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M2 Max inconsistent flickering on external 4K displays

A

alexcoulson

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 30, 2023
2
0
Hi all,

I figured I'd make a new post because an existing one is from 3 years ago.

I get bad flickering and ghosting with my Macbook Pro 16" M2 Max connected to 2x DELL U2720Q 4K displays.

I've spent hundreds of pounds trying out different types of cables:
Running latest macOS Ventura 13.3.1

The flickering is inconsistent, I notice it start perhaps once or twice a day. I cannot intentionally reproduce it.

It seems to be triggered by certain colours on screen (for example, on Discord, I could make it start and stop by hovering over a message, so the highlight message colour was triggering it?)

Tried speaking to DELL support but they passed me to Apple Support who I have a call booked in with senior support tomorrow.

I even recorded a video of it happening when it's at it's worst.


The flickering seems to slightly persist on the monitor even when I unplug the macbook for a short while.
 
Fishrrman

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
28,570
12,686
Check out this short (4 min) video in which someone shows how he corrected the flickering:

If you're connecting "through" an external hub/dock, I suggest you REMOVE the dock from the equation and connect your video cables directly to the Mac, even if it's inconvenient.
 
T

txtx

macrumors newbie
May 27, 2020
9
7
alexcoulson said:
Hi all,

I figured I'd make a new post because an existing one is from 3 years ago.

I get bad flickering and ghosting with my Macbook Pro 16" M2 Max connected to 2x DELL U2720Q 4K displays.

I've spent hundreds of pounds trying out different types of cables:
Running latest macOS Ventura 13.3.1

The flickering is inconsistent, I notice it start perhaps once or twice a day. I cannot intentionally reproduce it.

It seems to be triggered by certain colours on screen (for example, on Discord, I could make it start and stop by hovering over a message, so the highlight message colour was triggering it?)

Tried speaking to DELL support but they passed me to Apple Support who I have a call booked in with senior support tomorrow.

I even recorded a video of it happening when it's at it's worst.
View attachment 2195680

The flickering seems to slightly persist on the monitor even when I unplug the macbook for a short while.
Click to expand...

You prolly already looked at the refresh rate, but here's Dell's own article from 8/2022 on the S27SSQC model and two others. It's a MacBook-only issue. it seems. I spoke to Dell about it just yesterday, in regards to shopping for a S27SSQC, and they said the issue has been "cleared up". Maybe that means just for their 3 monitors listed, and maybe it means a macOS update helped or maybe "cleared up" means it's Apple's issue. Seems to happen with other monitor brands for the same refresh rate reason (Benq). RTINGS wrote of the S27SSQC specifically that they couldn't reproduce the effect.


For what it's worth (prolly nothing), my 2006 Dell monitor does the same but also on 60Hz--but as others have noted, it's mostly on a certain shade of dark gray (which is bad if you keep Adobe apps' default gray. Makes me wonder if Apple has targeted Adobe MacBook users with this, since those users are most likely to buy an external monitor to use for creative purposes--to push them to buy an Apple monitor.
 
svenmany

svenmany

macrumors demi-god
Jun 19, 2011
2,081
1,355
I have this issue.

I've just started experimenting with shutting my monitor off whenever I leave my computer. So far, that seems to have fixed it for me. It would always take a few days to start up and only reoccur every few days.
 
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