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so

  • yes

    Votes: 26 11.9%
  • no

    Votes: 168 77.1%
  • not sure

    Votes: 16 7.3%
  • will try a swap then if same, yes

    Votes: 4 1.8%
  • will try a swap then if same, no

    Votes: 4 1.8%

  • Total voters
    218

aacemyan

macrumors regular
Nov 20, 2017
135
206
TX
All iPads with mini led displays will exhibit blooming under the right scenario - there’s no lottery. I have a 12.9 2020 that I compared to extensively and while blooming is noticeable in white text / black background scenarios, you quickly notice how much better the image quality and colors are when watching movies. Old screen is dark grey in comparison, so I think some of the blooming is inherent to the stark contract dofferences when people crank up brightness in a pitch black room.
 

LFC2020

macrumors P6
Apr 4, 2020
16,874
38,037
No chance this M1 mini led beast is going back, only places I’m seeing minor blooming is in dark mode in the notes app and setting page.

Keep in mind these iPads have only been out for 4 days, I’m sure apple will release a update to fix the minor blooming in settings and notes app.

She’s a keeper for me ?
 

Chazani

macrumors regular
Oct 23, 2014
106
185
No, I don’t think so. This device is perfectly fine. Heck even the sound is so much better than my old iPad, especially in the low tones as I cannot hear high pitch (yes I’m deaf). The shadow edge is completely invisible to me because I don’t notice it. The blooming is only visible when it’s dark out, and a black screen with white marks at bright enough setting and viewing from an angle. I tested the black screen and other colors scribble, no blooming. Only white seems to do that and only when I am looking for it. This baby is my keeper ????
 

LFC2020

macrumors P6
Apr 4, 2020
16,874
38,037
Shadow, which shadow? Ohh around the edge, !remind me 1 year about its existence.
Looked at it once, hasn’t come into my view again, overhyped non issue ?‍♂️ It’s that thin it’s not even worth mentioning, can hardly see it

Lucky for you, no one is Forcing you to buy it
 
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thadoggfather

macrumors P6
Original poster
Oct 1, 2007
16,127
17,043
If I recall, you bought the 11". I guess you just love polls :)
Or preparing for next gen 11"
Guessing his thinking about giving the 12.9" a test drive ?
LOL!

oh yeah. I do love polls. Even when I am part of the poll, the #'s don't honestly sway me from making personal decisions I just find it interesting to gather a consensus. It lends itself towards interesting conversation, sometimes, and an interesting takeaway, sometimes.

Full disclosure - I am not an owner of the 2021 12.9, so I will not be contributing a vote. For now haha.

As of now, unless I actually receive the 2020 12.9 (might be getting a 256 cellular+wifi for a crazy deal, if it ever ships that is) and it works perfect but I have a change of heart and decide to flip it for a good profit AND pony up the difference for a base 2021 12.9, for the old switcheroo, I don't have a path to the 2021 12.9. So it's not a 100% chance I won't become an owner. But that's really truly not the intention of this thread.

Even further on my side note- It's most likely between that 2020 I described (since if I do get it and keep it, I probably will trade in my 2017 12.9 and it will be an extremely nominal upgrade cost in net) and an 11" 2021 which is already on the way from Costco and I'll have by middle of next week.

I'm not part of this poll, I just like input + data. Personally, I think both would bother the hell out of me if they are as accurate as photos I've seen, I don't like screen unevenness that's obvious and I don't like selective light bleed (even though I would love more contrast, inky blacks, etc). I am obsessive about screen details, beyond the obvious stuff like contrast ratio and brightness and blacks. The stuff most people probably wouldn't see or care about if they were informed of it. Pre-mini LED. But I guess if I really wanted to see, I would absolutely go test drive a few display units first and then start doing some decision making crunching rather than just take peoples' word for it one way or the other.

