It’s a screenshot of the photo taken via iphone on my macbook.As i couldn’t find it in finder I uploaded the screenshot.
My replacement is due later this afternoon.Will update here.
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iPad Pro Grainy display on new iPad Pro M4?
- Thread starter richard371
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My replacement is due later this afternoon.Will update here.
any picture taken on your iPhone will show up in the Photos App. You mentioned you found it on your MacBook, presumably the photo app there, so you are synced with the cloud. In the photo app on your Mac, you just select the pic you want, then use export under the file menu and voila. no screen shot required.
Quick update.Received my replacement today and it has the exact same grain(May manufactured).
I am keeping it as it doesn’t bother me much at least I got rid of the defective panel with green lines.
I am keeping it as it doesn’t bother me much at least I got rid of the defective panel with green lines.
I appreciate you confirming what many of us suspected... that there ARE some issues that can be corrected by returning the panel (your green line for example), but that the general 'graininess' issue has been overstated by the 'lottery' crowd, and simply exchanging panels wont change the perception because the low light grey is a function of all the OLED technology. Which, given how many years we have been told its a crime Apple doesn't have OLED..is ironic.
It's almost as if Apple engineers actually know what they are doing over armchair critics.
It’s the nature of the OLED tech it seems.
I can take weak grays(on some specific conditions) over all the other benefits of such beautiful display anyday.
The display is just phenomenal and there are some shortcomings with every display tech i believe like blooming on Minileds, IPS glow etc.
So instead of nitpicking over such a minimal issue, i want to enjoy the device for what it’s made and focus on areas that this excels at.
I have exhausted all the options and i am finally at peace after days of reading reddit threads, forums for OLED mura.
So in conclusion,i think for anyone with grain issues it’s the nature of the tech and i have replaced,bought a new one for my brother and it’s there in every one of them.
For me the benefits outweigh them and for anyone else there’s always LED ipads on the table.Choose whatever floats your boat.
Thanks, actual experience is valued and I wish people would have more of it before becoming so vociferous. they say the internet is a multiplier, usually of negativity, lets hope your message gets out there!
This is a mini review I suppose but will lead with the elephant in the room regarding these screens. Plus every review seems to talk about the 13” rather than the 11”.
I just picked up my 11” M4 (coming from an M2 and running out of storage) and definitely have the grain.
Screen. Like everyone who notices it states….It’s most noticeable at 25 percent brightness on a medium grey background in a darker room. It progressively gets better toward 50% and nearly imperceptible after that. This is holding it a little over a foot from my face. This definitely seems like a display tech downfall of OLED. Otherwise the display is very nice as far as color and HDR(though HDR is kinda over the top I wish there were settings). Still deciding if $1500 (512gb, new pencil and cover+ tax) is worth having this fault with the display tech. It’s not a trivial issue. Grain is very noticeable in other apps like weather at night. Even while gaming, browsing X. This isn’t trivial. To those who don’t claim to have grain…you seem to either not notice it or aren’t using your display in a dark room on lower brightness. Seems like every display has the grain to some extent.
Also in some ways the display does actually seems less sharp to some degree as well compared to my M2. Which I think is indicative of the tech rather than an actual issue. It’s just not as crisp if that makes sense And rendering text differently.
Speakers are different. Some say less bass but it’s more complicated than that. Some stuff is more clear, maybe less bass but what I notice most is less sound stage and dynamic range. The 2018-2022 iPads enveloped you more even with regular stereo music.
Form Factor. This is an incredibly thin device and kind of amazing the tech that’s built in. The thinness is what I keep noticing rather than the weight.
Cameras. The front camera seems to be a tad better quality from the previous generations but BARELY. Face ID errors are just as bad though since you’re always gonna be blocking the camera once in a while. apple should’ve just added 2 faceID sensors. They can afford it at these prices.
Speed/M4. Last because it’s weird is that this iPad is blazingly fast but so is the M1/M2. It seems like apple is just throwing speed for the sake of it because other do such poor optimization on their software. Gone are the micro stutters of the M2 as far as scrolling and other animations that were like death by 1000 digital cuts. Everything is silky smooth. But so was the 2017 10.5” iPad Pro that introduced ProMotion. Because they actually optimized the software to never have a hiccup in animations or scrolling (those days are gone).
