Reports Suggest Mini-LED 'Blooming' Effect on New MacBook Pro Displays Not an Issue

[Wackery]

Normal vision should have bloom.

Yeah, if you have cataracts

 

[steve123]

I would like to confirm that the display on the 16" MBP does have a blooming problem. I noticed this last night. I do some work sequencing music to lights using xLights software. I posted a video in another forum thread of the kind of video sequence I am talking about:

Review: Twinkly's HomeKit-Compatible String Lights Are Perfect for the Holidays

@MadeTheSwitch Here is a sample of one of the sequences I created using xLights this year. I believe there is a guy working on integrating support for Twinkly Lights into xLights so you may be able to do something similar in the future ...

forums.macrumors.com

The bloom is very noticeable when working with this type of video.

 

[Quu]

I would like to confirm that the display on the 16" MBP does have a blooming problem. I noticed this last night. I do some work sequencing music to lights using xLights software. I posted a video in another forum thread of the kind of video sequence I am talking about:

Review: Twinkly's HomeKit-Compatible String Lights Are Perfect for the Holidays

@MadeTheSwitch Here is a sample of one of the sequences I created using xLights this year. I believe there is a guy working on integrating support for Twinkly Lights into xLights so you may be able to do something similar in the future ...

forums.macrumors.com

The bloom is very noticeable when working with this type of video.

Videos like this do show blooming but this is worse case scenario. The lights are very dim and small, almost individual-pixel sized small and very spaced out.

You won't see better until each individual pixel is emitting its own light. The real test though is when you're watching other kinds of content like movies, tv shows. I watched Iron Man in 4K on my 16" recently and the only time I ever noticed blooming was during the cave scenes near the beginning of the movie.

When almost the entire display is dark and only very slight amounts of light are being emitted do the individual zones become visible to my eyes. It's a rarity. I don't want to diminish that the laptop has blooming because it most certainly does. But I don't see it as a "problem" in that the laptops are flawed or this isn't good enough etc

I feel the blooming is at an acceptable level for the price of the notebooks. Would I pay an extra $1,000 for no blooming of any kind under any scenario compared to this? I don't think I would. But I would pay perhaps $300 extra.

 

[steve123]

You won't see better until each individual pixel is emitting its own light.

When almost the entire display is dark and only very slight amounts of light are being emitted do the individual zones become visible to my eyes.

I feel the blooming is at an acceptable level for the price of the notebooks. Would I pay an extra $1,000 for no blooming of any kind under any scenario compared to this? I don't think I would. But I would pay perhaps $300 extra.

If Apple can't figure this out then they should allow the user to turn off local dimming so we can avoid the artifact.

It clearly is a problem with the display and the root cause is the algorithms they use to control local dimming.

Considering the price paid for a 16" MBP with M1 Max I think they could have included an OLED display instead.

 

[Quu]

If Apple can't figure this out then they should allow the user to turn off local dimming so we can avoid the artifact.

It clearly is a problem with the display and the root cause is the algorithms they use to control local dimming.

Considering the price paid for a 16" MBP with M1 Max I think they could have included an OLED display instead.

It isn't due to any algorithm. This is just how local dimming works with this many LED's. They would have to increase it from 10,000 to 50,000-100,000 to eliminate blooming on pixel-sized dim objects against a completely black backdrop.

Your expectations are unreasonable.

 

[WilliamG]

It isn't due to any algorithm. This is just how local dimming works with this many LED's. They would have to increase it from 10,000 to 50,000-100,000 to eliminate blooming on pixel-sized dim objects against a completely black backdrop.

Your expectations are unreasonable.

Even that wouldn’t be eliminate it.

 

[Quu]

Even that wouldn’t be eliminate it.

You're right it wouldn't eliminate it completely. Only per-pixel light emission with pixel-separation (so light emitted from one can't bleed into its siblings) would completely eliminate blooming.

But having 100,000 LED's as opposed to 10,000 would greatly reduce the size of the individual lighting zones and thus diminish the blooming effect significantly.

Personally I think the screen looks incredible even in dim-lighting. You can for sure notice blooming under very specific scenarios (pitch-black scene with extremely small and lowly lit objects) but I really don't come across that scenario often, I have human eyes after all.

 

[WilliamG]

You're right it wouldn't eliminate it completely. Only per-pixel light emission with pixel-separation (so light emitted from one can't bleed into its siblings) would completely eliminate blooming.

