Eye strain - Returned my 2019 16" Macbook Pro

[robvas]

The M1 chip has nothing to do with this. It's the screen.

 

[CRoebuck]

The M1 chip has nothing to do with this. It's the screen.

My issue is definitely not the screen. I have a 2017 MBP that depending on the version of OS X becomes painful to use. Extensive testing with this MBP and various flavours of OS , newer MBP's and Windows machines leads me to believe it is caused by temporal dithering implemented in Intel Display drivers hence my hope that M1 would be a solution.

 

[spencermfi]

Also, this affects me with an external monitor using these newer MacBooks (my late 2013 15" gives me no problem on the built-in display or external, but 16" and recent i3 MBA gives me the eye-strain/headache on both), so I strongly suspect the temporal dithering or something else that's not specific to the built-in display.

 

[Jugg]

Unfortunately, I think the issue is that there's just not that many people affected by this. Or, at least, not enough people complaining to Apple. I bet there are a ton of people who regularly get similar symptoms, but would never think twice about their phone or computer being the issue.

Re: posting on led strain - Good idea, will do.

I think the awareness is growing, if you follow ledstrain.org you will see many posts about apple products.

This is also a good sign (they only focus on one issue, but still ...): https://eyesafe.com/products/

We should all send feedback to Apple (https://www.apple.com/feedback/). I did.

What you said is true, though: back in the CRT era, I remember how many times I adjusted the monitor refresh rate for people who had no idea why working in front of a monitor was so tiring for eyes.

 

[tappy]

I faced the exact same issue. Bought the MacBook Pro in March of 2020 during the pandemic. After reaching home, started using the device. One wouldn't notice the symptoms before 20 minutes. Initially, I was uncertain, but then after 2-3 days, when I started to get headaches, nausea, and eye pain after using the Mac, I was sure it was to be blamed. Went to the Apple store to find solutions, they said they had no clue-idiots. I think Apple should really improve its customer service. I literally hate apple now as I spent like $1500 and can't even use it.

 

[aruzhnikov]

Got Macbook air m1 today. Nothing's changed, have the same problems with my eyes almost immediately.
Going to refund tomorrow. It's very very sad story how I've tried to become a user of apple's laptops. Will keep using linux.

 

[Jugg]

Got Macbook air m1 today. Nothing's changed, have the same problems with my eyes almost immediately.
Going to refund tomorrow. It's very very sad story how I've tried to become a user of apple's laptops. Will keep using linux.

Have you had good experiences with Linux on Apple laptops? If not, which linux distribution/version are you using and on which laptop?
Thanks.

 

[CRoebuck]

Have you had good experiences with Linux on Apple laptops? If not, which linux distribution/version are you using and on which laptop?
Thanks.

As someone who can no longer use MacBook's newer than 2017 and has tried many variants, versions of Mac OS I'm interested to hear this answer too !!! Running out of ideas.

 

[aruzhnikov]

Have you had good experiences with Linux on Apple laptops?

No, never tried. And I'm not sure that it's possible. I've heard that some guys had run some linux distributive on M1 chip, but most problematic is - to resolve issues with GPU. In M1 Apple uses a proprietary graphical chip and there is no neither specifications not open-source drivers.

which linux distribution/version are you using and on which laptop?

I prefer debian-based distributives. On my personal machine I use Linux Mint 20, on work laptop - Ubuntu 20.04.
On servers - debian.
My personal laptop - HP envy 15, for working I use Lenovo legion.

 

[Jetro]

I know this isn’t the forum for it but I had to resell an iPad Pro 2020 11” that I bought used but nearly new, because of eye strain. I told the guy who bought it from me about it but he’s much younger and hopefully it won’t effect him. They really need to improve their software if that’s what’s causing the horrible eye strain.

 

[greenmeanie]

As someone who can no longer use MacBook's newer than 2017 and has tried many variants, versions of Mac OS I'm interested to hear this answer too !!! Running out of ideas.

I haven't tried KUBUNTU on a MAC but you can get it pretty darn close in look and feel to MACOS.

 

[It's-ok-to-be-you]

You all may have heard of this, but doctors are now recommending Lutein supplements for Eye Strain - especially from Blue Light. I am not sponsoring Sundown, but they have a good Lutein supplement that is vegan-friendly. One perk is that it is used to prevent cataracts in the longterm. Lutein comes from eating a lot of spinach and broccoli, daily too.

 

[CRoebuck]

Having resigned myself to giving up on Macs and moving to Dell / HP land having struggled with recent Mac screens (2018 onwards) I then read this thread over on Reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/gkneso
Has anyone who's also suffered with 2019 16" or 2020 13" screens (eye strain, headaches, flickering, pixel walk) tried this? Do any of you have access to the machines that still cause you problems and willing to try this?

 

[TDDM]

Having resigned myself to giving up on Macs and moving to Dell / HP land having struggled with recent Mac screens (2018 onwards) I then read this thread over on Reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/gkneso
Has anyone who's also suffered with 2019 16" or 2020 13" screens (eye strain, headaches, flickering, pixel walk) tried this? Do any of you have access to the machines that still cause you problems and willing to try this?

Unfortunately, I've had no luck with different color profiles. I've tried multiple different ones, including the one that he's recommending, hasn't solved the issue on my end. It does seem that different solutions work for different people though, I'd recommend trying everything for yourself to make sure.

