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16" MacBook Pro ghosting / smearing...

This is cliché but it's worth to watch if you never saw this interview.


I ordered this macbook in the morning of its launch. I noticed this problem when I first login into this new macbook 16, but I told myself, it must not be a defect, maybe it was new feature came with this new display, or I just haven't get used to this brand new computer. My first notebook is Powerbook 17", and I plan to use the new one to replace the MacBook Pro 13, Late 2013 I'm currently using. For all those years I just heard about all the bad news about generations of macbooks but now I got the chance to experience one for real.

It's hard to believe that Apple is not aware of this problem before launch this product to market.

I'm curious also how John Gruber, Marco Arment and Federico Viticci feel about this issue, or they got a special version from Apple that's different from the version of mass production.

I also would like to see this thread on hackernews, but I cannot post new threads on it. Can someone help?
 
I'm definitely noticing 3 issues with my new 16" MBP:

1) Low screen brightness, even when set to 100%. I can make it brighter by having auto-brightness on, and shining my phone torch light at it, I can see it goes up above "maximum". Still, at max settable brightness it's noticeably lower than my old 13" 2016 MBP and my 2017 5K iMac.

2) Screen ghosting - even just moving around a Finder window results in a significant smearing and trails of everything moving on the screen

3) Audio popping occasionally when stopping playing audio - probably a software fix for this one?

Unsure whether returning is going to fix anything though, as it may be a panel lottery and a new one might not be any better. Manufacturing date on mine is 11 November. Quite unhappy though for the price that issues like this exist :(
 
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The more I use it the more the ghosting appears to be getting worse. I mean it's not just me noticing it more, it is literally like the screen is degrading. I noticed switching from 60Hz to 59.97Hz or vice versa sort of "renews" the display and the ghosting is dramatically reduced for a little while but then over time it gets progressively worse again.

I'm thinking that there is some kind of electronic hardware fault. I've contacted Apple this evening and they told me they were aware of only the speaker popping issue, but again this is just their tech support perhaps Apple HQ knows about the display too or not. They had me do a few things like reset the SMC, PRAM, create a new user account but both issues especially the ghosting on the display remains.

I would say that when I first got it the ghosting was minimal, now it's really quite bad, concerning to say the least that it does appear to be getting worse. I had my wife look at the laptop, shes only seen it a few times and hasn't been sat at it using it like I have and she even said to me she thought the "smudginess" when scrolling was worse than when I first showed it to her almost two weeks ago. I already thought this myself before I showed it to her so it's not her opinion colouring my own.
 
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Quu said:
The more I use it the more the ghosting appears to be getting worse. I mean it's not just me noticing it more, it is literally like the screen is degrading. I noticed switching from 60Hz to 59.97Hz or vice versa sort of "renews" the display and the ghosting is dramatically reduced for a little while but then over time it gets progressively worse again.

I'm thinking that there is some kind of electronic hardware fault. I've contacted Apple this evening and they told me they were aware of only the speaker popping issue, but again this is just their tech support perhaps Apple HQ knows about the display too or not. They had me do a few things like reset the SMC, PRAM, create a new user account but both issues especially the ghosting on the display remains.

I would say that when I first got it the ghosting was minimal, now it's really quite bad, concerning to say the least that it does appear to be getting worse. I had my wife look at the laptop, shes only seen it a few times and hasn't been sat at it using it like I have and she even said to me she thought the "smudginess" when scrolling was worse than when I first showed it to her almost two weeks ago. I already thought this myself before I showed it to her so it's not her opinion colouring my own.
Click to expand...
It's interesting you say this. Because one thing I noticed (but didnt say anything before) is that when the display (LCD) is cold, it seems like the ghosting isnt as bad, but then within a few mins of uptime/warmup, it seems like ghosting gets worse.

The only way I have found is to disable inertia for trackpad scrolling in Accessibility settings. This prevents the type of scrolling that exacerbates the issues, but also is functionality loss. It's a major bummer. I have to use the spacebar to quick nav to the bottom of the page with inertia off, and rely on the trackpad only for "short distance" scrolling. Sucks.
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M0rpheus said:
...
2) Screen ghosting - even just moving around a Finder window results in a significant smearing and trails of everything moving on the screen
...
Manufacturing date on mine is 11 November. Quite unhappy though for the price that issues like this exist :(
Click to expand...
This was the date of my unit#1. That's a bummer because I was hoping for that batch to not have the ghosting issue :(
 
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chabig said:
As all Macbook Pros run the same software and have roughly the same hardware, refreshing the screen at 60Hz, I'd say they are all working as designed. Perhaps you are just more sensitive to it.
Click to expand...
I agree. I have the base 16 inch and I guess I sorta notice this, but didn't think anything of it until I peeped this thread. I will forget about it tomorrow ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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Quu said:
The more I use it the more the ghosting appears to be getting worse. I mean it's not just me noticing it more, it is literally like the screen is degrading. I noticed switching from 60Hz to 59.97Hz or vice versa sort of "renews" the display and the ghosting is dramatically reduced for a little while but then over time it gets progressively worse again.

