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Display brightness issue with Win 10 on W520

W500/W510/W520 and W700/W701 Series
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jdwis
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Apr 17, 2012 5:18 pm
Location: Lei, UK

Display brightness issue with Win 10 on W520

#1 Post by jdwis » Tue Nov 04, 2025 2:22 pm

Hi

I have updated to Win 10 on W520
The brightness level varies from level 1 (low) - 10 (highest)

At level 2 it is too low and increasing to 3 its just too bright, the level does not increase gradually as it used to be in Win-7

No matter what you do it just doesnt help

I tried various utilities Intel/Lenovo Power Management programs - didnt help (actually there is none for Win-10, I tried from Win-7)
Some other available programs from internet - which just didnt work
Also made sure the Display driver is updated to latest ver.

Display - NVIDIA Quadro 1000M
Driver ver - 21.21.13.7755 (2017-07-13)
NVIDIA Control Panel Prog - 8.1.1070.0
Ver - 377.55

Nothing I could find which would help increase / decrease brightness gradually, nicely, like Win-7

Can anything be done ?

Thanks in advance guys

RealBlackStuff
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Re: Display brightness issue with Win 10 on W520

#2 Post by RealBlackStuff » Wed Nov 05, 2025 12:26 am

What happens if you use Fn-Home (brighter) or Fn-End (dimmer)?
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ZaZ
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Re: Display brightness issue with Win 10 on W520

#3 Post by ZaZ » Wed Nov 05, 2025 2:20 am

Does going from three to four or eight to nine produce the same large increases in brightness? You might want to boot it to Linux, which you can do via a USB or optical drive. You won't need to install it, but can test whether it produces the same results.
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jdwis
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Apr 17, 2012 5:18 pm
Location: Lei, UK

Re: Display brightness issue with Win 10 on W520

#4 Post by jdwis » Wed Nov 05, 2025 6:15 am

RealBlackStuff wrote:
Wed Nov 05, 2025 12:26 am
What happens if you use Fn-Home (brighter) or Fn-End (dimmer)?
Yes, I change brightness via these keys only Fn + Home or End and it does change brightness (brighter and dimmer)
ZaZ wrote:
Wed Nov 05, 2025 2:20 am
Does going from three to four or eight to nine produce the same large increases in brightness? You might want to boot it to Linux, which you can do via a USB or optical drive. You won't need to install it, but can test whether it produces the same results.
Going from 3 to 4 brightness changes, its more brighter on 4 than 3
Changing from 8 to 9 also changes the brightness, its brighter than its previous value 4

I have Linux as secondary OS, changing brightness there is no problem, it all changes gradually and nicely, in little values, which does not hurt your eyes - Linux - all good

In Win-10 (since updated from 7) the brightness is actually too high at even value of 2 and at 1 it goes quite a bit low (of course readable but u have to squint)

The increase in values from 1-2-3-4 etc I believe should be in very little fractions rather then large chunks.

Just now reading some threads on some other forums, someone tried to change the display properties in BIOS
I tried changing it, experimented to 2 different values "Discreet" and then later "Integrated"
Discreet - did not help and system hung and reverted back to NVIDIA automatically
Integrated - remained, and changed display to "Intel HD graphics 3000" - for which I tried installing new drivers etc, but things didnt work out well as I could not then use External monitor, and eventually I had to revert back to NVIDIA

jdwis
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Apr 17, 2012 5:18 pm
Location: Lei, UK

Re: Display brightness issue with Win 10 on W520

#5 Post by jdwis » Thu Nov 13, 2025 8:05 am

Has anyone come across similar or suggest anything on what to do for gradual increase in brightness rather than big chunky increase from level 1 ?

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