Videos of MacBook Air M2 flickering

Donux i was testing the Air with both charger plugged in and without, both flickered just as much on camera

DannyD2 Just ordered a second M2 Touch Bar Pro (returned the first TB Pro as it had a strong yellow tint to the right of the screen. Thankfully the new one does not!)

EDIT: Second one ended up being WAY worse in strain. It had an entirely different panel that was much less comfortable despite looking sharper and more uniform at first. Panel lottery is VERY real here.

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The second M2 Touch Bar Pro also does not flicker on camera!!

BTW, a close to maxed out M2 Touch Bar Pro with 24GB ram and 1TB SSD can be bought for only $1609 USD on the official refurbished store. Base model is $999. As mine looks essentially brand new out of the box — by "Apple Store standards" $1609 is honestly a pretty good price for this condition and specs! Looks like 1TB just went out of stock however

In conclusion:

M2 Touch Bar Pro with Stillcolor is my one and only recommended true flicker-free Apple Silicon MacBook.

EDIT: ONLY THE ONES THAT HAVE "00000000" IN PANEL ID

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M1 Air flickered displaying dark gray on my iPhone 14 Pro camera. Two M2 Airs also flickered. Others report M3 Airs have flickered. My 14" mini-LED MacBook Pro flickered. Both M2 Touch Bar Pro 13" LCD I have tried do not flicker. Just make sure to turn off the OLED Touch Bar!

It's insane how the "weird" M2 touch bar MacBook that reviewers said "why would anyone buy this?" ends up being the one and only Apple Silicon MacBook that doesn't flicker on camera. It feels like discovering a secret I wasn't supposed to know

EDIT: It is true that both M2 TB Pros did not flicker on camera, but only ONE was comfortable.

Interesting: Even my 2015 15" Retina MacBook Pro, which many say is PWM-free (despite having really bad temporal dithering that is currently impossible to disable, even after applying known AMD and Intel dither disable methods)… also has a flickering screen on dark gray backgrounds when capturing it through my iPhone 14 Pro camera.

I also have a 2015 12" butterfly keyboard MacBook that I was able to successfully, noticeably disable dithering on, and find pretty decently usable (compared to the 15" which I have a lot of trouble using), and it also flickers on camera when showing dark gray! It's a little bit milder though.

This means the M2 Touch Bar Pro remains my only MacBook to appears entirely flicker-free to my iPhone 14 Pro in slow motion, even compared to two Intel Macs!

Is my 14 Pro camera advanced in some way that it can detect PWM that is difficult for other cameras to see?

It's not flickering induced by the camera itself, because I've tested many shades of gray in slow motion on the M2 Touch Bar Pro — and on that laptop, nothing ever flickers to the camera at all. Instead, all I see when filming the M2 TB Pro is the same subtle graininess and very small banding shifts that I also get when filming a solid real life object in natural sunlight.

My M2 Touch Bar Pro with Stillcolor is literally more comfortable than many Intel Macs I've tried:

• 2015 15" rMBP (looks crisp but pretty uncomfortable to use, both in Intel and AMD modes)
• 2015 12" MacBook (most comfortable Intel Mac by far! actually very close, but flickers on camera and some backgrounds look hazy/"tiring" to me so the M2 TB Pro wins!)
• 2016 13" MBP Touch Bar (old laptop I used to own. was decently usable, decently crisp, but was uncomfortable enough when working on long documents that I would "subconcoously" end up switching back to an old PC many times for heavy work)
• 2018 13" rMBA (very bad on macOS, decent-ish on Windows)
• 2020 13" Intel MBP (very bad, just like 2018 Air)
• 2021 14" M1 Max MBP ( LOL)
• 2020 13" M1 Air (dried out left eye, long text sometimes looks flickery even with Stillcolor)
• 2022 13" M2 Air (pain in left eye, long text looked flickery even with Stillcolor)

M2 TB Pro is more comfortable than all of these.

I think we have a winner!

DannyD2

Here are the raw-panel-serial-number values.

EDIT: WARNING, the "Uniform Panel" (FMX) actually causes SIGNIFICANTLY MORE STRAIN! Despite possible uniformity issues, the "Tinted Panel" is actually MUCH more comfortable for sensitive users.

