Adaptive Brightness. Any Good?

[Gongalong]

Hi folks,

 

While using the laptop last night I lamented the lack of a feature that adapts brightness to the surrounding light, a la the average smartphone. A bit of googling though turned up that Windows 10 has a feature called Adaptive Brightness, although for some reason this was turned off on my power plan.

 

Has anyone used this at all, and does it work? More googling suggests it could be display driver dependent.

 

(I've got an HP Spectre x360 with Intel HD Graphics 620 and NVIDIA GeForce 940MX, although I suspect it's just the Intel chipset that gets used for the Windows GUI)

 

Thanks

[Norphy]

There would need to be some kind of light sensor built into the bezel of your display as well. Does yours have that?

 

I've not tried it with HP hardware but a Dell that I had which had this feature was pretty bad at it, the screen constantly flickered and the only way to resolve it was to turn adaptive brightness off. However, a Mac running Bootcamp is a lot better with it.

[Gongalong]

It's a fairly high end laptop, but no idea if there's an ambient light sensor.

[Norphy]

If you shine a torch on the bezel of the laptop, any light sensor might be a bit more visible, assuming the laptop has a black bezel. The sensor on my MBP is about 5mm to the left of the webcam.

[sted]

There would need to be some kind of light sensor built into the bezel of your display as well. Does yours have that?

 

I've not tried it with HP hardware but a Dell that I had which had this feature was pretty bad at it, the screen constantly flickered and the only way to resolve it was to turn adaptive brightness off. However, a Mac running Bootcamp is a lot better with it.

 

you could probably use the laptops webcam in theory

[Gongalong]

If you shine a torch on the bezel of the laptop, any light sensor might be a bit more visible, assuming the laptop has a black bezel. The sensor on my MBP is about 5mm to the left of the webcam.

It's hard to say because it's got the Windows Hello functionality, so an array of cameras at the top of the bezel.