 

[M12020_16gb_500gb]

I just tried it and it seemed to feel better. I don't know why actually. Sorry, not much help

Which one between the two felt better ? 60Hz or 59 ?

 

[yesanton]

What about the mini-led screen on the new big 2021 IPad Pro? If anyone tries it, let us know if the new display tech resolves the issues

 

[TDDM]

What about the mini-led screen on the new big 2021 IPad Pro? If anyone tries it, let us know if the new display tech resolves the issues

I ordered one, will definitely post impressions when it arrives. Fingers crossed that miniLED makes a difference ?

 

[Samorap]

Having resigned myself to giving up on Macs and moving to Dell / HP land having struggled with recent Mac screens (2018 onwards) I then read this thread over on Reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/gkneso
Has anyone who's also suffered with 2019 16" or 2020 13" screens (eye strain, headaches, flickering, pixel walk) tried this? Do any of you have access to the machines that still cause you problems and willing to try this?

Thanks for this suggestion. I suffered from eye strain, headaches, and nausea until I saw this post and I switched my profile to sRGB IEC61966-2.1. I immediately felt relief. The only problem is the sRGB IEC61966-2.1 profile is oversaturated.

 

[yesanton]

I ordered one, will definitely post impressions when it arrives. Fingers crossed that miniLED makes a difference ?

How is it going for you?

 

[TDDM]

How is it going for you?

Posted my impressions in the miniLED discussion thread here.

TLDR: Better than OLED, but still had symptoms from it.

 

[MacGekko]

Got Macbook air m1 today. Nothing's changed, have the same problems with my eyes almost immediately.
Going to refund tomorrow. It's very very sad story how I've tried to become a user of apple's laptops. Will keep using linux.

Has anyone here tried the Ivisor Matte Screen cover, using it on my mid 2015 Macbook Pro and have not had any issues, traditionally I had a problem with any computer that did not have a matte screen but this cover seems to ameliorate any of my issues.

 

[TDDM]

Has anyone here tried the Ivisor Matte Screen cover, using it on my mid 2015 Macbook Pro and have not had any issues, traditionally I had a problem with any computer that did not have a matte screen but this cover seems to ameliorate any of my issues.

Interesting, have you had any issues with any Apple products past 2016? (iPads, iPhones, or Macs)

 

[Whackintosh]

Thanks for this suggestion. I suffered from eye strain, headaches, and nausea until I saw this post and I switched my profile to sRGB IEC61966-2.1. I immediately felt relief. The only problem is the sRGB IEC61966-2.1 profile is oversaturated.

Naive question, but how does one disable P3 in BigSur? Is it just a question of turning off True Tone?

 

[simnew]

The display, for whatever reason, caused so much eyestrain for me that it really made the computer unusable as a work machine. I tried to power through the discomfort on the first night. But the next morning, I literally found myself dreading opening the lid. That's when I knew it would never work out for me.

I must be in some minority group here because I know a lot of people love their new 16". But if you're a long-time user of the older generation pros (2015 and before), it might be hard to adjust, depending on your age / vision. I'm guessing it has to do with the backlight being wide gamut (GB-R instead of WLED?), as the whole screen seemed to have an extra reddish haze over it. While it certainly gave photos a real nice pop, my eyes had the hardest time focusing on text. By the end of the first night, I was rubbing my right eye incessantly from the soreness.

Another strange issue is that I got serious headaches watching YouTube videos on this thing, like there was some serious ghosting going on. I double checked that the refresh rate was set at 60Hz, and even tried other refresh rates, but nothing helped. 60fps video was bearable, but the standard 30fps videos made me feel queasy for some reason.

Being the first Macbook that I've purchased since the 2016 redesign, I also found the lack of MagSafe and USB-a ports a straight up negative. Had no way of connecting my iPhone to the machine. Nothing new here, I read all about this before, but it really is an inconvenience for what seems to me like no real benefit in the general case.

The only thing that really impressed me about the machine were the speakers, which seem to be using some kind of DSP to provide really clear bass.

I really wanted to replace my aging 2015 15" Pro and was ecstatic when I heard the butterfly keyboard was ditched, but unfortunately it seems I have to stick with the 2015 for the next two years until Apple utilizes a different screen tech than their current wide gamut LED panels.

I assume you went into system preferences, displays and chose 'display tab' and 'scaled' to make the text larger or smaller as required ?

The screen is high resolution, but if you are struggling to see the text there are many options to make the text more visible including scaling, high contract mode and additional settings for visual impairment. Did you get a chance to play with these settings ?

 

[CRoebuck]

Naive question, but how does one disable P3 in BigSur? Is it just a question of turning off True Tone?

System Preferences > Display > Colour and then change the profile to sRGB or something other than P3. It will look quite over saturated but the working theory is that dithering is being used to approximate the P3 gamut, selecting sRGB may disable this. My own view is that Intel changes the dithering algorithm for HD and Iris graphics. I've had issues with every MacBook newer than 2018 and my previously 'no problems' Surface Pro suddenly became unusable (eye strain) after a Windows update last year. Rolling back made it fine again. My daily driver MacBook Pro 2017 is hanging in there until I can find a workaround (or a boxed 2015 MacBook Pro 15")