But having 100,000 LED's as opposed to 10,000 would greatly reduce the size of the individual lighting zones and thus diminish the blooming effect significantly.

Personally I think the screen looks incredible even in dim-lighting. You can for sure notice blooming under very specific scenarios (pitch-black scene with extremely small and lowly lit objects) but I really don't come across that scenario often, I have human eyes after all.

Heck, even my OLED iPhone 13 Pro Max blooms. It’s just the nature of light and our eyes.

 

[Moyapilot]

Heck, even my OLED iPhone 13 Pro Max blooms. It’s just the nature of light and our eyes.

I’ve seen this comment repeated quite a few times in this thread. Vision blooming and backlight zone generated blooming are two different things. 2500 or so zones in these will obviously create scenarios where blooming is distracting at least some of the time.

Unless there is a gap between the glass and the display, you really shouldn’t be seeing much if any blooming on an OLED phone if there are no vision issues (My comment above was a mis-type by me, I meant to say normal vision should not have any blooming).

Yes I see blooming everwhere when I wake up and don’t have my glasses on, and my eyes are watering. But thats temporary.

 

[WilliamG]

I’ve seen this comment repeated quite a few times in this thread. Vision blooming and backlight zone generated blooming are two different things. 2500 or so zones in these will obviously create scenarios where blooming is distracting at least some of the time.

Unless there is a gap between the glass and the display, you really shouldn’t be seeing much if any blooming on an OLED phone if there are no vision issues (My comment above was a mis-type by me, I meant to say normal vision should not have any blooming).

Yes I see blooming everwhere when I wake up and don’t have my glasses on, and my eyes are watering. But thats temporary.

Vision blooming is common to everyone. It's mostly only noticeable on black backgrounds with a single illuminated object. Literally everyone I've shown OLED too can see blooming. Now, you also have to bear in mind that these OLED panels are covered in glass, so there will always be some light scatter due to this, too.

 

[steve123]

Vision blooming is common to everyone. It's mostly only noticeable on black backgrounds with a single illuminated object. Literally everyone I've shown OLED too can see blooming. Now, you also have to bear in mind that these OLED panels are covered in glass, so there will always be some light scatter due to this, too.

Blooming artifacts from dimming zones is very different than vision blooming you are referring to. The geometry of the LED array causes a very unique geometry to the bloom.

 

[WilliamG]

Blooming artifacts from dimming zones is very different than vision blooming you are referring to. The geometry of the LED array causes a very unique geometry to the bloom.

Oh absolutely. No argument. I'm just talking about bloom in general.

 

[maratus]

"not an issue" here doesn't mean it's not an issue. it's more like "I don't care" or "I'm ignoring it because I refuse to say anything negative about my Apple toy". it looks fine in some content but on text/dark backgrounds it's definitely noticeable. Mini LED is good for TVs but shouldn't be in anything like an iPad/Laptop.

yeah sure it's better than a standard LCD but let's not kid ourselves on here: Mini LED is a stop gap technology. Apple will eventually move to OLED and then Micro LED. OLED is by far the superior technology when compared to Mini LED but of course it has it's own flaw which is a risk of burn in. I'll take the the risk it MIGHT happen after a couple years over having to deal with annoying blooming every time you look at the display as soon as it's out the box.

Micro LED is the true end goal. the LEDs will be so small they will be able to light up individual pixels instead of tens or hundreds of pixels with Mini LED. if there's any blooming with Micro LED it might spill over to the next pixel but you'll never notice that unless you put it under a microscope. of course Micro LED won't be at risk of burn in like OLED.

as long as Apple is using Mini LED i'm not touching their products. these MacBook Pros and even the iPad Pro should've came with an OLED display as it's currently the best tech available.

OLED is hardly the best tech. It's still a challenge to find an OLED screen without white uniformity issues and the colorshift is horrible and even varies a lot from panel to panel. Add it to burn-in (especially a problem for Mac OS and Windows interface). I'd rather deal with some blooming in extreme scenarios than OLED's own issues and insane panel lottery. And if in the future Apple 10x-50x the number of zones and improves the dimming algorithms, it'll be good enough even compared to micro-LED.

 

[steve123]

The thing Apple needs to do with these Mini LED displays is give users an option to turn off local dimming in display preferences if we need to.