I don't want to get anyone's hopes up and want to be cautious but this is the best experience that I've had stood Infront of an Apple Silicon.. I just checked it out for 10/15mins in the store.
Hard to say for certain, Ill definitely be keeping an eye on it!!
I did check an M3air for a few moments and I'm pretty certain the M4 Pro didn't have the trance like brain fog symptom.
So so hard to say for sure though…
madmozg Yeah I've just been back to the store and it's hard to believe, but this seems to be comfortable for me..
I'll be proceeding with caution, I still feel like I'm a little spun out after looking at it.. but maybe that's the promotion. I'll likely get hold of one soon for a big test run.
Unbelievable if the end of this drama is in sight!
Ok, lets see then. 1 Day impression does not count. But 14 day, or at least good 1.5 weeks of work (~12 day) should give some decent answers. 6 Days using color LCD profile, 6 days using sRGB if there would be any strain on native ICC. Also 1/2 of the time should be spend using this machine on external monitor, which is known to be decent, i.e. works well with let say windows machine or old intel mac. By well, it does not mean there is no eye strain from long hours of work, it just means there is no abnormal eye strain that triggers quickly and is residual even after leaving montitor for 10 minutes or so.. If this test passes, then there is another set of tests needed to debunk wrong batch hypothesis. Sadly, in my area, there is no return policty, so I hope someone in US, CA, UK, FR, DE, … etc could perform these tests. There should be at least 7 out of 10 people who say - OK, I can work with this all day.
madmozg So good news so far. After some tinkering, I finally got the screen to stop feeling like it was "moving" by using StillColor AND BetterDisplay. This is the first time I've felt like my eyes are extremely relaxed when looking at the screen, however I do find a bit of pressure build up in parts of my head like the top and parts of the back but not any kind of headache like I've historically gotten. Not tons, but after a few minutes, it starts feeling that way. I haven't tried using it for multiple consecutive hours just yet, but I will keep trying and see if I adapt. So far, I'm very pleased. I looked at your Reddit post again, and you also had some head pressure within that first week as you were adjusting?
For anyone else wanting to try out the M4 Macbook Pro, Here are the settings I am using right now:
StillColor:
In the application, I have "Disable Dithering" and "Disable Uniformity2D" both selected.
I ensured that the dithering was turned off via StillColor and not so much with BetterDisplay by running this command and receiving three results that all say "No" for the "enableDither" flag.
➜ ~ ioreg -lw0 | grep -i enableDither
| | | | "enableDither" = No
| | | | "enableDither" = No
| | | | "enableDither" = No
➜ ~Then of course, here are my display settings:
TrueTone is disabled
Automatically Adjust Brightness is turned off
Display Profile Preset: "BetterDisplay XDR" - (I found BetterDisplayXDR to be better than the others) so I will continue to tinker with the different options.
I'm currently trying out both ProMotion and 60hz. 60 Hz feels a bit more comfortable on my eyes.
To be honest, I don't know how this will go over the coming days, but I feel more hopeful for this laptop than I have for the 10-15+ laptops I've tried in the last 2 years (all of which were unusable for me including M1-M3 Macbook Airs and Macbook Pros). Anyway, I hope this config helps others 
Sorry, but for 2k machine, I do not want any tinkering Its kind of bad news at least to me
@whystrainwhy nice progress! thanks for sharing your experience
Donux well no-one is trying to convince you to buy anything here.
madmozg Yeah of course I'll admit, I used the laptop for 2-2.5 hours today and I felt "cooked" a bit from the pressure in the head, but that's why I was curious with your journey. You said you went for 2 hours the first day. Was that because you couldn't "take it" much longer and needed a break? Or was it just circumstances of the day got in the way? I'm hoping to incrementally increase the amount of time I use the screen, but right now I'm typing this message on my 100% comfortable 2014 macbook pro because I think I needed a break from the screen from the M4 lol. Does this sound familiar?
whystrainwhy Everyone has in some way similar, but in another way different eye strain experience. To me - "feeling cooked" does not sound right. With a decent machine, I could push full day no problem, even if there would be a strain. 2 hours does not sound right at least to me. But I am wondering how it would feel with external monitor, and also with a laptop panel, how it would feel if you switch to sRGB (Web & Internet). I am assuming you are running Color LCD, which I treat as "show off mode" for the retail store front, definitely not suitable for work on this hardware.
Donux @madmozg As I've alluded to before, the best chance for a native solution is to find someone involved with engineering at Apple who is either really bored or experiences the issue themselves and having the technical evidence in hand and is amiable to discussions potential solutions. Of course getting exact empirical evidence is a challenge in itself.
Hey guys, the panel lottery with new MBP M4 is real. I've received yesterday MBP M4 Max in addition to my current MBP M4, I though that I need a more powerful laptop to be safe for the next couple of years.