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"Uniform Panel" M2 TB Pro: (uniform colors! slightly more greenish on left but I have to REALLY squint to see it)

EDIT: This "Uniform Panel" caused bad strain and nasuea for both me and others here. AVOID!

FMX229114YDNTJHAM+GE1S2405893931+PROD+B214121852196+11228722228722228722228710+K12120392K12220403+645052209KW80A00TTCYYGAHN62628520+S252891HR1S252891HR1S252891HR1S252891H

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"Tinted Panel" M2 TB Pro: (comfortable, but had the infamous "Yellow Tint" and a VERY obvious shift in whites from reddish on the left to greenish on right half in a very noticeable way.

EDIT: The "Tinted Panel" seems to NOT cause strain. No nausea! I actually recommend the Tinted Panel (00000000 in panel ID), especially if you can find one that doesn't have the noticeable uniformity defect that mine had! So far, others have had luck in finding much more uniform Tinted Panels!

F0Y235201ADNTJGAW+000000000P11C5+PROD+Y000000000000+00000000000000000000000000+PY19N0709PA07N0717+6755DKF4P9002214TTTYYW1EA80526916+S6896893Z8S6896893Z8S68968932US6896893

(yes it actually had that many zeroes)

BTW: My M1 Air's panel for comparison…

FP1223202CVP3WVBD+5AQK240320A9JA+PROD+Y218621852194+2122321L22322122322B223220+K10720181K11620413+5425A2205KT30T00TTUYYJY5A41424483+S23D688Z79S23D688Z79S23D688Z79S23D688Z

Both of the M2 TB Pro panels I've tested have REALLY deep black levels. These are very unique panels from any other Mac. I do not remember any Intel MacBook Pros — even the very final early 2020 Intel model — having black levels anywhere close to what these can do.

Somehow, this does not make things look "too high contrast" as these panels are able to somehow have amazing black levels AND have the lowest eye strain of any Apple Silicon MacBook! Since I used to associate deeper blacks with strain in the past, this is actually very surprising and satisfying to me. (In comparison, the M1 Air has much more "typical" LCD black levels with a bluish IPS glow.)

EDIT: this is only true on "00000000" Tinted Panels. On "FMX" Uniform Panels, it actually DOES look "too high contrast" and causes strain.

By the way, are you running Stillcolor already? If you aren't yet, definitely install it as it is still needed for the laptop to become truly flicker-free.

madmozg I can easily see with my peripheral eyesight how darker objects are flickering on MBA M2.

With MBA M2 I'm also having dry eyes and very slight symptoms because of that small pwm, I wish I can turn that sht off

Yup exactly. I was able to notice the same thing with the M2 Air flickering in the corner of my vision with my own eyes too! Especially while reading long blocks of text like the software update terms and conditions popup. It didn't matter whether Stillcolor was activated, I could still notice flicker.

Also get dry eyes when looking at the M2 Air (especially my left eye).

However, surprisingly, it's not purely because of "basic IPS" that strain is lower on the M2 TB Pro — because the M1 Air also has "basic IPS" with no notch, but actually flickers on camera in the same way the M2 Air does!

EDIT: Even though both M1 Air and M2 Air flicker with a "slight brightness dip after each frame" in a 240hz recording — I actually find the M1 Air MUCH more comfortable than the M2 Air!

So this specific type of flicker may not actually be the "core" problem, at least for me.

It's something else about the M2 Air that makes it "worse" than both the M1 Air (which ALSO flickers on camera) and TB Pros (which DON'T flicker on camera).

As we know, the M2 TB Pro doesn't flicker on camera, so the M1 Air and M2 TB Pro panels are entirely different beasts despite appearing nearly the same in Apple's official spec comparison.

I highly suspect the M2 Pro has a true 8-bit display.

In comparison, my M1 Air unit had a noticeable "scanline-like alternating pattern" (which the TB Pro doesn't) when I looked really close up at the pixels.

EDIT: After using the M1 Air for much longer, I do not think this is FRC.

The M1 Air certainly has a "every other scanline alternates between brighter and darker in a striped pattern" quality to its LCD that the M2 TB Pro doesn't, but it doesn't bother me.

The M2 Touch Bar Pro seems to have no TCON-level temporal dithering at all. All temporal dithering on the TB Pro seems to happen exclusively on the GPU and can be entirely disabled. Static elements like a non-blinking text cursor become entirely still to me after activating Stillcolor on the M2 TB Pro.

