Any downside to running laptop screen full brightness

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Dec 16, 2022
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Work gave me a 2024 macbook pro, I really love the hardware.

Anyway I have opportunity at times to work outside in the shade, and it does really well with the screen at full brightness. Definitely legible and doesn't hurt my eyes.

But I'm wondering about the lifespan of the display itself, anyone know whether this prematurely ages it? When I'm inside which is the vast majority of the time its at half brightness, and I have it setup to black the screen quite quickly when its idle.

When I say "gave me", it's still their machine as I just use it, but ideally I don't tell them after 3 years that their $3400 laptop is now toast.
 
Faster battery discharge is the only real downside.

Burn in hasn't been a real issue for a very long time in my experience.

I gave my mom a Samsung Galaxy S 8 or 10 when it was a year old and it has burn in on the keyboard when I looked the other day, she must type a lot lol.

I guess the other worry of mine is it gets less bright over time, backlight burns out?

I haven't kept up to date with hardware much these days, just not sure what this thing is using and how good the tech is. My 12 year old Samsung Ultrabook has many, many hours of usage and no visible wear of any sort neither in terms of burn in or brightness.
 
I gave my mom a Samsung Galaxy S 8 or 10 when it was a year old and it has burn in on the keyboard when I looked the other day, she must type a lot lol.

I guess the other worry of mine is it gets less bright over time, backlight burns out?

I haven't kept up to date with hardware much these days, just not sure what this thing is using and how good the tech is. My 12 year old Samsung Ultrabook has many, many hours of usage and no visible wear of any sort neither in terms of burn in or brightness.
Those older Galaxy phones had older OLED technology that was prone to burn-in. The MacBook is not OLED. The LEDs should last tens of thousands of hours before they even diminish a few percent of their max brightness. The laptop will be far outdated then.
 
If it's a company provided laptop then run it hard. If the screen burns just say electronics aren't made like how they used to be as that works.
 
If it's a company provided laptop then run it hard. If the screen burns just say electronics aren't made like how they used to be as that works.

That's not fair to them. Besides, no guarantee that they don't replace it with some 8 year old thing in the closet that's half as powerful, noisy, can't hold a charge etc.
 
Use it as you like or need to be comfortable. You mentioned things not being fair to the company in an above comment, but it goes both ways. Nobody means abuse it - run it however you need to in order to comfortable do your job - it's your eyes and they're worth more than a company PC. Besides if they allow the brightness adjustment to go high I am sure it has been tested to some spec and will last as long as you need it to. When I was still with GM they replaced all our laptops every 3 years so I used it as I needed to and that is FAIR. I do see your concern about it going bad and getting stuck with a junker but that is a risk you need to take if you want the screen so bright.
 
Companies get the most favorable tax write-off by leasing computers for exactly 3 years. You're likely to be issued a new computer every 3 years.
 
Companies get the most favorable tax write-off by leasing computers for exactly 3 years. You're likely to be issued a new computer every 3 years.

We're a small company and that's not likely to happen. I'm one of the last hires and we got some good stuff but others on the team are using older machines. These will have no problem being used as software dev/admin laptops for years to come as long as the hardware itself holds up.
 
If you’re worried so much tell them to give you an enterprise grade windows laptop from Lenovo or HP. Those are way tougher than MacBooks.

MacBooks hardware is quite fragile despite their quality outside appearance. Not sure if they fixed their keyboards, but those were known to break, same with internal ribbon cables for the screen.
 
If you’re worried so much tell them to give you an enterprise grade windows laptop from Lenovo or HP. Those are way tougher than MacBooks.

MacBooks hardware is quite fragile despite their quality outside appearance. Not sure if they fixed their keyboards, but those were known to break, same with internal ribbon cables for the screen.

I'm not "telling" them anything, that's not an option. We're an OSX only company other than linux on the servers.

I don't need tough as I don't abuse my stuff. These macbooks run circles around every bit of windows hardware I've thrown them up against, when it comes to performance and battery life which is what matters to me. Touchpad is second to none as well. The hardware is great, some might prefer a little more deep and clicky keyboard but I have no issue with it though that is the only area where Lenovo seems to get it right over the macbook. But yes these are not the same keyboards as the ones breaking a few years ago.
 
I'm not "telling" them anything, that's not an option. We're an OSX only company other than linux on the servers.

I don't need tough as I don't abuse my stuff. These macbooks run circles around every bit of windows hardware I've thrown them up against, when it comes to performance and battery life which is what matters to me. Touchpad is second to none as well. The hardware is great, some might prefer a little more deep and clicky keyboard but I have no issue with it though that is the only area where Lenovo seems to get it right over the macbook. But yes these are not the same keyboards as the ones breaking a few years ago.
I'm not a mind reader, just an FYI ;)

Again, if they're so great, why the worry? My last windows laptop was 5 years old before I was upgraded. Worked great until I returned it.
As far as "running circles" around windows laptops, that depends what tasks we're talking about. I don't see many mac users that run CPU/GPU heavy CAD software, they mostly use windows PCs and laptops. Must be a good reason for that.
I run Catia V5 and 3dx mechanical design software on these, so no Mac for me because of that. Not that I would want to switch anyways, I'm too used to windows at this point.
 