MBP M4 (I dont have any strain with this):
"raw-panel-serial-number" = <"F0YHAP0007N00006GT+A+P9RN49001F24D9+PROD+Y437343934426+P805R0801Y50540907+424C9GC6782423J46D000A43B48T47X7577EIM1A4O67707+5044141A144252A144251544262844271544262034432234"
MBP M4 Max (not comfortable symptoms):
"raw-panel-serial-number" = <"FMXHA10032Y00006GW+A+GE1S4807881361+PROD+Y431343434354+K60640772Y72140803+433C9GC30424190F46R000A42T46345D78403IAD4973493+A24375208439420D43952643951A43951543962044395100
I've asked claude if it could decode this serial numbers. So here is the response:
It can be pretty inaccurate, but still some interesting info to post here.
Also from symptoms perspective I don't like it at all. I can tell that I'm feeling weird with some symptoms like pre/headaches symptoms and some eye irritations. Its not comfortable at all. Going to return it back. Also would be great if someone could help with a better decoding.
Interesting about the panels. I wonder if you can post what it says in colorSync utility? Click on the Devices Tab, click on your Display, then click "open" on the "Factory Profile" section and then look for line 16. It should say "Apple Display Make and Information". Is there any difference between the M4 (base) and M4 (max) that you can see in the fields displayed there?
Here is what it looks like on my 2017 MBP 13 for reference:
Hey, have anyone tried a 14 inch M4? Does it also use quantum dot now?
Back at the apple store today having looked at lots of Windows laptops (on a side note the ones I find most comfortable happen to be touch screen when I check) but yeah super comfortable on 16" and 14" today very tempted to test one but will likely wait till after Xmas.
I looked at a new mini on a studio display and this started spinning me out in seconds.
there really is something massively different going on!!
I just wanted to respond on here that I do hope it works well for you guys. I think there's something in the OS itself happening for me because I ended up returning my 16" M4 MBP due to that super strainy feeling that I just didn't have it in me to "push past" that 2 hour mark. I may wait until the M4 Macbook Air comes and try that but there have been some people who have felt good from it, but there is also a panel lottery between them so just be aware of that too
whystrainwhy I think there's something in the OS itself happening for me
Yep for me I have the sensitivity to the OS/driver-related issues too. I can't even use a 15-inch late 2008 or 13-inch mid-2009 MBP LOL — even with the old dither disable methods like NVInject kext… Arguably the 2009 has super intense strobe PWM, but the late 2008 15" is flicker-free to my camera and also gives me a similar kind of brain fog feeling.
The issues are the worst on both in macOS, however even with an old Ubuntu version they still aren't usable for more than ~30 minutes for me.
I can't use the Mid-2015 15" Retina for >30mins either, no matter if I'm in AMD or Intel graphics mode.
The only exception is Late 2016 13" MBP, which is "semi" usable for some kinds of more visual tasks (e.g. photo editing or graphic design — it was OK enough to be the computer I originally learned graphic design on), but I still have that strain feeling in the background, and I can't comfortably work with text documents on it… even though I technically can use it, there's still something really weird going on.
With the 2016, the moment I need to start writing a longer document, even in the years before I knew I had LED strain I used to immediately switch to an old Windows laptop instead LOL…
(Weirdly, installing Windows or Linux on the Late 2016 MBP makes it entirely unusable, especially Linux which gave the strongest eye strain I had in a while immediately after booting it up — making it the only Mac that's actually better with macOS compared to other OSes…)
I don't have any good external monitor yet, but I've noticed that all my external monitors are worse than usual whenever they're connected to a macOS device.
Today, the only way I can "seriously" use macOS — as in, entire days of work with tons of text while consistently avoiding strain — is through a NoMachine stream via a known-good Windows laptop (AUO TN laptop LCD from 2015 with Intel drivers disabled)
For reference, I'm also sensitive to the Windows Intel driver issues that have been discussed all the way back with driver version 9 in 2012… some laptops are still "okayish" with drivers on, but the only way I can get a "TRULY/consistently" good screen that works every day is with MS Basic Display Adapter (+ a good panel of course)
Sadly the new MBP didn't work for me. The pain behind my eyes wasn't immediate but did come back after a few minutes of using the laptop at the store. Bummer.
I spent some time this weekend with a colleague's device that has an FMX panel serial number (what madmozg found to be not comfortable) and with the nanotexture display option.
For me the improved quality of the backlight was immediately apparent. It is better than the last iteration of pros for sure, in that it's not immediately eye-piercing for me. But there was still a quality that felt straining. I'm guessing that's related either to the PWM or something with the FMX panel.
Still, this feels like progress… once they switch the Airs to this kind of backlight, those devices could be usable for some people. I'm still happy this forum tipped me off to the M2 Pro TB though -- it continues to work for me.
DannyD2 Was the FMX display you tried out on a 14 inch or 16 inch?
