Best MacBook Pro for no PWM, anyone had problems with the new 14"?

[AJTC]

That's great, thanks for letting me know! Haven't got it yet, the refund just went through for the 14". Debating between the M1 Air & Pro tbh, how are you finding the Touch Bar?

The Touchbar is more responsive on the M1 than my 2020 Intel. The heat of the Intel chip cooking seemed to affect the responsiveness of the Touchbar which made me hate it. But on the M1 I'm actually enjoying the Touchbar.

I was debating with the Air too but the display, the form factor, the inclusion of a fan (which so far I've only used by manually turning it on while Xcode was updating), the speakers and battery life all made me go for the Pro.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the 13" to the 14" just on battery life and form factor too. I was slightly glad the PWM issue made me be more realistic about my purchase - I didn't really need anything the 14" offered.

 

[majkom]

Hm, guys this does not help. I was going to buy 2019 16 incher but again double guessing it, m1 13incher is tempting as well

 

[FranApple]

I just bought and returned two 14” for this exact issue. The screen seems great, but my eyes had difficulty focusing which led to eye strain over time. Couldn’t deal with it. Probably not a PWM issue, because I have multiple iPhone 13, 12, etc. Also not simply a mini LED problem because my 12.9 iPP is gorgeous and I can use it for hours.

Going back to a M1 MacBook Air was a huge relief but it sucks that I can’t use the new MacBook Pros. Hopefully future iterations don’t have this same issue. I’ve never experienced this with any other Apple product.

 

[jimmy_uk]

I was weighing up the MBP 14" and the newly announced M2 Air and came to the conclusion that the 14" would be the better buy spec-wise for only a little more cash. But having just checked this thread and Notebookcheck I guess as someone who is sensitive to PWM, the MBP 14 is out of the race for me.


"Thanks to the Mini-LED technology, there is no backlight bleeding; a black picture is just completely black, even at the maximum brightness. There are no limitations for the viewing-angle stability, either. However, the Mini-LED technology still has its share of issues. Like on the iPad Pro's Mini-LED screen, we can detect constant PWM flickering at all brightness levels. The frequency is very high and should not be an issue for the majority of users, but you will not be very happy with the screen if you are very sensitive to flickering. By the way, we can also detect the PWM at the maximum HDR brightness. The response times are also pretty slow, but the constant PWM flickering makes it tricky to determine the exact values. Subjectively, we can say that ghosting is not as noticeable as on Windows laptops with similarly slow response times. Maybe the ghosting is somewhat reduced by the 120 Hz refresh rate."

 

[MBPUser21]

I was weighing up the MBP 14" and the newly announced M2 Air and came to the conclusion that the 14" would be the better buy spec-wise for only a little more cash. But having just checked this thread and Notebookcheck I guess as someone who is sensitive to PWM, the MBP 14 is out of the race for me.


"Thanks to the Mini-LED technology, there is no backlight bleeding; a black picture is just completely black, even at the maximum brightness. There are no limitations for the viewing-angle stability, either. However, the Mini-LED technology still has its share of issues. Like on the iPad Pro's Mini-LED screen, we can detect constant PWM flickering at all brightness levels. The frequency is very high and should not be an issue for the majority of users, but you will not be very happy with the screen if you are very sensitive to flickering. By the way, we can also detect the PWM at the maximum HDR brightness. The response times are also pretty slow, but the constant PWM flickering makes it tricky to determine the exact values. Subjectively, we can say that ghosting is not as noticeable as on Windows laptops with similarly slow response times. Maybe the ghosting is somewhat reduced by the 120 Hz refresh rate."

I'm wondering if the M2 Air will have a similar screen to the 14"? I'm thinking of going for the M2 13" Pro, waiting for Notebookcheck to review it first though. Do you mind me asking what you're using at the moment?

 

[jimmy_uk]

I'm wondering if the M2 Air will have a similar screen to the 14"? I'm thinking of going for the M2 13" Pro, waiting for Notebookcheck to review it first though. Do you mind me asking what you're using at the moment?

The M2 Air will have a Liquid Retina display, not mini led like the 14" MBP.

Currently I only have access to an older iMac at work and use my iPhone 7+ and a Windows PC at home. This will be my first Apple laptop purchase.

I'm sensitive to all of the OLED iPhones and had some vision issues with the IPP 12.9" with mini led.

 

[johnscully]

Any experiences yet with the MacBook Pro M2 regarding eye strain? The MacBook Pro M1 gave me eye strain and headache after a couple of minutes.