Videos of MacBook Air M2 flickering

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.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

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.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

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.

Rikl interesting part is that on the M2 Airs, yep I definitely had two totally different panels between them, panel lottery is real:

• one was sharp, had reddish tint, good anti glare coating, it felt "like it's own distinct panel"
• one was blurry, had heavy greenish tint, really bad glare, it felt like "they took the same type of panel from the 14" and shoved it in the Air but without the mini-LEDs"

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!

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

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?

EDIT: This post is outdated!

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Finished trying out the M1 Air on both 13.0 and 13.6.6. PSA y'all the M1 Air (at least mine) flickers on camera on gray backgrounds even when dithering is disabled in the same exact way that two M2 Airs I tested also flickered. M1 Air is affected by this too.

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(EDIT: weirdly enough, although it's true this flicker exists on the M1 Air too — it somehow doesn't seem to bother me on the M1 Air, unlike the M2…)

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Max brightness, no True Tone, no auto brightness, @2x resolution, no lights on in the room, it's bright outside so no artificial light coming in from outside either.

I also made sure to test with BetterDisplay mirroring and other color profiles, and these did not stop or affect the flicker in any way.

For those curious: On M2 Airs, I also tried essentially every IOKit frame buffer registry item possible to modify, both on/off and numeric ones, and they did not stop the M2 Air flicker. I do not think any of them will stop M1 Air flicker either.

The ONLY Apple Silicon MacBook that is flicker free to my iPhone 14 Pro camera is the M2 Touch Bar Pro.

I have previously verified that this is not a camera grain-induced issue by placing the M2 Touch Bar Pro next to two M2 Airs and filming them all side by side at 240hz slow motion showing the same dark gray Stone solid color wallpaper. Two M2 Airs flicker (and we now know the M1 Air flickers too) — but the Touch Bar Pro didn't flicker at all.

In summary…

Even with Stillcolor:

(By "PWM-like" I mean flicker can be captured on my phone camera at 240hz, vs. temporal dithering which usually can't be picked up on camera at all.)

M1 Max Pro 14" mini-LED flickers — PWM & very likely TCON-level dithering

Two M2 Airs (each with unique panel) flickers — PWM-like

M1 Air flickers — PWM-like, just like M2 Air (EDIT: but more comfortable for some reason?)

M2 Touch Bar Pro does not flicker on camera at all, as long as the Touch Bar is turned off and Stillcolor is active.