DannyD2 Bro, you know what?
After i found the flicker on M2 Air, i returned it in 14days windows.
More devastating is I reproduce it even on M3 Macbook air 13inch and 15inch.
Yes, I've bought both this week. But sure i'll give them returned.
Apple sucks.
Apple-Meta-USA How did you find it ?
Has anyone captured this same type of backlight flicker on camera with an M1 Air?
I know they have PWM under 75% but I doubt that they have the same "strong flicker that can easily be captured on camera on dark gray backgrounds" like a really large amount of M2 and M3 Airs seem to have, since their panel is more of the classic edge-lit backlight style a la the Touch Bar Pros.
However, if anyone has used an M1 Air and have captured the same effect, please let me know.
The one thing I know is that the M2 LCD Touch Bar Pro is entirely immune to this issue, despite extremely fast PWM at lower brightness, nothing ever shows up on camera at all no matter if it's at low brightness or high.
For M1 Air, Notebookcheck says PWM exists under 50% brightness. Rtings says no PWM at all.
Who knows how they test these things?
For mine, I can't tell. Mine does have significant dithering, solved with Stillcolor.
Still not as comfortable as screens from 10-15 years ago.
Rikl To test on your M1 Air (because this is one way to cause flickering on the M2 Airs): set the "Stone" dark gray solid color wallpaper option in wallpaper settings.
Then, turn brightness to max. Record the screen in 240fps slow motion on your phone camera. Let me know if flickering is visible in the slow motion recording or if it just looks normal playing back.
I knew I would find flickering. But I could not see any at the 240fps slow motion.
Maybe some background noise at full brightness? I was trying to be super critical.
I recorded the video in a morning light room.
After recording I realized that there were no room lighting LEDs on in the room.
Maybe that's a factor when people find flickering.
I was surprised that I could use the screen in full brightness without nausea.
But not for everyday.
Rikl I knew I would find flickering. But I could not see any at the 240fps slow motion.
Maybe some background noise at full brightness? I was trying to be super critical.
This is a good sign! Only noticing what seems like your camera's own noise on your M1 Air lines up with what I'd call the flicker-free display I saw on the M2 Touch Bar Pro — instead of the 2 flickering M2 Airs I tested which were really obvious in comparison (in those cases, there was actually flashing from darker gray to lighter gray visible in the slow motion recording)
Rikl After recording I realized that there were no room lighting LEDs on in the room.
Maybe that's a factor when people find flickering.
For the M2 Air, that's not the case — I tested the M2 Touch Bar Pro and two M2 Airs all next to each other with no lights on, and the M2 Airs were flickering but the other was not.
So far, it looks like the M1 Air does not have the same easily captured flickering issues that M2 and M3 Airs seem to frequently have, which is reassuring to know.
I might have won the panel lottery. I bet they use more than a few manufacturers.
Rikl interesting part is that on the M2 Airs, yep I definitely had two totally different panels between them, panel lottery is real:
Unfortunately, despite the panel variation, both flickered just as much on camera when displaying the same colors.
EDIT: IGNORE BELOW: THE M1 AIR FLICKERS
Only the M2 Touch Bar Pro is truly flicker free!!
However, I'm more confident about the M1 Air and Touch Bar Pros being flicker-free in general, because color accuracy wise I actually got a "defective" panel on my M2 Touch Bar Pro test device — heavy color tint, really weird gradient effect where it looks reddish on left and greenish on right, it also starts to feel blurry on the right.
But despite ending up with a worse quality panel, the Touch Bar Pro is actually flicker-free on camera, Stillcolor works perfectly (nothing looks like it's moving at all), and actually does not cause the kinds of eye strain that I experienced with the M2 Airs!
This makes it very likely that all M1 Airs are also flicker-free on camera (despite still having the general issue of panel variation), given the very similar "old type of screen" as the Touch Bar Pros — they both don't have the Liquid Retina branding, and both would not need the backlight tweaks needed for a notch or rounded corners. Edit: NOPE the M1 Air flickers just like the M2 Air on camera
I've actually decided to pick up an M1 Air to test soon, so I will test for flicker on whichever panel I get and am likely to report my findings later this week!
FWIW. On Blooey's gradient image. my M1 Air loses separation at 7 bits. With Stillcolor.
Rikl Which app are you viewing the image in? FYI, macOS Preview and Quick Look will always apply their own spatial dithering (which is non-moving, unless the app redraws e.g. while scrolling) regardless of any other settings, meaning that it's not really a good app for evaluating the true bit depth of the screen.
Also, by losing separation, do you mean that the bands always stay only as thick as 6-bit even above 6-bit?
DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs The macOS framebuffer is never deeper than 10 bit, so some degree of spatial dither is expected when trying to display a 16 bit image like Blooey’s test image.
It’s not that unexpected that the M1 Airs have a six bit panel; they’d be the deal of the century if they had a true 8-bit panel.
DannyD2 Actually really interesting if the M1 Air is 6bit, as the M2 Touch Bar Pro still seems to be 8bit with Stillcolor enabled.
6bit panel but with a 10bit OS frame buffer is a really odd combination, haven't really seen that in many other devices. It's also hard to find any of this info documented anywhere
It's in Preview. I mean that the halfing of the bands stops at 7 bit and after that the transition is smooth to the right.
These are horizontal bands that are all the same height. Should I be looking at the image differently?
Same when set as wallpaper.
Rikl Really strange, just picked up an M1 Air myself and for me the halfing stops at 9 bit (like it did on the M2 Touch Bar Pro) even if Stillcolor has disabled dithering
DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs I've tried so many solutions before Stillcolor to make the M1 Air "usable", I may still have something set that I forgot about.
The M1 Air is an early 2020. Is it possible I have a left over Intel panel?
Good luck with the new M1.
Rikl Unfortunately I don't think I had good luck.
PWM-like flicker on solid colors detected on slow-motion camera on MacBook Air (M1, 2020), exactly the same as MacBook Air M2. Even when Stillcolor is enabled.
The only Apple Silicon MacBook that I've used at all so far that does not flicker on camera at all is the M2 Touch Bar MacBook Pro.
Will upload a video recording sometime later if any of y'all want to see it
Also, the first M1 Air is late 2020, not early 2020. An early 2020 MacBook Air would be the very last Intel one, not M1. Does it say M1 in your About This Mac?