--

it's interesting so far at least for as much moaning as there have been about these issues or "issues" depending on perspective on MR, most people aren't returning their device. So that indicates to me people aren't happy about it but they'd rather take the good with the bad and deal with it / see the overall good of the package to forego that, or most of the people complaining have opted out of it being a purchase consideration in the first place (who would be everyone excluded from validly participating in this poll - who isn't an 'owner')

Of course - the sample size is still really small.
 
Last edited:

krspkbl

macrumors 68020
Jul 20, 2012
2,450
5,884
Blooming, non issue.

Shadow, non issue.
you're in such denial 🤣 every where you go you're defending this screen lol.

blooming + shadow is definitely an issue. blooming is real even if you want to pretend it isn't. it's impossible to have an Mini LED display with no blooming (i'm not attacking your precious iPad don't worry). blooming is a result of the way these displays are designed. and the shadow is very much real. haven't seen any other displays with shadows but now this has it...it's OK? seems strange.
 

Isengardtom

macrumors 65816
Feb 14, 2009
1,351
2,196
you're in such denial ? every where you go you're defending this screen lol.

blooming + shadow is definitely an issue. blooming is real even if you want to pretend it isn't. it's impossible to have an Mini LED display with no blooming (i'm not attacking your precious iPad don't worry). blooming is a result of the way these displays are designed. and the shadow is very much real. haven't seen any other displays with shadows but now this has it...it's OK? seems strange.
And you’re always doing the opposite so I guess you’re even?


Poll : No, I’m happy
- Shadow is not an issue for me
- Some blooming is visible in certain dark conditions but it‘s not a deal breaker at all. Quality of this display is still much better than my LCD iPad pro for my use cases.
 

radus

macrumors 6502a
Jan 12, 2009
720
447
For now my eyes are much less stressed (using the new 12.9 1TB) as with the old 2018 1TB 12.9 - I will keep it.
If blooming or anything else will become an issue I will find out what apple care + is worth.
 

Mr Retina

macrumors regular
Jun 5, 2013
249
189
LED blooming is nothing new and is within normal use of the displays backlight capabilities, all that can be adjusted is how aggressive local dimming is applied to the picture, which I’m sure apple will adjust with updates the same way TV manufactures tweak the picture settings every other month it seems like nowadays. 90% of this board has an LED backlit tv, and sleep just fine at night with the Crazy amount of Haloing/blooming that is visible especially during “Movie Night“. I personally do not use my iPad at night in a dark room with the display brightness at 100% let alone 50% because I prefer to avoid glasses until oldman me tells me its time. You can literally replicate this “issue” on your tv at home by just airplaying/hooking up the iPad to your tv, you will notice the same glow on a tv that has decent to outstanding FALD LED/Mini LED backlight Arrangement like the iPad. I can easily replicate the blooming on my high end sony set, but I can’t on my LG CX OLED Because there’s literally no backlight and OLED has self emissive pixels that create its own light .

For my primary use case which is browsing/emailing/consuming all kinds of media the XDR is great and the HDR peak brightness is massively impressive for such a small display. I find that the display is much better when watching both SDR/HDR content than it was on my 11inch, and its nice to actually see black aspect ratio bars instead of grey ones when watching a movie or YouTube videos.
 

phillyboy82

macrumors regular
Oct 27, 2015
175
70
Not from Philly
I see bloom in a couple of Apps - Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video. It's mainly on the overlay controls though which I don't normally see, so I am learning to accept that part, but whenever there is lower-quality streaming video sometimes I see black blobs in the shadowing moving around with the scene which is hard to deal with. I ended up switching to the amazon website for now to stream videos and that works great with the built-in Safari player.

I'm starting to think the angle of the screen relative to you can exaggerate the bloom effect. All other apps seem fine so far, including the Kindle app in night mode thankfully.

This still feels like something that could be software fixed to reduce the "area of bloom", with how Apple went on about the m1 coordinating the two LCD panel layers. I don't really mind that it is there, just that the video progress bar has 1/2 an inch of bloom around it...
 
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