of an Accessibility Feature, as a result, many manufacturers release FlickerFree screens (e.g. ergonomic IPS screens with certain kinds of low-blue-light PWM-free backlights). Ironically, a different subsegment of population are bothered by IPS screens but get less eyestrain on 240Hz+ OLED screens -- because of a different eyestrain factor. These people occasionally accidentally blame PWM when their eyestrain was caused by something else.

Screens currently produce over ~100 niche motion sickness / nausea / eyestrain / headache (or any discomfort) triggers, and a manufacturer can't optimize-out all of them for a five-sigma of population... Some are as mudane as prescription eyeglass incompatibilities, and some are niche like a low-quality antiglare filter, etc.

 

[left shark fan]

The new MacBook Pro displays also use PWM (pulse-width modulation), even at 100% brightness. Embarrassing.

So are they worse than the M1 Macbook Pro displays for PWM? Because I currently have an M1 and am looking to upgrade.

 

[john123]

So are they worse than the M1 Macbook Pro displays for PWM? Because I currently have an M1 and am looking to upgrade.

“Worse” isn’t the word I would use because ***most people*** aren’t bothered by it and many can’t even detect it at all. Millions of people, myself included, have used both PWM and non-PWM displays.

I do not mean to trivialize the issue. It is scientifically valid. But when PWM zealots go so far as to create new fake Internet forums accounts to “corroborate” what they said, that’s a level of disingenuousness that people should take into account.

 

[left shark fan]

“Worse” isn’t the word I would use because ***most people*** aren’t bothered by it and many can’t even detect it at all. Millions of people, myself included, have used both PWM and non-PWM displays.

I do not mean to trivialize the issue. It is scientifically valid. But when PWM zealots go so far as to create new fake Internet forums accounts to “corroborate” what they said, that’s a level of disingenuousness that people should take into account.

Thanks for the answer John. I also have issues with PWM hence why I asked. Especially the OLED phones I react rather badly on with eye-strain and blurry vision, so currently sticking with my iPhone 11. The M1 Macbook Pro i've been able to use without any problems so that is great. I was just wondering if I would also be able to use the M4 Macbook Pro without any problems since they made a change to the display. Did anybody try out the M4 that also has experience with the M1?

 

[turbineseaplane]

@left shark fan

You will definitely want to try this out for yourself.

A part of what got me to move on from my MacBook Pro M4 was that I did not enjoy looking at it and using that screen size.

I thought it was just about the screen size, but I really also never was truly comfortable looking at the screen for some reason. I was always toggling the brightness up and down to try to find a sweet spot and I just never really did.

That’s a bunch of anecdotal data that might mean nothing but it also might be indicative of something. I don’t know.

 

[john123]

Thanks for the answer John. I also have issues with PWM hence why I asked. Especially the OLED phones I react rather badly on with eye-strain and blurry vision, so currently sticking with my iPhone 11. The M1 Macbook Pro i've been able to use without any problems so that is great. I was just wondering if I would also be able to use the M4 Macbook Pro without any problems since they made a change to the display. Did anybody try out the M4 that also has experience with the M1?

I've read conflicting stuff on this. For example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PWM_Sensitive/comments/1gsbbk4/looks_like_apple_updated_macbook_pro_m4_displays

I agree with the previous poster that unfortunately, you'd just have to try it to find out. It doesn't seem that there's a consensus or universal experience people are having.