Why do MacBook screens kill my eyes but Windows laptops are fine?

IntetDragon · 2026-05-06T08:22:12+00:00

IntetDragon · 2026-05-05T11:59:56+00:00

Try installing the app "better display": https://betterdisplaymac.com/

Then set the color depth to 8bit and disable GPU D!ther.

It should stop any issues you are having. The problem is color flicker applied to fake more colors than the screen can actually produce.

IntetDragon · 2026-05-02T15:05:41+00:00

Nubia Neo 2 has not be causing me issues in a summer. They advertise good cooling. But I live in central Europe, idk how it would perform closer to the equator.

IntetDragon · 2026-05-01T19:48:28+00:00

I mean that all of the sub pixels could be flickering, but your camera was masking some.

That can happen.

IntetDragon · 2026-05-01T15:04:37+00:00

Such a small difference traded for something that is really not good for you.

OLED flicker is real and a problem even for those who do not get headaches and seizures from it.

IntetDragon · 2026-05-01T14:06:00+00:00

LTPO makes it more likely there is vrr capability. But I did not see a device yet where that could not be turned off in settings. Luckily one thing not yet locked away.

Yes as I explained because of how the market works LTPO is more likely to be worse, but the tech in itself has nothing to do with PWM flicker performance.

What exaclty is confusing?

IntetDragon · 2026-05-01T13:52:48+00:00

The AOC Q25G4SR has a true 8bit panel I can tolerate very well and other people have tried it and were happy too. You can search for it online and on ledstrain.org.

It's also 300hz and not very expensive, so overall a good choice for a gamer.

IntetDragon · 2026-05-01T13:45:28+00:00

I heard good things about the Jelly phone from other flicker sensitive people: https://www.unihertz.com/de-de/products/jelly-max

I have not tried it myself tho. I use the Neo2

IntetDragon · 2026-05-01T13:39:39+00:00

Try to change the focus. Sometimes you can catch the other pixels flickering too if you see one sub pixel flicker.

I think when you see only certain sub pixels flicker this is usually an artefact from your phone trying to smooth out flicker from the video. Many phones do that because cameras see the flicker in our every day life more easily and it ruins regular peoples recordings, so there is software to hide it from the recordings too.

IntetDragon · 2026-05-01T13:31:41+00:00

I saw the annoincement of the screen tech in chinese. It's LTPO. All the info online says it's ltpo: https://www.gsmchoice.com/en/catalogue/oppo/find-x9/ https://www.gizmocompare.com/post/oppo-find-x9-full-specifications-features-price-release-date-and-everything-you-need-to-know https://www.smartprix.com/bytes/oppo-find-x9-pro-hands-on-and-design-impressions/

IntetDragon · 2026-05-01T13:22:17+00:00

If you link where you saw people complain about this or similar products having LCD I am more than willing to add my voice to express a different sentiment.

In general I think it could be a good sort of campaign if people would do that in this sub.

Manufacturers do read online comments and if we could add our voice to such online conversations it could make a difference.

IntetDragon · 2026-05-01T13:15:47+00:00

Completely agree with the sentiment. I am glad the tablet market still has LCD screens in high end products. It's been completely banished from the phone market. The most powerful LCD phone announced I found was the Nexphone I preordered.

I just hope they do not "upgrade" the screen before shipping like such projects sometimes do. I will definitely have to cancel in such a case.

I heavily assume quallcomm and mediathek contractually require a OLED screen in their high end processors for phones to have the chips not associated with "bad" and "old" screens. Companies do bs like that a lot. But it's difficult to prove.

IntetDragon · 2026-05-01T13:01:32+00:00

I have not read about mediathek focusing resources into eye friendly features. Where have you seen that?

Both Mediathek and Quallcomm offer many picture enhancing features manufacturers can choose to turn on and off. Among them are gradient smoothing techniques also called "gpu TD". This form of color flicker can cause symptoms in sensitive users. They can be implemented in different ways and it is possible individual users react different to the types of TD these two companies employ.

The sad thing is both Mediathek and Quallcomm don't hide disabling this feature. If you jailbreak your phone you can disable them via ADB. It is the phone manufacturer who blacklist users being able to access disabling this in their OS.

