Ranked on a 1-10 scale based on symptom severity. All laptops running Ventura unless otherwise specified. All using default display settings. MBA 13" M1 -- Instant eyestrain and nausea. (10/10 I only used this for a few minutes. Brutal) MBA 13" M2 -- Delayed eyestrain, no nausea. (6/10 I used this for a week. The eyestrain starts off mild and increases over time. I can only use it for 15-30 minutes before it's too painful. Not sustainable for long-term use.) MBA 15" M2 -- Instant eyestrain and nausea. (9/10 I only used this for a few minutes. Much worse than the 13" version.) MBP 14" M3 -- Instant eyestrain and nausea. (9/10 I only used this for a few minutes. Very uncomfortable.) MBP 13" M2 -- Mild eyestrain, no nausea. (3/10 I used this 1.5 hours daily for 6 days. No major issues using the preinstalled Ventura. HOWEVER -- when I upgraded to Sonoma, it was immediately unusable. I can only use this machine running Ventura.) MBP 14" M1 Pro -- Mild eyestrain, no nausea. (2/10 I used this 2-3 hrs daily for 10 days. Used for up to 5 hours in one day with no major issues using the preinstalled Sonoma. HOWEVER - when I downgraded to Ventura, the eyestrain kept getting worse. I can only use this machine running Sonoma.) MBP 16" M2 Pro-- Instant eyestrain, mild nausea. (8/10 I only used this for a few minutes. Could be a 9/10 or 10/10 but I'm unwilling to find out.) MBP 16" M1 Pro -- Mild eyestrain, no nausea. (2/10 I have only used this for 1 hour so far, seems not too bad. Running Sonoma.) Most recent update: 12/28/23

Sonnis If you are desperate, I can use the MacBook Air 15 M2 by taking a drug called fluxarten. In my case 5mg per day is enough and I can work.

Your post matches up with my experience with these models as well. I haven't tried the M3 Pro yet or the M2 15" Air but otherwise spot on.

I've tried most of these and found them to match up to my findings as well. The worst for me were 14 and 16" MBP, then m1 air, then m2 air 15", then the best was m2 13" air (still not great as a daily driver). I have not tried m2 pro 13". I eventually gave up on macbooks, sold my units and bought a Thinkpad x1 carbon and it is 10x better than any Mac I've used in the last 5 years. I really did not want to give up MacOS but I was getting severe symptoms and now I just wish I made the jump sooner because I'm pretty sure I suffered some permanent damage over the last few years without being away of what was happening. Thanks for sharing your results!

Would you mind sharing the exact specs of the M2 Pro that you have? I'm on an Intel Mac right now but I've been thinking recently that I'm gonna have to upgrade at some point…

Great post thank you! +1 for sharing the specs of your M2 Pro 13". I too am still on an Intel Mac (2015 pro) and badly need to upgrade.

devilgrove It's the base model 2022 13" MacBook Pro M2, 8GB, 512GB running Ventura. The other machine I'm having success with so far is the 2021 14" MacBook Pro M1, 16GB 512GB running Sonoma. They both have a different "feel" to my eyes and brain, but so far I have been able to adjust to each one. Oddly enough I can't use the 13" with Sonoma or the 14" with Ventura.

Did you attempt to run the with forced low power / high power mode? Or simply with power supply vs low battery, With ProMotion the framerate it gets capped at 60 hz in low power. What application you run also makes a difference on what framerate it runs at. For example if you have some constant overlay that changes it uses a stable 120hz instead of going up and down. This can be observed with Quartz Debug from Additional Tools for Xcode.

async No I didn't. All my testing is just using the OS and Safari, letting the battery run down with default settings.

I'm testing as many MacBooks as possible. Here are the results.

NewDwarf

GBowler Do you check on the external monitor? The problem is the external screen can be PWM enabled.

GBowler

NewDwarf I haven't read much about PWM at all compared to dithering, so potentially these two MBP could be sending different pwm frequency to the monitor?

Lauda89

NewDwarf There are two versions of that drug, a 10mg version and a 5mg version. Fortunately, with the 15" macbook air, I only need the 5mg dose. Of course I would prefer not to take medication however I don't have a laptop that doesn't cause migraines right now.

