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MacBook Pro 16 Inch Display Color
- Thread starter anpaman
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I have heard about the display brightness issue(dim) from many people now, it’s one of the reason why I’m still on the defence about getting one. I’m one of those people who always has their MacBook at the max brightness. I can’t imagine the display being less bright than my current MBP(2017).
Really? Previous ones had 10 bit panels? I think Macs never had 10 bit panels.
I was also underwhelmed with the 2019 16" screen. Seemed "foggy" and text had poor contrast.
Calibrating the display helped immensely at the expense of color accuracy. Still, my older 2015 MBP 15 seems to have better "clarity" for lack of a better word.
Could be a dealbreaker for me, will see if things get better after a week of use.
Calibrating the display helped immensely at the expense of color accuracy. Still, my older 2015 MBP 15 seems to have better "clarity" for lack of a better word.
Could be a dealbreaker for me, will see if things get better after a week of use.
Interesting - I've not heard much about this on reviews/podcasts talking about the 16"
This a thing?
This a thing?
1) do not rely on a video of a display to judge a display. Just don't.
There are many ways for color to be reproduced inaccurately. You don't know the color temp of the person's lighting, what color temp the computer is set to, if they are using "true tone"...which changes color temp, or if white balance on their camera is set correctly to the lighting. If the color temp of the display doesn't match the lighting, then it will look wrong; there is literally no fixing it. Our eyes are good at dealing with mixed lighting, but cameras are not.
And, oh yeah, then there's your monitor. What you are seeing my be completely different from what other people see when watching the same video. (You don't sound like a person who knows about monitor calibration...)
2) Calibrate your monitor! And turn off "true tone!" (You have to turn off true tone in order to calibrate, which is good. "True Tone" is the anti-calibration.)
3) "accurate" color is what the macbook display is good at, but it needs to be calibrated with a calibration device to ensure that it is actually accurate. It is probably pretty close out of the box, once "true tone" is turned off.
4) MacOS has built in manual "calibration" tools. So you can fiddle until it looks the way you want it to. But these are subjective adjustments, not calibration. Calibration is a reference to an objective standard.
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Nope. Not a thing.
I have used an xRite colorimeter to calibrate my display.
The difference between the ”out of box” experience and the calibrated screen was quite small. But as LuciusWrong say, make sure TrueTone is off if you want color accuracy.
I have measured the brightness to 475 nits, which is 5% below spec. To get maximum brightness you must disable Auto Adjust Brightness otherwise brightness may be reduced due to low ambient light.
I have the impression, that the 16” temporarily loses color calibration in some situations. This could give a washed out impression. I assume this is some driver issue. Remember that even if you do not calibrate your display, there is a number of color profiles available in Display settings. I would suggest you check settings and try different profiles.
The difference between the ”out of box” experience and the calibrated screen was quite small. But as LuciusWrong say, make sure TrueTone is off if you want color accuracy.
I have measured the brightness to 475 nits, which is 5% below spec. To get maximum brightness you must disable Auto Adjust Brightness otherwise brightness may be reduced due to low ambient light.
I have the impression, that the 16” temporarily loses color calibration in some situations. This could give a washed out impression. I assume this is some driver issue. Remember that even if you do not calibrate your display, there is a number of color profiles available in Display settings. I would suggest you check settings and try different profiles.
the 16” will do some weird stuff when brightness auto adjustment is turned on and the machine is in direct sunlight. when I’m in direct sunlight the screen gets brighter, but also the whites get clipped to make the screen very washed out.
Every person that knows what they’re doing has said the factory calibration was basically pretty good out of the box. I think a lot of you folks just need to disable True Tone and auto brightness.
matram - same findings as you. I sometimes see abrupt color changes as if the calibration was lost temporarily, but comes back minutes later. Same impression as watched out colors.
Not convinced that it is just a software / driver issue. I hope it is not hardware / screen related.
Also strong ghosting with my display.
Not convinced that it is just a software / driver issue. I hope it is not hardware / screen related.
Also strong ghosting with my display.
I find the ghosting to be really unfortunate.
Once you see that and take note of it, it‘s basically impossible to “un-see it”.
I was at Costco yesterday and played with a 16” real quick again and my eyes immediately picked it up and were annoyed by it. I’m really not a fan of whatever hardware/software decisions Apple made here that are leading to this.
If you put 2 MBPs next to each other it seems that the display on the new MBP 16 is a bit greenish, I am just not sure if this is the 'accurate' colour and older MBPs have less accurate displays. Anyway I also observed the screen has a greenish/yellowish hue which makes black text on a white background like print (ie. black text on slight yellowish paper) even when True Tone is switched off.
The other issue, as a lot of people have observed, is the slow response rate of the screen. When scrolling through text it's really annoying (it's far worse than my MBPr 2012). The text is blurred out and colours shift from black to greenish (on a black background with white letters, these become blue while scrolling). Unfortunately Apple hasn't acknowledged this to be a problem, yet, so I hope more people raise their voices. It's the most expensive MBP as of now with an sluggish performing screen, I am a bit disappointed as I hoped the 2019 version would be an improvement over the 2012 retina version, while this one had a better display. Come on Apple, you can do better than this, no?
The other issue, as a lot of people have observed, is the slow response rate of the screen. When scrolling through text it's really annoying (it's far worse than my MBPr 2012). The text is blurred out and colours shift from black to greenish (on a black background with white letters, these become blue while scrolling). Unfortunately Apple hasn't acknowledged this to be a problem, yet, so I hope more people raise their voices. It's the most expensive MBP as of now with an sluggish performing screen, I am a bit disappointed as I hoped the 2019 version would be an improvement over the 2012 retina version, while this one had a better display. Come on Apple, you can do better than this, no?
As others said, objectively these 16" screens have measured very accurate when calibrated, and the calibration is generally very close to how it arrives.
There's no indication the ghosting and such is worse than Apple intends. Doesn't bother most users, though it's a real problem for others. Notebook Check's 16" measured about about 10% worse than its predecessors, slower than most but not all they tested since 2016. I don't expect much to change with this one. Maybe when they go to a new type of screen and not just a new size.
There's no indication the ghosting and such is worse than Apple intends. Doesn't bother most users, though it's a real problem for others. Notebook Check's 16" measured about about 10% worse than its predecessors, slower than most but not all they tested since 2016. I don't expect much to change with this one. Maybe when they go to a new type of screen and not just a new size.
To get crisp display, you need to change from default, to the middle selector (1536x960) in display preferences, otherwise, the scaling is "off", and not sampling at 2:1.
Also, Xrite iProfiler doesn't work with the iGPU UHD 630, onl for the AMD graphics. There is a glitch where blacks go bright blue when the integrated grapics are deactivated. Xrite says the fix is to not use the integrated graphics and force dedicated full time...ugh. That's like a mechanic telling a car owner that to keep his car from stalling at 3000rpm to set idle speed to 3500rpm :-|
Paul
Also, Xrite iProfiler doesn't work with the iGPU UHD 630, onl for the AMD graphics. There is a glitch where blacks go bright blue when the integrated grapics are deactivated. Xrite says the fix is to not use the integrated graphics and force dedicated full time...ugh. That's like a mechanic telling a car owner that to keep his car from stalling at 3000rpm to set idle speed to 3500rpm :-|
Paul