EDIT: only true on Touch Bar Pros with "00000000" in panel ID. TB Pros with "FMX" panels still feel like they're "moving" even with Stillcolor.

This is very unique from both the M1 and M2 Air, where even with Stillcolor it feels like something is still ever so slightly moving around the text cursor.

madmozg MBP 13 TB is good, but the display is so small and outdated in compare with 15-16 inches..

Honestly, I see the outdated screen form factor with large bezels to be actually helpful in reducing eye strain!

I've always had problems with all screens with slim bezels, since in order to look at the corner of the screen my eyes need to figure out whether to focus at close distance… but then start drifting away and suddenly attempt to a huge focus shift to whatever is behind the screen, since the bezel is so close to where the screen ends and the rest of the real world starts. My eyes get really confused whether they should be looking at the edge of the screen or whatever is behind the screen and keep alternating back and forth.

I love screens with large bezels and I will defend chunky bezels until the end of time, as it gives my eyes "breathing room" to much more to easily focus and lock onto the very corners of the screen.

I agree that it's very unfortunate there isn't any Apple Silicon laptop like the M2 Touch Bar Pro with a larger than 13" screen. I can't speak much on this though, as I generally prefer 13" or smaller screens because they help me move around more — I can easily use my laptop in a bunch of different places and postures throughout the day. 15" displays are cool, they look awesome on a desk, but IMO they end up not being versatile enough for my workflow.

In the end, I'll take a fully usable laptop with still very much modern internals (the M2 TB Pros, EDIT: specifically the ones with comfortable panels) over an unusable laptop with more fashionable aesthetics (the M2/M3 Air) any day.

In addition, outside of the ugly Touch Bar, I still think everything else about the M2 TB Pro looks very beautiful!

I am SO satisfied that I have found a Mac laptop from the current decade — one that still has more powerful hardware than any other laptop I own — that finally works for me. That is something to cherish.

EDIT:

This laptop ended up being the M1 Air for me instead because I was tired of playing the M2 TB Pro panel lottery LOL

On the other hand, I got a good panel M1 Air with "no glare" first try!

Even though there is an additional "PWM-like flickering issue" seen on all M1/M2/M3 Airs — it does not seem to affect me on specifically the [M1] Air!

This was surprising, because I can't use the [M2] Air. That means this "brightness dips" flicker is probably NOT the culprit though, because I can use [M1] Air fine despite it flickering on camera too.

However, I still recommend M2 TB Pros with comfortable panels ("00000000" in ID), because they are the ONLY Apple Silicon MacBooks that have no "camera-detectable PWM" if that matters to you!

However, I do NOT recommend M2 TB Pros with "FMX" in the panel ID.

By the way, I just sold my previous 14" mini-LED MacBook Pro. I am never looking at it again in my entire life.

ledstrain-alpha we've already tried this, on apple silicon the color profile will always say the same model number & manufacturer regardless of even if the panel looks entirely different

instead, there is a different terminal for apple silicon command to run to get the panel-serial-number

(the one we were already using: ioreg -lw0 | grep -e "panel-serial-number" -e coverglass)

that's the only known way to get panel info on apple silicon

DannyD2 Interesting, really glad that you're liking it! How is it going so far in terms of strain?

EDIT: THE BELOW IS ONLY TRUE on M2 Touch Bar Pros with "00000000" in panel ID.

**On the other hand, M2 TB Pros with "FMX" at the beginning of the panel ID cause strain!**

Strain levels are going really good for me so far, possibly there are still certain things that still would be easier to look at on an older Windows laptop with a non-retina screen but outside of that there is still so much good. I am totally getting the feeling of "over-the-top intense and unrelenting information density" at the highest level on this M2 TB Pro with Stillcolor. I can see so much at once on the screen at one time, applications that have very cluttered user interfaces look incredible on here instead of disorienting.

Grids of images feel like I'm seeing the whole grid at the same time (instead of the image I'm looking at feeling "more in focus or 'more prominent' than the others"), this laptop with Stillcolor is fully able to expand my field of vision which I literally can't say about any other Apple Silicon laptop I tried. One example is the expanded grid of wallpapers in System Settings, on the M2 TB Pro I can clearly process it as "a uniform 4-column grid" and am able to quickly scan through it — instead of feeling like I need to "read" it one-by-one or only two-ish columns at a time.

