Thinkpads Forum

I just picked up an X120e in perfect condition, and I'm really liking it so far. But I've found an annoyance with the backlight. It seems that when the screen is displaying a light or mostly white image, it increases the brightness. When showing darker content, the backlight dims. The backlight "level" doesn't change, but the physical brightness of the backlight obviously does. It's even more noticeable when you lower the screen brightness, as it seems to make the changes more drastically. For example, a dark image causes the backlight to dim way too low, but switch to a white website and the backlight quickly ramps up and blows out your retinas.

Is there an option to disable this anywhere?

Disregard. I didn't have any luck searching any X120e specific forums, but found some on Lenovo's official forums for a different model. Tons of people offering suggestions regarding Lenovo's PowerManager, Dynamic Brightness Control (which was disabled), etc. Finally found one post that explained it:

It's a setting in the AMD Catalyst Control Center. Power > Powerplay > Vari-Bright. Enabled and annoying by default.