Kanatarium Your laptop has PWM? Take a high speed camera and slow motion video camera to the screen at under 30% brightness to see.
PWM is an awful way of dimming a display because instead of dimming the pixels it dims the screen by rapidly turning them off and on. They go from fully on to fully off, and dimmer brightness means the pixels simply are off for more of the time.
The brain is too sophisticated and profound for PWM trickery. I'm pretty sure PWM dimming causes brain damage over time. Generally heavy users reach a point where they lose tolerance for PWM techniques. Becoming sensitized to PWM will reduce tolerance for all forms of flicker.
There should be a law passed that displays using PWM have to include a warning or disclaimer on the box. That would set a fire under these companies to cut it out by increasing public awareness of the potential dangers.
When we buy processed food, we expect a list of ingredients. Similarly, we should be notified if a screen uses flicker-based techniques to modulate brightness.
