- Edited
Back in 2020, I gave my 2016 13" MacBook Pro originally bought in early 2017 to someone else — ironically in order to upgrade to a 2020 13" Intel Pro which is the first laptop I ever started having truly significant screen issues with. (Which then proceeded to get even worse when I switched again from the 2020 Intel to a 2021 M1 Max 14" Pro…)
As they aren't screen sensitive, I finally managed to trade my newer 2018 Retina MacBook Air (i5) — which I found unusable on any macOS version, and only usable at all on Windows — to get my exact original 2016 13" Pro back. They needed a laptop with official support for Sonoma and more RAM. It's a win-win because unlike me they luckily do not have issues with the 2018 Air screen!
I made the smart decision of choosing to not fully wipe the 2016 Pro and instead just remove their user account and Find My off of the device. That way I avoided any potential screen setting changes that may come with a full reinstall of a newer version of the OS. (When I first gave them the laptop, they started with a fresh install of 10.15 Catalina and later upgraded to 12 Monterey.)
The 2016 13" Pro screen is exactly how I remember it
Not "perfect" and I can still totally observe dithering on macOS, but more usable compared to most other Intel Macs.
Update: This 2016 13" Touch Bar Pro has become VERY usable with a noticeably still and flat image after switching from macOS to Windows 10 2004, original June 2016 Intel drivers, and ditherig.exe (see my later replies)
My 2016 MacBook Pro specs
13-inch, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports, Touch Bar
2.9 GHz i5, 8 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, Intel Iris Graphics 550
macOS Monterey 12.6.3 Edit: Switched to Boot Camp Windows 10 2004 and huge improvement
There are many interesting things about the 2016 13" Pro that set it apart from other laptops:
- It has Iris graphics but is not terrible (contrary to the typical bad reputation of Iris graphics) — much more usable on macOS than the 2018 Air which had UHD Graphics 615.
- It has a P3 screen but very does NOT show a Color Depth option in BetterDisplay at all. Most P3 Intel Macs are known to default to 10bpc color. This Mac is very unique as its native color gamut is P3 yet is also limited to (and defaults to) only 8bpc color.
- It is MUCH more usable than my 2015 15" Retina MacBook Pro (which has a AMD R9 M370X dGPU and Iris Pro 5200 iGPU). Even on integrated graphics mode, the 2015 15" has so much glare and the screen appears to be constantly moving. (On integrated mode the 2015 only shows 8bpc but still causes strain. Interestingly, while in AMD discrete mode the 2015 also shows a 10bpc option.) Overall the 2016 13" Touch Bar Pro feels much better.
- My 2016 does NOT have the infamous "Yellow Tint" and whites ACTUALLY look white. However, there is some yellowing starting to show around the edges simply due to wear over time.
- I had my 2016 MBP screen repaired once (at the Apple Store, while I originally owned it) in Fall 2017. Since then there have been no more screen replacements. I have a hunch that I won the "panel lottery" in whichever new panel its true original screen was replaced with. Because of this factor, there's a chance that most 2016 MBPs in the wild do not have the same exact panel that mine does.
- Warning: there is still "some" kind of dithering at play to some extent, as changing Software Brightness in BetterDisplay will appear "entirely smooth" with no shifts in banding. And unfortunately, setting
nvram boot-args="dither=0"
does nothing on this laptop and color adjustments remain just as "smooth". FWIW the only laptop I've actually ever gotten that command to noticeably improve the screen on is the 2015 12-inch (single port) MacBook. - However, very strangely, although I'm still sensitive to whatever form of dithering is used here it's not AS bad as the dithering used on other MacBooks. Temporal flicker is still noticeable but doesn't seem to "apply to everything" in the super obvious way seen on most other modern Macs? For example, I see flicker on text but scrollbars look still. My only guess is that because of the really unique combination of P3 and only 8bpc color, Apple may have decided to use more spatial dithering here (which doesn't move) in some places where they usually would apply temporal dithering?
- Touch Bar still has PWM just like other newer Touch Bar MBPs. I've posted about methods to black out the Touch Bar to work around this earlier on this forum.
Currently my only known usable Intel Mac is 2015 12" single port MacBook on 10.14.6 Mojave (with boot-args="dither=0").
Running 12.6.3 Monterey, the 2016 13" Touch Bar Pro comes close, better than many other Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, but dithering is still an issue on macOS. TLDR: good hardware, bad software.
Edit: Dithering can be disabled with Windows 10 2004!