Macbook Pro 16 display uniformity reports?

[7Mekanos]

Hi, could folks with the new MBP16 and a calibration device be kind and post uniformity reports of their screen?

Here’s mine created with i1 Display Pro and DisplayCAL software.

This is my second MBP, returned the first one because of color uniformity issues (the right 1/3 of the display had a red tint). This one’s clearly better but not nearly perfect. There’s some green tint on the top left and red tint on the bottom right, visible to my eyes and also reflected on the report.

Now I’m debating whether to play the display lottery again or just keep it. Would be good to know how common good uniformity (ΔE / ΔC < 2 or even < 1) across the panel is with these displays…

 

[jabbr]

most of the 14" and 16" MBPs I've seen have surprisingly great uniformity. It seems to be much more consistent than previous generations.

 

[Sanpete]

Looks typical as far as brightness goes. NotebookCheck always tests this. You can see their measurements including comparisons to other models here:

Apple MacBook Pro 16 2021 M1 Pro in Review - The best Multimedia Laptop for Content Creators?

Notebookcheck reviews the new Apple MacBook Pro 16 with the M1 Pro SoC, Liquid Retina XDR Mini-LED display and 1 TB SSD.

www.notebookcheck.net

 

[Fred Zed]

Hi, could folks with the new MBP16 and a calibration device be kind and post uniformity reports of their screen?

Here’s mine created with i1 Display Pro and DisplayCAL software.

This is my second MBP, returned the first one because of color uniformity issues (the right 1/3 of the display had a red tint). This one’s clearly better but not nearly perfect. There’s some green tint on the top left and red tint on the bottom right, visible to my eyes and also reflected on the report.

Now I’m debating whether to play the display lottery again or just keep it. Would be good to know how common good uniformity (ΔE / ΔC < 2 or even < 1) across the panel is with these displays…

View attachment 1985709

Wishing you all the best in your endeavors. Keep us updated, thanks.

 

[Six0Four]

All I know is my screen brightness uniformity and it is excellent in that regard. Maximum of 4.7% deviation. As the brightness goes down this number stays under 5%.

I have the 14".

 

[7Mekanos]

Yes, brightness uniformity seems to be good with these displays, though I’ve read reports of occasional banding artifacts due to poorly calibrated minileds, but those are probably too small to measure on a 5x5 or 5x3 grid.

However color uniformity is what I’m more concerned about, as having color tints on a white background is really annoying when doing design/illustration work. Having a 3% tint towards green on the left and 2% towards red on the right creates a 5% difference accross the screen which is quite noticeable.

Unfortunately none of the reviewers seem to measure color uniformity, notebookcheck for example only measures brightness. Or then uniformity is measured as delta E which combines brightness and color variations, as that seems to be the default reporting setting for most software - for example in DisplayCAL you have to change the criteria setting in the report manually to see the results separated as luminance and delta C.

Just to compare I measured some of my other screens. Here’s my Huawei Matebook Pro X:

As you can see from the numbers, worse brightness uniformity as typical for an edge-lit lcd, but way better color uniformity. Also no tint when viewed from an angle, vs. the MBP which tints heavily towards green/magenta when viewed from the sides.

And here’a my BenQ PD 3200U:

Again, worse brightness uniformity but better color though the numbers are closer. However this is a 32” screen and more of a low end model so wouldn’t expect any better.

 

[HeraFlight]

My experience with the *14* inch pro is pretty poor personally, decent screen lighting but really poor tint uniformity. I've had 2 units - one with this yellow mark/band going down the screen near the middle, making it a pain to even read on normally, and one that's better for that but red tinted to the left and yellow to the right

 

[lambertjohn]

The screen on my 2021 16" is perfect. I couldn't have asked for a nicer computer.

 

[Sanpete]

Are you comparing to the new P3 Huawei Matebook Pro X, or an older conventional sRGB one? The latter doesn't compare favorably at NotebookCheck, maybe mostly due to brightness variation. But that does add to the perceived variation, which is why delta-E is used, I imagine. You may have lucked out there.

Don't know how the HDR capability affects this. Might be harder to achieve the same color accuracy with that.

 

[7Mekanos]

Are you comparing to the new P3 Huawei Matebook Pro X, or an older conventional sRGB one? The latter doesn't compare favorably at NotebookCheck, maybe mostly due to brightness variation. But that does add to the perceived variation, which is why delta-E is used, I imagine. You may have lucked out there.

Don't know how the HDR capability affects this. Might be harder to achieve the same color accuracy with that.

It was the older 2020 model I measured. Bought two of those actually and kept one, the other had backlight bleed, mine doesn’t. White uniformity was similarly good in both though.

I’d guess the color uniformity problems have more to do with the LCD manufacturing process, polarization, coating etc. HDR is more about the backlight and local dimming. Of course variations in the mini LED backlight color/brightness could also lead to poor uniformity, but that would look more like banding, splotches etc... Whereas this looks similar to poor color uniformity in conventional IPS lcd displays. Which leads me to believe that Apple simply does not bother, as 90% percent of potential customers and reviewers will always value brightness and saturation over any kind of accuracy…

 

[Sanpete]

You mean Apple doesn't bother to check uniformity? I imagine they do, but their specs are probably more liberal than yours. There have been some complaints about tint variance from one side of the screen to another, as there usually are. Yes, stuff like screen coatings may well be the culprit.

 

[Six0Four]

What's really odd is looking straight at my 14" pro, the left side looks slightly more warm/yellow. When I flip the laptop upside down the left side (the opposite side that looked cooler before) now looks warm/yellow now. lol.

This leads me to believe that it is the coating. Not bothered by it because it is barely noticeable.

 

[7Mekanos]

You mean Apple doesn't bother to check uniformity? I imagine they do, but their specs are probably more liberal than yours. There have been some complaints about tint variance from one side of the screen to another, as there usually are. Yes, stuff like screen coatings may well be the culprit.

Guess they have some specs for the display manufacturers, like max delta E < 5 or something. But for the most expensive laptops in the market, I’d hope they would be tighter with the specs. Or implement uniformity compensation in the firmware like most pro desktop displays do.

Actually, some 3rd party developer could perhaps create a uniformity compensation app - by displaying an overlay image, with values generated by mapping the screen with a colorimeter. Like I can easily make my white screen look perfect, colorwise, by painting with a red and green brush, 1% opacity, on a full-screen white background, to counteract the tints… An overlay would of course create some performance impact which is why a hardware/firmware implementation, or at least something deeply integrated into the macOS graphics pipeline would be better, but I imagine the overhead would be marginal with modern GPUs.

What's really odd is looking straight at my 14" pro, the left side looks slightly more warm/yellow. When I flip the laptop upside down the left side (the opposite side that looked cooler before) now looks warm/yellow now. lol.

This leads me to believe that it is the coating. Not bothered by it because it is barely noticeable.

Odd. I see no difference in mine upside down, and of course the colorimeter does not care about orientation. But I guess there could be additional tints caused by the coating, sometimes exaggerating the tints of the LCD.

 

[Sanpete]

What's really odd is looking straight at my 14" pro, the left side looks slightly more warm/yellow. When I flip the laptop upside down the left side (the opposite side that looked cooler before) now looks warm/yellow now. lol.

This leads me to believe that it is the coating. Not bothered by it because it is barely noticeable.

That is curious. That suggests to me it isn't the screen coating, at least not in the way I was thinking. I recall someone posted pics of their screen that showed the tint varied with the angle of view.