I've had my XPS 7590 (i9, 32GB, 512SSD, GTX 1650, 4K LCD) for about 6 months and I think this started around a month or so ago - when I run a game or something else that uses discrete GPU, the screen flickers slightly. This looks like the backlight brightness level fluctuates a bit, resembling the flickering you can see on old CRT screens/TV.

The flickering strength is not consistent across apps. I can run my OpenGL demo and see no issues, then run a test scene in Unity and the flickering will be very noticeable. In games this varies. This also depends on the view direction of the 3D camera in the app, but I can't spot any correlation between the amount of stuff rendered and the flickering strength. It also does not matter if I run the app full screen or in a window, the issue affects the whole display.

The flickering depends on the brightness level. I usually keep mine at 20%. If I switch to 0%, the issue is gone. If I crank the brightness up it becomes less noticeable with higher values. At 100% it's barely visible.

This is also affected by battery level and charging status. I normally use "Custom" charging mode in Dell Power Manager (50% - 80%). I tried to charge up to 100% and the issue is less noticeable with higher battery levels. The issue is completely gone when the laptop is charging or running on battery. So this happens only when I run on AC power and the battery is "idle".

I'm lost here. I have all the latest drivers and not sure if this started after some update or this is a hardware degradation issue (I hope not). Tried downgrading video drivers, no luck