MBP2018 suffers from reduced display contrast when sunlight shines on it

[maikm23]

Hi all,

when the afternoon sun shined on my display a few days ago, I noticed the contrast being reduced. Blacks became light greys. It's reproducible by holding an iPhone's LED to the sensor next to the facetime camera. I also was able to reproduce this with a stock MBP 2018 in an Apple Store, so a hardware defect is unlikely.

True Tone is off, and changing that has no effect.

Can anyone else please try this?

I'm attaching a few screenshots (made with an external camera pointing to the screen, because macOS-made screenshots don't show this effect, blacks are still black there). Compare the blacks in the image with the color of the display's bezels.

Maik

P.S. rdar://44141305

 

[maflynn]

Is your "Automatically adjust brightness" checked or cleared?

 

[maikm23]

Is your "Automatically adjust brightness" checked or cleared?

Cleared, and checking it also doesn‘t make a difference. The overall screen brightness stays the same. Only the contrast is reduced. Bright colors stay around the same brightness, but dark colors become bright too.

 

[Wiscosity]

Cleared, and checking it also doesn‘t make a difference. The overall screen brightness stays the same. Only the contrast is reduced. Bright colors stay around the same brightness, but dark colors become bright too.

I have the exact same problem, did a bug report to Apple but they didn't get the problem...
It's still there with the latest software update. I wonder if this is a general problem or limited to certain Macs?

 

[maikm23]

I have the exact same problem, did a bug report to Apple but they didn't get the problem...
It's still there with the latest software update. I wonder if this is a general problem or limited to certain Macs?

The problem somehow disappeared for me through one of the last updates. Can't tell which one it was.

 

[Ron21]

Same here, I noticed this 'bug' last year after getting my 2018MBP but can no longer reproduce it. They must have fixed it in one of the updates.

 

[appleuser181]

Hey guys, I noticed this same exact issue recently and I am running the latest macOS (10.14.6).
Is there a way to fix this?

P.S both "true tone" & "auto brightness" are enabled in display settings and I'm using a 15" MBP (2018)

Thanks in advance!

 

[f0ma]

This is totally intentional. It's a feature that increases gamma to make screen readable under bright sunlight.