Monitor Defects As Fast As Possible
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2016-05-06
·
1,295 words · ~6 min read
0:00
So, your new monitor finally arrived and you're super excited to play games at 4K
0:06
or watch techie on a screen that's big enough to let you spot that weird growth
0:10
on my chin that uh Sorry. Anyway, so you
0:14
plug in your new display, but something doesn't seem right. Is there something
0:19
wrong with it, or do you just need to adjust some dials?
0:24
While it's true that many new monitors could use some adjustments called
0:28
calibration to look their best, defects
0:31
out of the box are unfortunately not that uncommon. So, what should you be
0:36
looking for on both new displays as well as your existing display after you've
0:41
been using it for a while? Well, one relatively straightforward thing you can
0:46
check for is dead or stuck pixels. This
0:49
is as easy as throwing up a little application called Dead Pixel Buddy on
0:54
your screen and cycling through all the different colors, looking for any small
0:59
points that are black or displaying the wrong color. This can happen due to
1:04
defects in the manufacturing process or even from touching your screen too
1:09
roughly if you've owned your monitor for some time. Stuck pixels can sometimes be
1:14
fixed with gentle pressure from something soft like a pencil eraser or
1:19
with freely available utilities that flash many colors per second on the spot
1:24
where your stuck pixel is. Dead pixels, however, are usually dead for good. So,
1:30
check to see if your monitor is still under warranty and what the dead pixel
1:35
terms of your warranty are. Some manufacturers need like five in one spot
1:40
in order to qualify. But what if your pixels all look okay, but you're
1:43
noticing areas that are strangely brighter than the rest of the screen?
1:48
Well, if these areas are toward the corners or the edges, you could be
1:53
suffering from bleeding, which isn't to say blood loss. I'm talking, of course,
1:57
about backlight bleeding, which happens because modern flat panel displays, with
2:01
the exception of OLEDs, work by shining
2:05
a strong backlight through a liquid crystal display panel to create an
2:10
image. Oftentimes, this backlight is not
2:13
completely blocked from leaking around the outsides of the LCD by the screen
2:19
bezel. This results in that backlight
2:22
bleed that causes that lightness around the edges. Now, I do have some bad news
2:28
about backlight bleed, and that is that the best way to avoid it is simply to
2:32
buy a higher quality display with higher
2:35
manufacturing standards, as there's pretty much nothing you can do to fix it
2:40
yourself. Although, some intrepid do-it-yourselfers have tried dismantling
2:45
their monitors and sealing the edges of the LCD with electrical tape. But if you
2:50
have an IPS panel, make sure that you are not confusing backlight bleed with
2:56
an effect that many have called IPS glow. This is a glow that's present on
3:01
some parts of IPS screens, especially when you view dark images, at an off
3:07
angle, and it actually is a result of the way that IPS technology works. So
3:12
moving back from the screen a small amount or looking at the screen deadon
3:17
by moving your head to the side rather than turning to the side should mostly
3:22
solve this problem and tell you whether you're dealing with IPS glow or
3:26
backlight bleed. And the only way to avoid IPS glow is to make sure that you
3:31
read user reviews and see if other people are complaining about excessive
3:35
glow on the model that you're looking at. Okay. Okay, then what if you've got
3:39
light splotches on your screen that clearly aren't backlight bleed or IPS
3:44
glow and look worse when your screen is very dark? This one is called clouding
3:49
and is usually a result of a physically damaged screen that was stored or
3:53
transported improperly. There isn't much you can do about it once it happens. So,
3:58
make sure you're handling your display with care or get a prompt replacement if
4:02
your monitor is new. Which leads us finally, speaking of things you can't
4:06
reverse, beware of this one, to burnin,
4:10
which can happen if you display the same static image on your screen for a long,
4:15
long time. You'll see this often in public places like restaurants or
4:19
airports that often have things like a channel logo burned into the corner of
4:23
the screen or a grid that has constantly changing information in the cells, but
4:28
not in the lines themselves. Now, although burn-in is less common on
4:34
modern flat panels than on older CRTs and can sometimes actually be fixed in
4:39
more moderate cases, long-term burn-in can still permanently damage your
4:43
monitor. So, unless you want to see the ghosts of computing sessions past every
4:47
time you sit down in front of your display, it is worthwhile to turn it off
4:52
when you're not using it or at the very least run a screen saver. So, I hope
4:56
this summary helped, but I also don't want to scare you guys because even with
5:00
the army of problems that you can face as a monitor owner, most of them can be
5:04
avoided simply by doing your homework before buying, returning defective units
5:09
on time if there is a problem, and by taking care of it after you buy it.
5:13
After all, I shouldn't have to tell you guys not to have cat agility contests or
5:18
BB gun fights in the same room where you keep your $1,000 ultrawide. Though, of
5:24
course, if you are the kind of person who doesn't know those kinds of things
5:27
on their own, maybe you should do some learning. Maybe head over to linda.com.
5:31
With a linda.com membership, you can watch and learn from top experts who are
5:35
passionate about teaching in all kinds of fields, whether it's business or
5:40
productivity applications or uh video editing or photography. You can take
5:45
your hobby or even your career to the next level. And you can do it at your
5:50
own pace. And it's got they've got so many great tools, many of which have
5:53
been added since we originally started doing these spots forlinda.com. So now
5:57
you can browse the course transcripts to follow along or you can search for an
6:01
answer and then skip to that point in the video. You can take notes as you go
6:05
and refer to them later. You can download the tutorials and watch them on
6:08
the go, including on your iOS or Android device. You can create and save
6:12
playlists of courses that you want to watch or customize your learning path to
6:16
share with your friends and colleagues and team members. And all you've got to
6:19
do to try it for free, yes my friend, to
6:23
try it for free is head over to linda.com/techquicky.
6:27
After your 10day free trial, if you kind of go, "Wow, this is really great. I'm
6:31
learning so much." Then at a flat rate starting at just 25 bucks a month, you
6:35
can become a linda.com member and start taking your mind to the next level today
6:41
or at least 10 days from today. I mean, you could start today, but you pay
6:46
later. You guys understand? Thanks for
6:49
watching, guys. If you like the video, do this thing. If you disliked it, do the other thing. If you want to check
6:52
out our other channels, do that thing. If you want to leave a comment with video suggestions, do the other thing.
6:57
And if you want to subscribe and follow, please do that thing. Thank you. Bye.