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This is a monitor with dead pixels. It's a defect your new monitor can have out of the box,

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but there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.

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True, a lot of places will let you return any purchase within 30 days or so, but after that,

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it can be very hard to get a monitor with dead pixels fixed,

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even if it's under warranty. I'm not saying that whoever made your monitor

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won't honor the warranty if, say, it won't turn on or the backlight goes out,

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but why do display manufacturers just give their customers the cold shoulder

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if some of the pixels on their screen, you know, the thing you're looking directly at,

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straight up don't work. Let's start out by talking about what a dead pixel is.

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On a typical LCD display, the transistors that control each pixel

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can get stuck in one position or another permanently,

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meaning the liquid crystals will be turned in such a way that no light can pass through,

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rendering that pixel dark or off. On an OLED display, you'll instead have a pixel

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or individual color sub-pixel completely burnt out,

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but the result is the same, an unsightly dark spot that can be noticeable

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against a light-colored background. Pixels can also die by being permanently in an on-state,

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often called a bright pixel defect, causing a distracting bright spot,

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especially noticeable during dark scenes. So we've established that permanently dark

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or bright pixels can be very distracting, but why do they end up in the finished product

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that you just bought? Why?

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I mean, think about how many CPU cores are defective when they roll off the assembly line.

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Those cores are just disabled and the chip is sold as a model with fewer cores.

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With displays, though, the dead pixels remain a part of the product experience.

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There's nowhere to hide them, but eliminating the problem is non-trivial.

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That's because a standard 1080p display has over two million individual pixels,

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and if you have a 4K screen, it's well over eight million.

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When you're manufacturing that many tiny screen elements,

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defects are highly likely. If a panel had to be perfect,

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there'd be significant amounts of wasted product. Combine that with the high cost of shipping

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and replacing defective panels when a customer wants an exchange,

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and you arrive where we are today. The display industry has actually settled

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on what it considers a normal amount of dark or bright pixel defects that one panel can have

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before it's considered bad. They even ratified these numbers in a document.

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There's actually an ISO standard that many display manufacturers use as a guideline

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for determining how many pixels need to be defective on a display panel before they give you a replacement.

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The ISO divides electronic displays into several classes

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depending on how critical it is for them to be accurate. Most consumer monitors out there

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are considered class two by the manufacturer, meaning pixel faults matter,

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but it isn't crucial for the panel to be perfect.

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In many cases, even more professional grade screens, such as the ASUS ProArt series,

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use the class two rules as a baseline, even if the panel itself was originally manufactured

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to be higher grades, such as class zero or one. Class zero, sounds like an anime.

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And for class two screens, a panel is considered defective if it has more than two dead or bright whole pixels

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or more than five faulty sub-pixels, the small red, blue, or green dots

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that make up a full pixel. Note though that the ISO standard is not a hard

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and fast rule that display manufacturers have to abide by

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in order to sell displays in your region. While some companies cite it,

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others seem to barely know it exists and many deviate from it in one direction or another.

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Some will be super cool and replace your screen if there's just a single defect,

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but it's more common to need to have between three and 12 total faults.

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And sometimes they even have to be in a cluster on the same part of the screen.

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This can be especially annoying if you have a high end display like an OLED display.

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Just because you paid all that extra money for an OLED doesn't necessarily mean that the manufacturer

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will give you a more lenient dead pixel policy. But if the problematic pixel is suffering

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from a bright defect, you might have a couple of alternative options.

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Because an individual bright pixel is typically more noticeable than a dark one,

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some manufacturers will have a lower replacement threshold,

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sometimes as low as just one bright pixel. Other times, especially on OLED screens,

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bright pixels aren't permanent, but can be unstuck with free utilities

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that quickly cycle the offending part of your display through many different colors.

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Bottom line, check that dead pixel policy carefully

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before throwing down tons of cash on a pricey new display.

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Or just sit back far enough to where you won't notice the imperfections.

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That's not a bad philosophy for life actually. It's a, I support it.

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Hey, that was the whole video. Thanks for watching guys. Like the video if you liked it.

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