When I work from home, I connect the mac to the 27GR95QE-B (27" 2K OLED 240hz) monitor and with this combination I have no migraine problems so I take the medication when I have to work from clients. So 0 to 5 times a week.

If i connect the same monitor to my gaming PC 13700K + 4070 + W11 21H2 gives me migraine problems after one hour of use.

I bought a PWM detector:

MACBOOK:

Gaming PC:

The modulation depth is worse with gaming PC but I don't think that is the problem. My current smarthphone is iphone X which has 240hz frequency and 99.5% modulation depth and I can use it for hours without any problem..

GregAtkinson

Lauda89 When you took the measurements with your Opple LightMaster, did you test the same color for both devices? I'm guessing you tested a brighter color (like white) for the Macbook and a dimmer color (like gray) for the gaming PC.

It would be best to use the same colors for both. And also to try using a handful of different colors, comparing the same color on one device with the same color on the other device.

Here's a handy page that lists all 256 shades of gray, red, green and blue. Obviously you don't need to test all 1000+ colors, but testing 20 different colors might produce interesting results. https://pixelinversion.com/AllColors.html

Also, it would be interesting to see the waveform from your iPhone X. 99.5% modulation depth is pretty crazy for a screen.

DannyD2

Lauda89 That's really fascinating… is that measurement from the Opple taken on the Macbook Air M2 15 inch? I thought Notebookcheck had found that it doesn't have PWM, but that measurement is showing 240Hz PWM? I wonder if it's picking up FRC dither? But I thought FRC was typically half the frequency of the refresh rate?

Edit: Sorry, I didn't realize you were using an external monitor for the test.

Lauda89

GregAtkinson For comparison I used the white ledstrain background from chrome. I will try some other colors.

In the meantime, I will add these graphs:

Iphone X IOS 14 (perfect for my brain):

Ipad air 2 (ledstrain white with safari) the only ipad tried that does not give migraine problems but I am stuck with IOS 13 for fear of updating:

Finally the business laptop which is an HP elitebook 840 g8 that destroys me in an hour of use (again ledstrain white with chrome):

From these graphs I cannot find any logical explanation with my symptoms. Because the HP should be the best and the iphone X the worst instead for me it is exactly the opposite.
The only thing I know is that it is a software problem.

DigDeal

macsforme

I can absolutely confirm this. MacOS Ventura update from 13.2.1 to 13.3 changed something on firmware level of my M2 MBP 13". I was able to use it for hours, but it added some high frequency flickering that's best seen with white text on black background. It's completely unusable now. I can see this flickering even I take my eyes off the screen, it takes maybe 15-30 minutes to get my sight in order after using it.

What’s worse that is seems to be irreversible. I downgraded to earlier Ventura and even Monterey. I went to service and asked them to downgrade the firmware to 13.2.1 which they did (it could be done with recovery from another mac) but nothing changed.

macsforme

DigDeal To clarify, you actually downgraded the firmware, not just the operating system (macOS) version? Downgrading the firmware involves putting your Mac in DFU mode, connecting it to another Mac via USB-C/Thunderbolt, and restoring a specific macOS version using an .ipsw file using Apple Configurator 2. If only a recovery USB stick with an earlier macOS version was used, this would not downgrade the firmware. It sounds like you described an actual firmware downgrade, but I just want to be sure. I am also curious if you observed a firmware version change in the System Information app after the downgrade.

For the record, an Apple silicon MacBook Pro was where all of my vision problems started as well. There is definitely something harsh going on there.

Donux

DigDeal Maybe this is how they increase sales? Got eye strain, aha, need better product? I mean this sounds ridiculous but in this world I am surprised day by day as to what is possible when you have weak CEO and very pushy board.

DigDeal

macsforme Hi, yes, that is exactly what they did. I read an article on mrmacintosh.com about downgrading firmware to a specific version, downloaded 13.2.1 ipsw file and brought all this to a service center, where they uploaded the entire image using another Mac. As a result both "system firmware" and "OS loader" reported by system information matched the ones for Ventura 13.2.1.

macsforme

DigDeal Sorry to hear the firmware downgrade did not work for you. 😦 I wish there were better methods for empirical measurements of these problems (I see there are some hopeful developments in other threads here recently). Because of this, it can be hard to determine whether some irreversible changes are occurring during software updates (not limited to the main firmware), or if our brains now associate the whole device with being a threat, even after reverting to the previous, tolerable state. I hope our continued research here will ultimately bring some clarity.