Overall I’m still on the fence on if I’ll keep it which has never happened in my 14 years of owning iPads. I got one day 1 in 2010 and then the iPad Pro became my main home computing device for everything including creative apps in 2016 when I ditched my iMac. However I see why people are demanding perfection at these insanely high prices and lack of backwards compatibility. Even with trade ins it’s nearly $1000 for anyone to buy into the new iPad Pro with new accessories.
Attached are photos using my iPhone 15 of each iPad Pro side by side as well as using affinity photos export screen. This is a really pretty obvious comparison of how bad it looks in person. Pro apps use grey backgrounds…. Photos do the same which makes them hard to edit and know the amount of noise due to these displays. Not a good option for photo editing. Also added a video panning back and forth
of one of my photos on each device where more grain is added to the M4 pro on the left.
I just picked up my 11” M4 (coming from an M2 and running out of storage) and definitely have the grain.
Screen. Like everyone who notices it states….It’s most noticeable at 25 percent brightness on a medium grey background in a darker room. It progressively gets better toward 50% and nearly imperceptible after that. This is holding it a little over a foot from my face. This definitely seems like a display tech downfall of OLED. Otherwise the display is very nice as far as color and HDR(though HDR is kinda over the top I wish there were settings). Still deciding if $1500 (512gb, new pencil and cover+ tax) is worth having this fault with the display tech. It’s not a trivial issue. Grain is very noticeable in other apps like weather at night. Even while gaming, browsing X. This isn’t trivial. To those who don’t claim to have grain…you seem to either not notice it or aren’t using your display in a dark room on lower brightness. Seems like every display has the grain to some extent.
Also in some ways the display does actually seems less sharp to some degree as well compared to my M2. Which I think is indicative of the tech rather than an actual issue. It’s just not as crisp if that makes sense And rendering text differently.
Speakers are different. Some say less bass but it’s more complicated than that. Some stuff is more clear, maybe less bass but what I notice most is less sound stage and dynamic range. The 2018-2022 iPads enveloped you more even with regular stereo music.
Form Factor. This is an incredibly thin device and kind of amazing the tech that’s built in. The thinness is what I keep noticing rather than the weight.
Cameras. The front camera seems to be a tad better quality from the previous generations but BARELY. Face ID errors are just as bad though since you’re always gonna be blocking the camera once in a while. apple should’ve just added 2 faceID sensors. They can afford it at these prices.
Speed/M4. Last because it’s weird is that this iPad is blazingly fast but so is the M1/M2. It seems like apple is just throwing speed for the sake of it because other do such poor optimization on their software. Gone are the micro stutters of the M2 as far as scrolling and other animations that were like death by 1000 digital cuts. Everything is silky smooth. But so was the 2017 10.5” iPad Pro that introduced ProMotion. Because they actually optimized the software to never have a hiccup in animations or scrolling (those days are gone).
Overall I’m still on the fence on if I’ll keep it which has never happened in my 14 years of owning iPads. I got one day 1 in 2010 and then the iPad Pro became my main home computing device for everything including creative apps in 2016 when I ditched my iMac. However I see why people are demanding perfection at these insanely high prices and lack of backwards compatibility. Even with trade ins it’s nearly $1000 for anyone to buy into the new iPad Pro with new accessories.
Attached are photos using my iPhone 15 of each iPad Pro side by side as well as using affinity photos export screen. This is a really pretty obvious comparison of how bad it looks in person. Pro apps use grey backgrounds…. Photos do the same which makes them hard to edit and know the amount of noise due to these displays. Not a good option for photo editing. Also added a video panning back and forth
of one of my photos on each device where more grain is added to the M4 pro on the left.
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@jonnyb098 Great review, exactly pointed out all the weak and good points about the newest iPads that I personally experienced.
