It's not useful for certain cases, and it's downright annoying for some, such as when you're watching video.

For the use case described in the blog post, though, I think it's pretty useful. I've been using Lumen every day while working, and it's been pretty helpful to me.

Actually, I don't think it's useful for that case specifically. My example would be switching between say reddit (very bright UI in default or common subreddit themes) and my IDEs (using white text over dark background) or imgur. The brightness increase is generally not noticeable, but the darkening of bright screens is absolutely obnoxious to me.

The only time I change my brightness is when my laptop is unplugged, or when I'm using it very late at night with no external light.

Others may prefer the Lumen way, but I wouldn't use it even if I were paid for.

I have an LG display with this anti-feature built in as well. An amusing anecdote about that: The OSD is not documented very well. There's a feature named “SUPER ENERGY SAVING” and a feature simply named “DFC”. As I learned via google, “DFC” is supposed to mean “Digital Fine Contrast”.

Now, about these two features: One of them turns off the backlight when I lock my screen, the other adjusts the backlight intensity automatically based on the display contents.

Did you think “SUPER ENERGY SAVING” was the first and “DFC” was the second? Nope, of course not - it was the other way around. “SUPER ENERGY SAVING” advertises itself as “saving energy” by reducing the backlight intensity when it's “not needed as much”, and “DFC” advertises itself as increasing the “dynamic” contrast (by basically turning off the backlight during the black frame test pattern).

Good job LG. This is actually one of the least sad bits about the OSD's horrible design and implementation.

Had to send back a Dell XPS 13 for this exact reason. Unbelievably annoying.

Absolutely true. The biggest hindrance was when playing games, the screen would become washed out.

Another would be when switching between sublime and stackoverflow.

I found a fix though(For dell laptops only). If you disable this via the intel video settings screen and you're plugged in to a power source, just remove and reattach the power cable and your screen should be fine.