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iPad Pro iPad Pro Blooming discussion [merged]
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I bought this iPad about a week ago and after the second day I was about ready to return it because of the blooming in certain conditions; primarily dark room viewing. I’ve since gotten used to it and for me the other aspects of the screen (Eg. brightness and colour) make up for it.
I also seem to have noticed that some apps are not as bad as others, so I’m wondering if maybe it’s something that could be improved by Apple.
Anyway like I said there’s too many good things about this iPad to send it back and I don’t think the times that I happen to see the blooming are going to change my mind.
I also seem to have noticed that some apps are not as bad as others, so I’m wondering if maybe it’s something that could be improved by Apple.
Anyway like I said there’s too many good things about this iPad to send it back and I don’t think the times that I happen to see the blooming are going to change my mind.
it's true that the blooming is only noticeable when in a dark place, but one of the main use cases for my ipad is watching movies or tv shows in bed with the lights out and the blooming pretty much ruins the experience. It's true though that it's worse with certain streaming apps, i've noticed. When i talked to the genius staff at an apple store, they told me apple was working on a software fix, but honestly im not sure if they were just telling me that to go away.
I mean, I don't want to convince you that your wrong or anything, but do you only watch content with pitch black scenes all the time?
I see it too, of course. But it's happening so rarely for me, that I simply don't care. The screen is amazing otherwise, it might be the best HDR content I have ever witnessed. (and I own a C9 LG OLED)
if you're in a dark room the blooming will break what's on the screen because there's always dark content, wether it's the black bars on the top and bottom and whatever dark content is on the screen. it's a big issue for me.
I watched Netflix the last three days in bed, and it was dark. I don't know what you are seeing there, but my black bars are black and the bright lights feel like looking into the sun in the darkness.
I see the blooming without content, the white controls on top of a black screen for example, or in extreme situations like For All Mankind scenes in space, but never otherwise.
On the Disney app there is a glow about an inch above and a inch below the image extending into the black bars noticeable in dark scenes.
What makes me believe this is something that can be improved with a software fix is that some apps are worse than others. Makes me think the genius staff might not have been putting you off.
Since this would be pretty easy to do for videos, have you tried covering the content with an opaque straight edge (like a cut of poster board) to see if it’s the brightness blowing your eyes out? Someone posted an image of the blooming LED grid awhile back and, gauging that, it SEEMED like the bloomed area would be more like half an inch.
I’m guessing that, with the content obscured, you’d be better able to see the part of the grid that’s being overlit.
You are right, it might not be an inch but I think it's a bit more than 1/2". In this Disney app when the screen goes to black you see the entire space that is glowing. Essentially the whole ipad screen is glowing with the exception of the top inch and bottom inch. This area would include the space that the actual content resides plus the extra glow top on and bottom of the content.
Actually the more I study this the more I don't think the performance is app dependent. They are all performing about the same. When the content goes to black or near black you can see how far the glow extends into the bars.
Menu overlays appear to perform the same across all apps with the same glow. Of course with overlays there isn't going to be zero blooming like OLED, but I was hoping for less than there is. With apparently 2500 zones, it should be less IMO.
The other thing that makes one thing it can resolved in software is there are physically thousands of the miniLED lights. Obviously they can be controlled.
I bought the new 2021 iPad Pro thinking the screen would be way better than the 2018 model I‘ve had. But it‘s the opposite.
The blooming is horrible, especially at night when watching a movie. Even when the UI elements are hidden you can notice the horrible blooming on top and bottom and it seems over the footage itself which eliminates any perfect blacks that the new mini-LED screen was supposed to accomplish. Therefore I see no real difference in screen quality but actually worse because of this distracting blooming effect.
Really disappointing. Did Apple test these screens before putting out in the wild? How can they claim the screen is better and release this?
And can it somehow be fixed with a software update? Probably not I assume.
The blooming is horrible, especially at night when watching a movie. Even when the UI elements are hidden you can notice the horrible blooming on top and bottom and it seems over the footage itself which eliminates any perfect blacks that the new mini-LED screen was supposed to accomplish. Therefore I see no real difference in screen quality but actually worse because of this distracting blooming effect.
Really disappointing. Did Apple test these screens before putting out in the wild? How can they claim the screen is better and release this?
And can it somehow be fixed with a software update? Probably not I assume.
it's probably a "software" issue, but most likely some chip controlling this. Maybe it's limited right now? Who knows. Apple needs to have some selling points for future updates, right?
But reading comments like: "this is worse than my old iPad screen" leave me really wondering if I have a special edition of the 12.9". This is so much better than anything else I used in the past watching movies and stuff. The blooming is such a rare issue, I'll just stop thinking about it now and keep enjoying it.
I just bought my iPad today and the blooming is easily noticeable, particularly, but not exclusively, in high screen brightness/low ambient light conditions. To test whether a specific app was more to blame, I took a screen shot of a particularly bad example (Anki in night mode - white text on a black background), opened the screen shot in the Photos app and also opened it in Procreate for comparison; the blooming was just as bad in each of the three apps displaying the same content, unfortunately.
Personally, I am disappointed, but I’m prepared to give it a bit more time to see if I become inured to it.
Personally, I am disappointed, but I’m prepared to give it a bit more time to see if I become inured to it.
Just got this tablet How do I test fro blooming? I did test some Netflix hdr scenes in the dark and dint see anything.
If you don't see anything just stop now. Why would you purposely look for something that could damage your experience? This is all blown out of proportion anyway. It isn't an issue for the most part unless you plan to use it in a pitch black room and read your kindle books with white font, or draw on a black screen with your pencil.
Content with white text on a black background highlights the issue the most.
To add further to my previous post. I have since compared my 10.5” IPP with my 5th gen 12.9” in a dark room whilst using Anki in night mode, and the mini LED just blows it away, blooming or not. I’m going to keep this bad boy.
Completely agree with this comment.
Your iPad will have blooming, just like any mini led display. Use the iPad how you intend to use it and enjoy it. I have this iPad and have never seen blooming and I don’t intend to look for it. I know it’s there, not because it’s faulty or an “issue” but because it’s a mini led display. Just like LCD‘s showing dark greys instead of deep blacks!
Why would you “test” for blooming? All the iPad pro 12.9 units perform the same.
Welp. Although I don’t see it in any HDR content in dark, the haloing hit me like a train when I went to bed last night and launched Apollo in dark mode. I admit it looked rather awful and worse than my 2018 iPad Pro. Portions of the screen were pitch dark while some portions were lit. And the halos were shifting while scrolling.
Wish we had the ability to completely disable the local dimming functionality when just using it for casual web browsing or novels.
Wish we had the ability to completely disable the local dimming functionality when just using it for casual web browsing or novels.