Interesting stuff about faceID - dont think anyone complained but the horizontal change hardly improved device unlocks for me. Still many failed scans where I need to reposition the device properly, quite annoying but at least not worse than previous gen.
I would just add that after initial letdown with the grain stuff and following every single thread to find out how widespread the issue is, I ended up settling on "it's just what it's gonna be with iPads of this generation". Great, expensive device, but definitely not without weaknesses.
Interesting stuff about faceID - dont think anyone complained but the horizontal change hardly improved device unlocks for me. Still many failed scans where I need to reposition the device properly, quite annoying but at least not worse than previous gen.
I would just add that after initial letdown with the grain stuff and following every single thread to find out how widespread the issue is, I ended up settling on "it's just what it's gonna be with iPads of this generation". Great, expensive device, but definitely not without weaknesses.
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Oh wow that grain is really intense. Like even in the UI, from a normal distance, it's clear as day. It's weird none of the reviews mention this. Are you satisfied with that? I feel like for me personally I think I'd rather have the LCD, because the grain would drive me nuts?
Thanks for posting your review, that exactly matches my own experience. Grain is quite easily noticeable on grey areas at low light/brightness. In comparison, watching a movie in bright conditions looks superb with great colour and contrast.
There is no possible way I would keep that device With the screen like That. Like I said earlier there were two side by side in Apple Store, one looked like yours and one was much MUCH cleaner.
None of the reviews mention it because they probably dont actually use the device like a typical person. Which is why EVERY REVIEW IS IDENTICAL IN CONTENT. Sprinkled in with opinion of why they hate iPadOS.
No im definitely not satisfied with it. For $1500 buy in? HAH! And im also not satisfied with how eye poppingly retina burning HDR is in a dark room. I have to turn the brightness to like 5 percent for it to be bearable. 1600 nits peak brightness in a dark room watching a movie or YouTube is a little insane 1.5 ft from my face.
So it’s confirmed this is a display lottery situation? NO THANKS
When you compared and say one was better, was the grain still there just less or completely clean like non-OLED iPads?
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It’s noticeable on any medium color background, X, macrumors dark blue bar, etc. it’s just the WORST on medium grays.
It's going to be fun to watch the people who are now so accepting of grain and PWM issues on the OLED, and seeing if they are the same people who went apoplectic over the #bloomgate on the miniLED display.
I didn’t spend too long looking. they were next to each other and one had super noticeable grain and one didn’t. People saying all oleds are like this are really trying to cope-hard
There is always some amount of display lottery with iPhones and iPads. With iPhones I got into a habit of buying two or three units and keeping the one with the best (or least bad) screen. With iPads I have been mostly lucky so far, including the M4s. We don’t know the distribution of graininess on the M4 iPads. Most people don’t seem to have a problem.
Because there are multiple problems. Some screens are worse than others or people don’t see it. For as expensive as these devices are Apple should’ve done the proper QC to make sure the grain is as minimized as possible oif this is indeed the mura effect indicative of OLED displays.
To those who say even iPhones have this but isn’t seen due to high PPI….then Apple should’ve made these higher ppi like 326. iPads have had 264ppi for (checks watch) …. 11 years!
Most creative apps including apples use medium grey backgrounds where this grain is most noticeable and these are pro devices marketed at pros at pro prices.
That’s not really true. Most people even joke they just bought a $1000 Netflix device. People using it for real work in various lighting will notice this. Apple knows this and will most likely do nothing. Having to play the display lottery and being ok with that is kinda pathetic.
True. I just expect better considering this is a higher end device aimed at professionals. If this was an OLED mini that 90 percent of people used for consumption it would never get noticed.
UPDATE: returned and told the store what’s going on. Seemed like they knew but didn’t wanna say much else about it. First time returning an iPad in 14 years.
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A Quick update.After using the device for more than 2 days,I am having a slight different issue from previous one.
I am experiencing this particular green line on some “particular” set of wallpapers from Macos Big Sur.
But when i try them on two different M4 11” they don’t have such issues.
Should i go for a replacement again? I think i will wait till things settle down and go for a replacement after some months.Hopefully the manufacturing issues have sorted out by then.