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Chris60549

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 8, 2019
31
21
How is the brightness of the new displays in day to day use with Safari and Mail etc.? As long as it is not HDR content (i.e. Netflix etc.), the brightness is supposed to be the same 500 nits as before. That would be quite disappointing and not helpful when reading in bright daylight. Any impressions?
 
Sounds quite disappointing. I was totally hoping for 1000 nits Safari/Mail/Word brightness when working outdoors enjoying sunshine. That never worked for me with 500 nits displays.
 
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I put my old MBP and new one in the sun and the new one is 10-20% better. There wasn’t as much sun glare and it was slightly brighter.

I don’t think I would have been able to tell if they weren’t side by side.

That said, the brightness from HDR content literally hurts my eyes. I wonder why they couldn’t increase the base non-HDR brightness more…
 
I did not see any difference when using the M1 MBA and new MBP 14 with Safari and Photo’s.
Yeah it’s the exact same as my intel 16” shocking I was looking forward to a brighter panel but even with hdr it’s the same
 
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Yeah it’s the exact same as my intel 16” shocking I was looking forward to a brighter panel but even with hdr it’s the same

So for example, when visiting YouTube in Safari, and playing an HDR video, but not full screen, so you still see the SDR webpage around it, especially the white background. At full brightness, the video should look remarkably different. Things like sky’s with white coulda, highlights and bright objects should make rbe SDR white look dim and pale.

Keep in mind HDR isn’t meant to always be super bright, so dark or normal scenes may still be calibrated around SDR nits to leave range for things that have a reason for higher nits.

I also found I could lower the screen brightness without effecting HDR peak highlights until around 50% brightness.

I myself was looking to be more blown away by the HDR, it’s great, not question, but it’s funny how your eyes and perception can almost normalize it at full screen with an HDR video, in a sunlit room. You’ll think, what the brightness should be, then switching back to SDR will look incredibly dim at full brightness. But 5 minutes later, you’ll be turning down the screen brightness because some white webpage is just too bright.
 
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Apple made it seem like 1000 nits was the standard max brightness (up from 500 nits with last generation), and 1600 nits was the highest for HDR content. So if that is not the case, when do these MacBooks hit 1000 nits? I think a lot of people thought that they'd get 1000 nits while out in daylight, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
 
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Apple made it seem like 1000 nits was the standard max brightness (up from 500 nits with last generation), and 1600 nits was the highest for HDR content. So if that is not the case, when do these MacBooks hit 1000 nits? I think a lot of people thought that they'd get 1000 nits while out in daylight, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Plus, the original XDR display is 500 nits SDR, while the iPad XDR display is 600 nits SDR. So right there could mean it’s one or the other, or even improved. They didn’t list it in the specs and now we have to look at 3rd party sources that say 500 while using the XDR display profile.
 
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