Macbook Pro 2021 16" truly 10-bit color?

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

There does not seem to be any readily-available authoritative information regarding whether these displays are inherently 10-bit color-capable, or whether that is specsmanship implemented with temporal dithering -- which some users report seems to correlate with massive headaches.

What do you know on the subject?

Hi Grant,

AFAIK, the current MPB displays (and Apple's Pro Display XDR) use an 8-bit panel and frame rate control (FRC, aka temporal dithering) to achieve 10-bit color depth. For example, in GitHub you can turn disable the GPU FRC.

[To the OP, it's truly a 1-billion color / 10-bit color display, in that humans cannot perceive the difference, but it's not a 10-bit IPS panel with 1024 color shades per dot, if that's what you were asking.]

As to whether that causes eye strain for some people, it's hard to say because there are always confounding factors. It's certainly true that some people are affected by the flickering of fluorescent lighting (usually 120 Hz), and mores by LED lighting (same frequency, but the magnitude of the flicker is greater with LEDs). So it would not at all surprise me if some people are affected by the temporal dithering even though it's nominally well above the flicker fusion frequency for human vision.

hey neuronatomist!

I have seen some of discussions here about headaches and eye pain attributed to these displays. Often the discussion goes on for a while with little constructive information added, until: At some point someone suggest changing settings to RGB profile or adding a third-party Utility to to turn OFF temporal dithering -- sometimes providing relief for the original author.

There does not seem to be any readily-available authoritative information regarding whether these displays are inherently 10-bit color-capable, or whether that is specsmanship implemented with temporal dithering -- which some users report seems to correlate with massive headaches.

What do you know on the subject?

Yes, the Liquid Retina XDR display in the 2021 16" MBP is a 10-bit display.

neuroanatomist-

Thank you so much for that information!