@GBowler noted different levels of eye strain between two identical MacBook models with different installed firmware versions. I also have several MacBooks of the same year (2015), which all had recent firmware versions, but among them I find certain screens more tolerable than others. So, while firmware remains a possible factor, I am currently leaning more toward attributing my personal issues to panel variations.

MAS-76

NewDwarf

I finally was able to execute on a 2019 MBP 16-inch w/ Intel and AMD Radeon Pro 5600M. I got the below from terminal (the Intel response a lot longer than your above). It seems like dithering is disabled on both, right?

My eyes are a bit tired from messing with so hard to tell right now on symptoms, but…

For the AMD:

And for the Intel:

MAS-76

NewDwarf

As maybe a bad sign I ran this command and got the below. A lot of "unable to find any matching services." Could it be the 16" and/or AMD Radeon Pro 5600M is too new for the kernel?

Unfortunately I am still having symptoms on the 2019 MBP (and no symptoms still on my 2015 15" MBP).

MAS-76

NewDwarf

If exact specs help I'm using a 2019 MBP 16" 2.4GHz 64GB 8TB Intel 630, AMD Radeon Pro 5600M, running Sonoma 14.3, here's the About This Mac:

xpatronum

Has anyone tried the 16 inch version (intel), any success with turning off dithering and no eye strain as well as 15 inch (intel) MAS-76 ?

GregAtkinson

Lauda89 That is very interesting. Here's a few ideas/questions:

The flicker rate on your iPhone X is 250 hz (it flickers every 4 ms), which is well above the level that most people will get headaches. So maybe you're not sensitive to OLED flicker or any kind of flickering at high speeds (say, 100 hz or higher).
So if you ignore the huge dips and just focus on the top line of the graphs, you'll see a correlation between headaches and the variability of the graphs. Note that when comparing these graphs, you have to keep in mind that they have different scales for the Y axis, so you have to imagine what the graphs would look like if they had the same scale.

Iphone X (no headaches, pretty flat if you imagine what the graph would look like if the Y axis went up to 250 and not just 100.)

Macbook (no headaches, pretty flat)

Gaming pc (headaches, pretty ragged)
I find it really interesting that the output from your Macbook and gaming PC have different brightness levels and that the gaming PC has a more ragged line than the Macbook. I would start looking for differences in how the display works. I think you'd mentioned that one of them connects via HDMI and the other via DisplayPort. That could be worth experimenting with. But also you could look in the monitor settings (are these devices somehow using different monitor settings?). And also for the graphics card you could play around with different settings like make sure you turn off "eye care" and blue light filters and things like that. The good news is you can make various changes and test them immediately with your light meter.
Testing with other colors, especially light gray and light green could be interesting. Something called pixel inversion happens at 30 hz and many monitors flicker worst with light colors vs pure white.

GregAtkinson

Lauda89 Oh, and have you tried turning off your discrete graphics card and using your integrated graphics card on your gaming PC?

GBowler

Link I'm starting to wonder has my brain trained to a specific flicker or dithering pattern and others are now uncomfortable

Sunspark

@Lauda89 On the iPhone X, change the brightness slider to 50% and run that test again. The modulation depth will be different.

GBowler

@NewDwarf thanks again for your help on this!! I have a Rx 5600 Xt in an EGPU exclosure do you know what commands I'd need to disable dithering on that please?

RobC

macsforme you could check the display panel of your Mac with the following command:

ioreg -lw0 | grep \"EDID\" | sed "/[^<]*</s///" | xxd -p -r | strings -6

DigDeal

macsforme yeah, pretty sure at that stage it's at least partially psychological. I'm literally scared to update any usable device at this point.

Interesting note, again proving my point that it's 100% software related, is that using "safe mode" makes it tolerable. Not ideal, but not as harsh as in regular mode. Most likely some sort of hardware acceleration is disabled.

vegeta97

i think laptops with ips lcd screens would cause the least eyestrain?

macsforme

RobC Unfortunately, all display EDID values for this MacBook model/year appear to be identical. 😕 My understanding is that Apple removed the ability to see the display model/vendor after people were returning earlier retina MacBook models which did not come with a display from their preferred vendor.

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