I'm not a mind reader, just an FYI ;)

Again, if they're so great, why the worry? My last windows laptop was 5 years old before I was upgraded. Worked great until I returned it.
As far as "running circles" around windows laptops, that depends what tasks we're talking about. I don't see many mac users that run CPU/GPU heavy CAD software, they mostly use windows PCs and laptops. Must be a good reason for that.
I run Catia V5 and 3dx mechanical design software on these, so no Mac for me because of that. Not that I would want to switch anyways, I'm too used to windows at this point.

The question about damaging the screen wasn't mac specific, there are only a few screen manufacturers in the world.

You can't judge performance or suitability of hardware for a given use by popularity, that's the first mistake. Momentum builds momentum, windows is more popular so more people learn it so more people use it etc, it's a positive feedback loop. It's still the worst OS by far when compared to OSX or linux. But if it's all you know or want to know, then many will stick with it despite the negatives.

The macbook performance comes from other areas like the motherboard/CPU/Ram/disk etc, I obviously haven't tested every new laptop out there but compiling software on my macbook vs other recent desktop machines there is no comparison. My AMD Ryzen 16 core workstation takes 7+ minutes to compile a project that the macbook does in less than 2 minutes with the same amount of ram, and that's with the AMD running linux as well so its already less bloated and slow than the same machine running windows. These apple M chips are crazy good.

It may have a fan, I have never heard it once. It never gets hot, my palms are always cool unless I have a process running at 100% and that's how I can tell I need to terminate a runaway process because I can feel my palms starting to get slightly warm. Battery life is exceptional etc. They're the real deal no question, if you want to fork out the cash. Thankfully I didn't have to.
 
The question about damaging the screen wasn't mac specific, there are only a few screen manufacturers in the world.

Even less reasons to worry about it because we would've heard if there were problems.

You can't judge performance or suitability of hardware for a given use by popularity, that's the first mistake. Momentum builds momentum, windows is more popular so more people learn it so more people use it etc, it's a positive feedback loop. It's still the worst OS by far when compared to OSX or linux. But if it's all you know or want to know, then many will stick with it despite the negatives.

The macbook performance comes from other areas like the motherboard/CPU/Ram/disk etc, I obviously haven't tested every new laptop out there but compiling software on my macbook vs other recent desktop machines there is no comparison. My AMD Ryzen 16 core workstation takes 7+ minutes to compile a project that the macbook does in less than 2 minutes with the same amount of ram, and that's with the AMD running linux as well so its already less bloated and slow than the same machine running windows. These apple M chips are crazy good.

It may have a fan, I have never heard it once. It never gets hot, my palms are always cool unless I have a process running at 100% and that's how I can tell I need to terminate a runaway process because I can feel my palms starting to get slightly warm. Battery life is exceptional etc. They're the real deal no question, if you want to fork out the cash. Thankfully I didn't have to.

I have an old macbook air and an M1 pro, so It's not like I don't have experience with the mac OS or iOS systems. To me it's just another OS. Nothing to get excited about.

The M chips are definitely impressive no questions there. Performance to power consumption, definitely top tier. But raw performance is just not there yet. PC workstations are still dominating the workplaces as Intel chips are the workhorse of many industries. There is no way around it. If they didn't perform, many would jump to Apple in a split second.
 
Even less reasons to worry about it because we would've heard if there were problems.



I have an old macbook air and an M1 pro, so It's not like I don't have experience with the mac OS or iOS systems. To me it's just another OS. Nothing to get excited about.

The M chips are definitely impressive no questions there. Performance to power consumption, definitely top tier. But raw performance is just not there yet. PC workstations are still dominating the workplaces as Intel chips are the workhorse of many industries. There is no way around it. If they didn't perform, many would jump to Apple in a split second.

I'm not necessarily a fan of OSX, though it's better than windows, I'm a fan of the hardware. Ideally I'd be installing debian or some linux distro on the hardware to get a match made in heaven.

You should look into this, it's not just efficiency, it's raw performance. You're going to have an extremely hard time finding a windows laptop that outperforms the macbook pro or even the air, and then it won't compete on efficiency (heat, battery life etc)

You can't just put osx on a laptop that's a few times faster and expect people to jump ship. It doesn't work that way. Vendor lock in is a real thing, never mind just the staff retraining factor which would shoot it dead in the water. Many people just need a chromebook these days when it comes to performance so why give them a macbook even if it's noticeably faster when the cost (including training and finding replacement software) to switch is prohibitive.
 
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