[MacOS] External Display Rendering Issue (High contrast)

[KevinTYJ]

I am experiencing some issues with a new MacBook Pro M1 Max 16inch with my external 4K monitor PE320QK.

I have been using the PE320QK for about two years with my previous MacBook Pro 16inch i9 without any issues.

When I plug the same monitor into my new MacBook Pro M1 Max to the same monitor with the same cable, high contrast areas seems to have weird artifacts, especially text seems like there is some kind of "compression" and there are darker edges like as if you HDR image haloing.

The weird thing is that I took both the computers to the Apple Store and my old laptop was experiencing the same haloing issue on their in store LG 3K 27inch monitor and my M1 Max was not experiencing the issue at all.

I tried with the two monitors I have both PE320QK same issue with the new laptop.

Does anyone know a solution to this issue? I've looked all over the internet and no one seems to know what is going on.

 

[Roswell]

18 minutes ago, KevinTYJ said:

I am experiencing some issues with a new MacBook Pro M1 Max 16inch with my external 4K monitor PE320QK.

I have been using the PE320QK for about two years with my previous MacBook Pro 16inch i9 without any issues.

When I plug the same monitor into my new MacBook Pro M1 Max to the same monitor with the same cable, high contrast areas seems to have weird artifacts, especially text seems like there is some kind of "compression" and there are darker edges like as if you HDR image haloing.

The weird thing is that I took both the computers to the Apple Store and my old laptop was experiencing the same haloing issue on their in store LG 3K 27inch monitor and my M1 Max was not experiencing the issue at all.

I tried with the two monitors I have both PE320QK same issue with the new laptop.

Does anyone know a solution to this issue? I've looked all over the internet and no one seems to know what is going on.

 

Have you tried playing with the color profiles and screen scaling options?

[KevinTYJ]

5 hours ago, Roswell said:

Have you tried playing with the color profiles and screen scaling options?

Yeah forgot to mention:

Tried all scaling options, disabled all profiles on the monitor, tried HDR mode, the different colour modes on the monitor. Sharpening was never enabled on the monitor ever.

[Roswell]

15 minutes ago, KevinTYJ said:

Yeah forgot to mention:

Tried all scaling options, disabled all profiles on the monitor, tried HDR mode, the different colour modes on the monitor. Sharpening was never enabled on the monitor ever.

I mean scaling and color space profiles in macOS, not on the monitor.

[KevinTYJ]

5 minutes ago, Roswell said:

I mean scaling and color space profiles in macOS, not on the monitor.

Yeah... The weird thing is the reverse happened on the 27inch monitor at the Apple Store. I tried all scales on the Mac. Colour profiles made a bit of an improvement, but I think this has to do with different contrast with certain color profiles. 

[KevinTYJ]

Here are some photos for comparison. It's not just a haloing issue, the colors are also completely different, despite being on the same color profile. I use my monitors without calibration (Its not worth the hassle for my workflow). It basically makes my monitor useless though because of the annoying color difference and haloing (almost like compression artifacts). Monitors are ran through a usb-c connection. Tried HDMI and DisplayPort with a dongle with the same disappointing result

You can clearly see the difference. They are both running on the same scaling but as you can see there is a significant difference in the way the image is rendered.

 

M1 Max

 

Intel i9

 

M1 Max

 

Intel i9

 

The reason why I think this isn't a M1 chip issue is because:

1. The image is rendered fine on my M1 iPad Pro

2. The reverse was the issue tested on a different monitor where intel Mac was the one having the issue while M1 max rendered the content just fine