Question Backlight flickering past ~20%

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Aug 21, 2019
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I have a Tongfang Chassis, one of Walmart's "OP" branded laptops. (1060, 16gig variant) Backlight was working generally fine aside from random occasional flickering that I assumed was related to the bios, but that only lasted for a few seconds in-game. While I was playing a game with my sister a few days ago, the backlight started flickering like crazy. The only way to stop it was to turn the brightness down. At low brightness (not lowest) it doesn't flicker. It will flicker much less around 30%, but still flickers a few times a second, then past that it'll flicker like crazy. It seems to be a hardware issue, it even flickers when booting. The brightness doesn't actually change whenever I raise the it while it's flickering. Is there any way to identify what issue this is? I couldn't find any other forums about flickering being tied to brightness.

No clue if this matters at all, but was I plugged into an external TV when this issue started. I noticed the monitor flicker a few times whenever I plugged/unplugged it.
 
If you ever take apart a flat panel display, you will find a thick chunk of glass (probably 2 pieces of glass with the liquid crystal between them) and the backlight. Backlights use to be a couple of fluorescent tubes, but now you find an array of LEDs. As you adjust brightness on your display, the LEDs get dimmer and brighter. If you have an uneven power source or failing driver (the device that supplies power to the LEDs) the LEDs can flicker. In your case, it sounds like the driver is failing because the harder you drive the LEDs (sending more power through the driver) the more they flicker. The fix is probably replacing the entire display (they are made as 1 unit) and it's probably not something you want to do yourself ... especially if the laptop is still under warranty. Potential temporary fix ... use an desktop monitor plugged into the HDMI or mini DP (looks like they are on the back, if I am looking at the right laptop). Now, if a monitor plugged into the laptop also flickers, then something else is going on.
 
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