One of the biggest differences to the M2 TB Pro and the M2 Air is that on the Air, whenever there was a really large object on the screen (such as a really big logo or when zooming into one object on a webpage), my eyes would try to respond to it as if they were trying to focus on something "really close to me" — like they would actually need to change their plane of focus — which would cause lots of strain. When I tried to force myself to keep focusing at the physical distance of the screen, on both Airs this would cause the "extremely large object" to go double vision.

However, on the M2 TB Pro, I can view objects of any size without even needing to refocus my eyes in the slightest. On a lot of other displays I need to refocus after zooming into something with Ctrl+Scroll accessibility zoom. On this display, I can maintain the same exact focus throughout the entire zooming gesture with zero effort and it just feels so satisfying.

Moving over the edge of a window and the cursor changing from the pointer to the resize arrow is also not causing my eyes to "vibrate" and refocus! It almost feels weird because I'm so used to that happening on other Macs! Same improvement with hovering over items in menu bar menus as the colored highlight moves between lines!

Window shadows are also noticeably less distracting which is really interesting, I haven't thought about the shadows that much at all while using the M2 TB Pro. On M2 Air I would still sometimes get distracted by them, even after activating Stillcolor.

EDIT: ONLY TRUE ON "00000000" M2 TB PRO PANELS (and actually true on my M1 Air too, which is also much better at this than the M2 Air).

However, M2 TB Pro "FMX" panels are MUCH worse at this.

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Colors also look beautiful, there's also this really interesting effect I'm getting where after I look away from the computer colors also look better in the real world as well? Like so many other displays (even usable ones) I feel "tire out my eyes enough" where I can't process colors & details in the real world to the fullest extent. Walking around after using this laptop though I swear the world looks more vivid to me

I thought that was a coincidence at first but I tried M2 TB Pro for a while, then other usable laptops, then the TB Pro again and was noticing a significantly different feel when looking at the world around me after using this compared to everything else. Given the fact that even my usable devices (like my 2012 Windows laptop) still show PWM on camera when displaying dark gray, maybe this is one of the benefits of using something that is truly PWM-free?

Finally, my left eye is twitching a lot less while using the M2 TB Pro, I keep expecting it to happen as I usually do with other Mac displays and yet it just doesn't most of the time.

EDIT: ONLY TRUE ON "00000000" TB PRO PANELS

Also pinging @async here, I think they would find these details useful.

async I think the high gamut ones colors messes things up a bit. Used my iPhone with green/red color filter (red becomes pink, and red is non existant) and high brightness on a clouded day with mostly white light. I swear the entire world looked off afterwards.

I'd generally believe this in the past, because it's true with most screens — but this seems to not be true with the M2 Touch Bar Pro even though it is wide gamut.

On this specific laptop (with Stillcolor), after using it even looking at super bright P3 colors on the screen, the world still looks fine and actually possibly even more colorful afterwards. This is why I'm saying the M2 TB Pro is so surprisingly unique for me in a good way.

However that only happens on this laptop.

I agree that on other laptops (that likely use PWM, since every other laptop I own except the M2 TB Pro actually all have that flicker on dark gray on 240hz slow motion!) even with Stillcolor/ditherig.exe, looking at bright colors and then stopping using the laptop, yes stuff will look really off afterwards.

But somehow, stuff does not look off after using the M2 TB Pro!

async This is why I disabled window shadows with yabai.

Yes, this is what I did on my 14" M1 Max MBP. but what's really nice about M2 TB Pro is I don't even notice any fake 3D effect at all, so window shadows actually don't even bother me on here.

On the M1 Air and especially M2 Air I still noticed some fake 3D.

But on the M2 TB Pro stuff looks entirely flat — even photos! — which is great.

Edit: Since then I've found screens that are MANY times more "flat" and more comfortable than this one was: for example, AUO303E 1600x900 TN Panel, which can be installed into a 14 inch ThinkPad and is the most comfortable screen I've found as of Nov 2024, it's better than all of my old monitors including CCFL ones

(but only AUO303E panels manufactured in 2015 and earlier are good though. A 2018 version had issues.)

Also, my 2019 MacBook Pro 16 inch is not flickering in 240 FPS iPhone camera at all.

As notebookcheck said it's 130KHZ PWM, but My eyes feel good.

Its panel is pretty good.