I'm thinking that there is some kind of electronic hardware fault. I've contacted Apple this evening and they told me they were aware of only the speaker popping issue, but again this is just their tech support perhaps Apple HQ knows about the display too or not. They had me do a few things like reset the SMC, PRAM, create a new user account but both issues especially the ghosting on the display remains.

I would say that when I first got it the ghosting was minimal, now it's really quite bad, concerning to say the least that it does appear to be getting worse. I had my wife look at the laptop, shes only seen it a few times and hasn't been sat at it using it like I have and she even said to me she thought the "smudginess" when scrolling was worse than when I first showed it to her almost two weeks ago. I already thought this myself before I showed it to her so it's not her opinion colouring my own.
Click to expand...

OK now that does sound bizarre. I don’t know if Notebookcheck looked for this and I only used one for 10 minutes. Can anyone else replicate this?
 
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If you change the refresh rate in displays under preferences to 59.94 the ghosting is pretty much gone in launchpad, but the options for changing the refresh rate disappear somewhere lol
 
Quu said:
The more I use it the more the ghosting appears to be getting worse. I mean it's not just me noticing it more, it is literally like the screen is degrading.
Click to expand...

Woah! Now, I noticed this before I boxed it up to return to Apple the other day, but kept it to myself to see if anyone reported it other than me in here. Very interesting

Idec50 said:
Can anyone else replicate this?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, that would be me 😂
 
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So the only way to 'cure' this problem is for Apple to switch panels, which doesn't help everyone who has purchased the unit already, but puts people like me, who are considering purchasing, off until they do switch panel manufacturers!
 
Yeah. I returned. It’s almost perfect, but for me ruined by the garbage response time. Better luck next time I guess :/
 
How come games running on the system seem to show no ghosting?
I was just watching some snippets of this and it seems fine?

 
Ifti said:
How come games running on the system seem to show no ghosting?
I was just watching some snippets of this and it seems fine?

Click to expand...

You won't be able to notice it on a video camera with a 29.97 FPS frame rate. It's like trying to experience how speakers sound in a video review when you're using your own speakers at home to listen, it just doesn't work that way etc

You need to really see it, scroll up and down in a browser, move a window around and so forth. Normal stuff you would do with the laptop.
 
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I don't get why no-one has mentioned it on any reviews?
I understand some reviews are biased etc, but some reviewers who clearly highlighted throttling issues on the previous gen etc, I would like to trust those YouTubers at least, and again nothing mentioned.
Could it be a bad batch of panels? May pop into a store at some point and test some display models, but major ghosting would annoy me and are putting me off a purchase - maybe I will hold until the next revision with [hopefully] FaceID…...
 
Ifti said:
I don't get why no-one has mentioned it on any reviews?
I understand some reviews are biased etc, but some reviewers who clearly highlighted throttling issues on the previous gen etc, I would like to trust those YouTubers at least, and again nothing mentioned.
Could it be a bad batch of panels? May pop into a store at some point and test some display models, but major ghosting would annoy me and are putting me off a purchase - maybe I will hold until the next revision with [hopefully] FaceID…...
Click to expand...
It's quite possible that there's more than one panel being used, and I wouldn't put it past Apple to cherrypick review units...

That being said, at least we're in the holiday return period if we're not happy (and I'm back on a 13" myself with an awesome panel).
 
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Quu said:
The more I use it the more the ghosting appears to be getting worse. I mean it's not just me noticing it more, it is literally like the screen is degrading. I noticed switching from 60Hz to 59.97Hz or vice versa sort of "renews" the display and the ghosting is dramatically reduced for a little while but then over time it gets progressively worse again.

I'm thinking that there is some kind of electronic hardware fault. I've contacted Apple this evening and they told me they were aware of only the speaker popping issue, but again this is just their tech support perhaps Apple HQ knows about the display too or not. They had me do a few things like reset the SMC, PRAM, create a new user account but both issues especially the ghosting on the display remains.

I would say that when I first got it the ghosting was minimal, now it's really quite bad, concerning to say the least that it does appear to be getting worse. I had my wife look at the laptop, shes only seen it a few times and hasn't been sat at it using it like I have and she even said to me she thought the "smudginess" when scrolling was worse than when I first showed it to her almost two weeks ago. I already thought this myself before I showed it to her so it's not her opinion colouring my own.
Click to expand...
Honestly, this is the first and only thing I’ve seen in this entire thread that’s genuinely disturbing. I have no immediate plans to move to the 16” from my current machine, but I did more or less like how it turned out. I wasn’t going to let this ghosting issue ruin that. But if it gets worse and worse over time, that makes the laptop a non-starter. I really hope this worsening can be fixed via software, even if the baseline ghosting is intrinsic to the panel.
 
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