New laptop screen keeps dimming by itself, have tried everything

[RDBell]

I got a new laptop very recently (Acer Aspire A515-55 Intel Core i5-1035G1) and am being bothered by the screen brightness going down whenever something dark is on my screen (Discord and Spotify for instance). This is extremely annoying and also makes it practically impossible to use my art program which is quite dark, as I can barely see the colours.

 What I've tried so far:

1. Turning off adaptive brightness in display settings -- I don't have this option in my display settings.
2. Control panel > power options > change plan settings > change advanced power settings > display > enable adaptive brightness setting off -- again, I don't have the adaptive brightness option.
3. Disable Sensor Monitoring Service -- I have done this, but it changes nothing.
4. Open Intel Graphics Command Centre > System > Power > turn off Display Power Saving and Enhanced Power Saving -- strangely, I don't have a "Power" section in my version of Intel Graphics Command Centre, so I can't do this.

This problem only occurs when my laptop is unplugged, but I don't want to leave it plugged in all the time as I know that can damage the battery and doing that caused my previous laptop's battery to swell and crack the casing (which is why I got a new laptop in the first place). At this point, I don't know what is causing the dimming issue but I would really appreciate some help.

[megan3000]

Considering that all the common suggestions we may find for this problem are not available for you, first questions that comes to my mind is: are you using the graphics driver from Acer?

Please note that laptop manufacturers change or modify their drivers to provide support for special features and customizations so their hardware works fine under their specific design.... On the other hand, the Intel generic drivers may override those customizations causing system's graphics features to not work properly.

First thing you need to do is make sure you are using the latest driver from Acer... Also check you have the latest BIOS.

Additional tip: I have seen some manufactures offer additional "software/drivers" for the display... let's say, for "improve performance, functionality, and so on".. check if anything like that is available for this laptop...

[RDBell]

I'm pretty sure I'm using the latest driver as this laptop isn't even a week old yet, but I did manually update the graphics yesterday anyway which changed nothing. 

I've just checked the BIOS which is V1.13 and the latest version as far as I can tell.

I'll check for additional software! Thanks for the advice.

[megan3000]

You may also check on the BIOS for any feature or option related to brightness, power, or similar... I have seen this on Dell laptops as "Eco[something]" (sorry, I don't remember the full feature's name)... but perhaps there is something similar on your BIOS...

[RDBell]

Oh yes, I know exactly what you're talking about! I have tried this, unfortunately the Acer BIOS is different to the Dell one and has no options like that.

[megan3000]

Ok... I took the time to test this myself on an new Lenovo laptop I have with 11th Gen and Iris Xe GPU.

Using battery only, I went to an online course I'm taking  (that I have been accessing before using only a desktop PC). The website launches the course on a white background with font black color and some menus light blue color... and I launched another app with dark background... I also use the Dark mode as the Windows Color theme.

Switching apps using Alt + Tab I noticed this dimming behavior... I read about 2 hours and about every 20 minutes I did the alt + tab switching and I have to confess that this dimming was very uncomfortable... I now understand why this is pissing off some users...

However, I went to intel graphics command center and I disabled Display power savings and the dimming behavior stopped. It says that disabling this may impact battery life; however, it is to early to say how much it will affect my battery life... To be honest, I didn't notice my battery was draining faster with this thing disable...

I need to say that I'm using the lenovo graphics driver as I almost never use the intel drivers (I don't like to use them on laptops...)

[RDBell]

@megan3000 (sorry, accidentally formatted this as a comment rather than a reply to your comment!)

It's good to know that this is a problem with the intel driver - well, not good of course it's extremely annoying, but I'm glad to know that it's not that my laptop is faulty.

The thing is, my version of Intel Graphics Command Center (which I assume is the latest) doesn't have any display power settings. This is infuriating because I'm sure this would solve my problem, but the power page doesn't seem to exist so I can't access those settings at all.

Here is a screenshot of someone else's command center (that I found on another forum while looking up a solution):

And here is a screenshot of mine:

If there's a way to somehow fix this, that might be the solution to my problem with dimming.

[megan3000]

Actually, this could be on the laptops side...

I took another (work) laptop and I noticed I also have the Display Power Saving option and I can enable and disable it with no issues...

Then, I checked 2 desktop PCs and I noticed they don't have that power option...

Long story short... could be that Acer decided to remove support for this feature as it seems this depends on manufactures... this intel article says that:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000060146/graphics.html

I understood you have the latest driver from Acer, right? at least that one should work (if the feature is supported)

On my two laptops, I have the same exact option that you pointed out in the first screenshot... I'm running latest version of command center app...

[RDBell]

Oh I see... I guess if the settings aren't supported by my laptop that explains why they aren't showing up. I have the latest driver and the latest version of the command center app so those aren't the problem. Back to square one with no solutions to this dimming I suppose...

[megan3000]

I think is better to ask acer what's going on... the thing is that even with the latest versions you don't have the options that would allow you to try and test if the power saving/brightness dimming feature can be disabled...

My laptop did do this same behavior when I decided to test it, but I easily stopped the annoying behavior by disabling that using the said features...

My desktop PCs don't have the feature/options, but I think it makes sense the feature is not available because (1) desktop PCs don't use a built-in battery and therefore no need to "save power" or care about battery life and (2) I have never seen this "brightness dimming" behavior on a desktop PC (I mean, on external monitors)

You should ask Acer, if this is normal and also if the system is lacking the features so every “unlucky user” that buys this laptop just needs to give up and deal with this every time the system runs on battery?

Or if there is anything else that can be done? (a BIOS update, a separate app or tool to manage brightness, or if the system requires to be returned?)

Sorry, I have no more ideas to share...

Megan