MacOS respects true color displays preventing dither + save monitor

WhisperingWind

For the Mac mini 2018 paired with the BenQ BL2420PT monitor (IPS, 6-bit+FRC), I find the 10-bit output setting (versus 8-bit) produces the most visually comfortable image.

The separate Windows 10 22H2 PC (Intel UHD 730) only outputs 8-bit to this monitor, yet the image looks as comfortable as 10-bit on the Mac.

A Mystery: To the naked eye, it's puzzling why the Mac mini's video subsystem behaves this way compared to the Windows PC and my M1 MacBook Pro. When I have time, I plan to analyze the HDMI output with a recorder to get concrete data on what's happening.

AshX

I bought a MacBook Pro 16" M1 Max with a MiniLED display a year ago. It was extremely uncomfortable to use with my external BenQ GL2450 monitor. Although the MacBook Pro M1 was very comfortable with the same monitor. I sold the MacBook Pro 16" M1 Max.

The only thing that made it OK was the option to stream the content of the virtual display in BetterDisplay to the physical BenQ GL2450 display. But the performance in this case wasn't great.

I tried it on several operating systems, including Sonoma. When comparing it with the MacBook Pro M1, I always brought both MacBooks to the same OS and firmware version via DFU.

P.S. Additional Note on the BenQ BL2420PT: although this monitor is advertised as PWM-free, it has a different kind of signal spike that can also cause eye strain during long sessions.

macsforme

AshX Unfortunately you can’t DFU downgrade Intel Macs firmware like you can with Apple Silicon using an IPSW, so even if you did a test downgrading to say, Mojave or Catalina, which pre-existed Apple Silicon, I don’t know how the newer firmware would interact.

To add some nuance, this is true for T1/T2 Macs, where BridgeOS can only be flashed with the version currently signed by Apple (usually only the latest version; similar to an iPhone or iPad). With older Intel Macs, it is technically possible to reconstruct an old firmware version and flash it with an EEPROM programmer and the right adapters. I have done this a few times for 2015 retina MacBook Pros, but at least for this model I believe I saw no difference in reported VBIOS versions for either the Intel iGPU or the AMD DGPU between the oldest available Apple firmware and the newest, neither did I find any subjective improvement in eye strain.

WhisperingWind

I installed Sonoma, Sequoia, and Tahoe on my MacBook Pro M1. However, I returned to Sonoma without using DFU. I also don't see any noticeable difference in terms of eye strain when running Sonoma with the firmware from Sonoma, Sequoia, or Tahoe.

On my Mac mini 2018, I also use Sonoma after installing and removing Sequoia. I don't notice any difference related to the firmware in terms of eye strain either.

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