Mac Portable Screen Visibility without Backlight: M5126

JDW

JDW

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Sep 2, 2021
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I would appreciate feedback from 5120 Mac Portable owners who have a machine that works and who have experiencing adjusting the contrast of their LCD.

I have a 5126 Backlit Portable, but when I turn off the Backlight, the LCD is really hard to see even under good lighting conditions, as shown in my video below. I want to know if the 5120 is the same. Thank you!

 
M

Mk.558

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Nov 11, 2023
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With that amount of lighting it should be pretty clear. I only have one image of a Portable, and it looked almost identically to this in real life. It's actually kind of surprising how crisp it looks like, probably because it's only 1 bit.

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That was with window shades pulled up to the right. If it's a little hard to read, you just tinker with the contrast a bit. Problem is you can't adjust contrast on a 5126.

What's probably happening is that the backlit displays don't reflect as much ambient light because the displays are different types. I'm not a SME in this area but I remember that the Duo 230 passive matrix display seemed to be easier to see in bright light (but not direct sunlight) than the 2300c display was. Granted that's kind of moot here because that's a passive matrix versus an active matrix, and the Portable uses an active matrix LCD.

This is a topic that comes (check page 3) up with 16x2 and 128x64 GLCDs used for hobbyist electronics and other applications. Sometimes people need a FSTN 16x2 for really bright lighting, such as an enduro computer for offroad motorcycle stuff.
 
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