Some people have reported that the brand new M1 iPad Pros
are suffering from blooming on the mini LED screens.
Now I know that there are a few other YouTubers
that have made videos on this, but I wanted to do
my own testing 'cause a lot of my subscribers
have actually asked me to do that.
And so in the spirit of the name, Created Tech,
I've created my very own test.
So I've edited together a bunch
of white shapes and animated them.
And I've set the resolution to match the screen on the iPad.
And in today's video, I'm going to do that test
and some other ones
to see if this really is an issue or not.
So for the first test
I'm going to completely kill all of the lights.
It's going to be pitch black in here.
I'm going to put the screen up to 100% brightness.
Now this isn't something you should obviously do.
It's not a realistic real life test.
It's actually going to hurt your eyes
more than anything, in the long run.
But it's just for the purposes of this video
to see if I can recreate any kind of blooming at all.
Now, what is blooming, you may ask.
Well, it's when bright or white pixels
on the actual screen are lit up,
and then that light actually bleeds out
into surrounding pixels that may actually be pitch black.
So it almost looks like if you draw a straight line,
for example, there's a glow emanating
from the line when those pixels
either side of the line should be pitch black,
due to the mini-LED technology.
Okay, so as you guys can see here,
we are just on the home screen
and you can see I have the brightness to 100%.
So if we come into the custom video that I've actually
created for this blooming test, we'll play this
and we'll see what kind of results we get.
So right off the bat, you can see that
there definitely is some blooming around the edges.
A little bit hard to see on the camera, but in real life,
it is definitely noticeable, but it's not super bad,
like it's not really off-putting, if that makes sense.
Right now, I'm doing an edge test.
So I'm making the circle go around the edges
and the corners just to see if the blooming is any worse.
And it doesn't look too bad right now.
So as you can see the actual whites and the blacks
are super, super dark, but just right on those edges
around the circle, there is some glow emanating out.
Right now with the square, it actually kind of looks worse,
because the square is obviously
in a shape where it's more noticeable.
And right now we have a static image.
It's about to start rotating and right now,
when it's rotating, it's actually quite bad.
Again, not super, super off-putting.
If I was watching a movie or I was doing some editing
or anything like that, it wouldn't be
super off-putting, but -
Hey guys, this is editing Liam, just reporting in.
So I'm, editing this footage now, and I've realized
that you really can't see it on this specific camera.
So what I've done is I've taken some B roll
and I've put that on the screen,
which will hopefully give you a more accurate idea
of what exactly I'm seeing with my own eyes.
So you'll notice that it's particularly bad
when we go into the Notes app on dark mode
and you can see up in the corners, all the white text
is completely blown out and blooming.
And specifically, when you actually start to draw
thin white lines, you can see the blooming
quite badly there as well.
And unfortunately, it's just not something I could
actually pick up with the setup I was using
to record this particular video.
Okay, so let's test out some other content.
I have some photos and also a Dolby HDR video here
that we can test out.
So if we come into the settings
and I make sure that the brightness is set to 100%,
if we kind of zoom in here,
you can't really see anything here.
It's not too bad.
Same with these other photos.
The blooming is, I can just barely make it out,
but it's not really noticeable at all,
now that we have some ambient lighting.
And if we move across,
again, nothing too crazy.
You can see it on the side, around here,
with that lens flare and also the white parts
of his knuckles where the light's actually hitting his skin.
And then if we have this moon image,
some very slight blooming around the edges,
but again, guys, I can barely make that out.
This is at 100%.
And then the Snapchat logo.
So you can see some fairly obvious blooming there
but again, not super bad.
Okay, so let's play this Dolby Atmos trailer
and we'll see if we can make out any blooming.
(faint jazzy music)
All right, I'm really not seeing anything too crazy,
just because there's so much happening
on the screen, and so quick.
I'm really not noticing any significant blooming.
And again, not really noticing anything too crazy there.
So if we skip some color and some more visuals,
the screen does look really good.
I do have to give it to Apple.
In wider scenes, such as these ones,
you won't notice anything.
It looks totally fine.
You just need to get to the pitch black scenes
with really bright whites
to actually notice any kind of issues.
So if we bring up a random MacRumors article,
you can see that even with a dark background,
it's really not too bad.
I don't really notice anything significant here at all.
It was very, very clear to read
and there's not really any issues with legibility,
so I'm quite happy with that.
So what I'll quickly show you guys, as well,
is the exact same scene at 100% brightness.
And this is during the day,
or at least with ambient lighting.
So you can see the same blooming issue is still there.
You probably can't see it on the camera,
but in real life, it's very much so minimized
compared to the pitch black room.
I can barely notice anything now.
So guys, there, you have it.
That is the iPad blooming issue explained
and maybe not quite debunked.
So let's just talk about it real quick.
So in my opinion, is it a massive issue?
I don't think so.
In the first few tests I did, it was in a pitch black room
with the brightness set to 100%,
and it was very specific white lines and drawing and shapes
on a pitch black background, which I think in most cases
most people probably aren't going to encounter.
So I think the blooming issue
has been blown out of proportions a little bit
from some of the articles out there.
But, in saying that, it definitely is somewhat of an issue,
depending on what you use your iPad for.
And it might actually vary from iPad pro to iPad pro.
So in a few other videos I've seen on YouTube
they haven't had any issues, but as you can see there,
specifically in this particular test,
I was noticing a massive amount of blooming.
Now blooming is a side effect of mini-LED technology.
What actually happens is that the individual LEDs,
when they're lit up and they're at 100% brightness,
sometimes that brightness can spill over
across other unlit LEDs
and cause the illusion of ghosting or blooming.
But that's kind of a little bit
of a drawback of the mini-LED technology.
The trade-back is you're getting really, really dark blacks,
and the whites are really, really bright,
and just the overall screen is
really gorgeous and lovely to use.
But like I've said before, guys, I really don't think
95% of people are even going to notice blooming issues
on their iPad, if they even have them in the first place.
Anyway, thanks for watching this video.
Hopefully you found it helpful
and hopefully it alleviated any kind of fears or concerns
you've had around the iPad.
If you have any more questions or tests you want me to do,
leave a comment down below,
but apart from that, I'll catch you guys in the next one.