It’s not micro LED - it’s mini LED.

Mini LED uses an array of white LEDs to provide somewhat-localized dimming / illumination. You can get close to true blacks with this, but you might notice a halo around areas since the mini LED array resolution is lower than that of the RGB pixels.

I'm not sure halo is an issue with modern miniLEDs. I've actually worked with research-grade local dimming algorithms and it's relatively easy to get a perceptually nearly perfect picture if you have a calibrated backlight and some image processing software. These algorithms have been known known for a while but it looks like only recently got to production due to need for efficient realtime implementation (they need to run at full 60 or 120 Hz after all).

And, maybe more important, let's not forget the glare effect in our eyes [0] that tends to mask smaller halos.

A couple papers for example, [1] describes one of the better classical algorithms, and [2] is about a modern NN-based approach.

[0] https://resources.mpi-inf.mpg.de/hdr/TemporalGlare/

[1] (2015, pdf) https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01362368/file/IVMSP2016...

[2] (2020) https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.08352v1

I apologize for not reading those papers first, but I don't see how this is possible. With miniLEDs you have a small area of the screen which has a single backlight - if half of that area is 100% white and half 100% black, you'll need the backlight 100% on.

How can that black be as black as in the neighboring area where the backlight is off?

The human eye perceives colors relative to their surroundings, so a black pixel next to a white pixel will look blacker. You can exploit this effect to enhance the perceived contrast ratio. How well this works in practice varies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion

This, and in general setting LED brightness to minimum necessary to get target brightness with fully open LCD, taking into account interaction of nearby LEDs (light from one LED spreads to adjacent cells, thus you could minimize brightness of boundary LEDs even farther).

I read the papers - it can't, they just seem to have novel ways of controlling the zones available. I supposed the smaller the miniLED array the more control you can have over the zones and the better it works. But there doesn't seem to be anything that really solves the bleeding issue.

MBP is miniLED, with LCD as a primary light modulator and a relatively (compared to older local dimmed displays) high-resolution backlight. I.e. you have 3456‑by‑2234 LCD pixels that filter light, but like 300-by-100 light sources (LEDs) behind it.

MicroLED (uLED) is still an exotic technology, it’s in principle similar to OLED, but with inorganic LEDs. It has better color rendering and less burn in problems, but is difficult to manufacture for now.

Basically, display technology names are deceptive, similar names may mean completely different things.

Some people get much more severe symptoms including migraines at LEDStrain.org

I had the exact same issue and spent a lot of time figuring out why this was a problem for me, as I would alter between my old 15 inch and new 16 inch and feel the difference each time.

Long story short, I found a solution that removed all my issues;

- Use the accessibility «contrast» feature set to level 2

- Use an app[0] that applies a gamme filter to adjust the white level down to account for the contrast increase

- (optional) use an srgb color profile that disables temporal dithering of colors

This reduces you max brightness level to the same amount as the old 15 inch (I don’t need the extra brightness) but allowes you to keep the backlight at max output, minimizing the pvm strobing effect[0] that some people seem to be sensitive to.

[0] https://michelf.ca/projects/gamma-control/

[1] https://osxdaily.com/2021/05/14/workaround-pwm-oled-iphone-i...

It also helps to use the default resolution to avoid supersampling/anti-aliasing effects.

Just saw this - I had played with numerous settings for a long time and some seemed to make it better, some not so. I did not try your solution.

BTW, I don't run into any issues with the 13" M1 AIR also. So, decided that it wasn't worth it for me to have to fiddle around with setting on a rather expensive piece of hardware and decided to return it and wait in case Apple launches a 15" MB Air with a regular (as in not mini LED) screen.

In they don't, I'll give the 16" MBP another shot and might try your solution.