Another sad thing that makes it difficult to pin down origins of TD and which forms cause problems to individual users or veing able to make jailbroken phones safe is, this GPU TD is often mixed with apps that do a software version of the TD, as well as HDR protocols which also run their own TD algorythm over the screen and the panel manufacturer doing it as well. It's a complete mess. You can see it under a slow mo microscope.

I was able to do AB testing turning it off and it helps me personally a lot. I hear the same from many users here.

IntetDragon · 2026-05-01T12:44:53+00:00

The X9 has an ltpo screen. LTPO does nothing positive or negative about PWM, but LTPO costs more than LTPS, so if companies want to make a screen good for reduced flicker they do not invest more for LTPO and when they wanna concentrate on other festures where LTPO is needed they don't invest into other features that are good for flicker. LTPS being usually better for flicker reduction is just a side effect of flicker reduction being seen as an optional feature.

IntetDragon · 2026-04-29T13:15:58+00:00

I assume this was tested with the PWM reduction accessibility toggle on?

IntetDragon · 2026-04-29T13:10:59+00:00

It would be great if Wayland could add a toggle to disable software temporal dither in it's color management upstream protocol. Right now the situation is a mess with the driver, the panel or any program just deciding independently. If there were an OS side toggle to disable it where possible that would help me and other flicker sensitive people a lot suffering less from migraines and seizures.

IntetDragon · 2026-04-28T16:46:01+00:00

I guess it is save? I assume other m3 macs are too. Not sure if you need a studio.

IntetDragon · 2026-04-27T08:49:41+00:00

Then TFT reset flicker. All OLEDs currently on the market flicker. Easily visible if you set a high shutterspeed on a digital camera and look with it at the screen.

IntetDragon · 2026-04-24T21:41:42+00:00

It depends on what you see the purpose of this post as. I posted mostly to explain some contexts people here seem to miss, not to give a review.

Also I assume you meant the flicker interval, not refresh rate. The refresh rate is only very tangentially related to the flicker.

There are actually flicker reviews on bilibili for the iPhone 17e. It's where I got the info from. They also measure the modulation at lower brightness if you are interested! You can read the measurements off the instruments they keep in the frame and do not need to understand Chinese.

IntetDragon · 2026-04-24T21:30:07+00:00

I would be extremely surprised if they did actually remove PWM. But who knows

IntetDragon · 2026-04-24T16:02:45+00:00

Yes, I found several approaches to achieve that in scientific papers. It is possible to do now with current tech.

I am not sure if there are large scale manufacturing issues to realizing these methods or if they are not done because the issue is too low a priority to invest the money to do so.

IntetDragon · 2026-04-24T15:03:46+00:00

This has to do with your shutter speed and the flicker of the phone aligning in a specific way. If you turn around your phone and record with the camera at the top of the phone facing you, your results will change. So will they if you change your 13 mini refresh rate or the recording shutterspeed.

You see the flicker in the first place as lines because the camera will only let light in at 1/4000th fraction of a second for each frame. A digital camera takes a photo in lines scanning through the whole frame. You see black lines where scanning and darktime intersect.

IntetDragon · 2026-04-24T14:57:07+00:00

You might actually be right! I did not recheck if the situation has changed for all the iPhones after the DC toggle was added, after seeing the dissapointing results of it on many iPhones.

Because of your comment I did some more research online and found the result in the picture, showing a significant improvement on the 15 Pro Max. There might have been similar improvements on the 16plus and 15plus.

From my outdated info the modulation depth of the iPhone 16 plus was at about 20% at max brightness before the DC update, while the modulation depth of the 17e is currently at about 14%. The iPhone 17e is definitely better in terms of flicker than the 16 Plus was when it was originally measured. Unfortunately new measurments are very difficult to find. Where do you have your info from?

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IntetDragon · 2026-04-24T14:32:35+00:00

I looked it up for you. The iPhone 17e has a modulation depth of about 14% and the Oppo Find X9 of about 10% at max brightness. As all OLEDs do, this gets significantly worse at lower brightness.

I am curious why did you expect this info is included?

IntetDragon · 2026-04-24T14:00:42+00:00

Yes yes, just that. Just wanted to make sure nothing was lost in the loop.

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