Monitor QA or lack of?

[Flakey]

Hey all,

So I've decided it was time to retire my old and dying U2312HM and U2311H monitors. Which haven't had a bad run.

Now I regularly lurk around reading the forum and read reviews that the resident expert here posts on TFTCentral, so I'm not unaware of the varying problems that seem to have plagued the industry recently!

Anyway, so I eventually settled on 3xU2417H thanks to Dell's brilliant warranty (having personally used it twice before I can attest it's really easy).

Problem being to get what I'd call 3 decent quality monitors has been nothing short of a nightmare. In total it took me 7 monitors to get 3 of acceptable quality (1 being practically perfect).

Considering this is supposed to be a "premium" line I'm quite shocked really.

The rough breakdown of faulty monitors is the following:
Monitor 1 = 2x dead/missing pixels next to each other
Monitor 2 = 4x stuck pixels of varying colours varying places around the screen
Monitor 3 = Horrible backlight bleed in the bottom and top right corners
Monitor 4 = 1 dead pixel and 2 vary lazy pixels in varying places around the screen

The 3 I've eventually settled on are OK! 2 of them have very minor bleed in the bottom right which I'm guessing is to do with the control panel and 1 of them is practically perfect.

Another point to note is that the factory calibration is basically a load of rubbish. Out of the 7 monitors 5 have come with default set red/yellow/blue tinting, 1 of them severe enough that whoever calibrated it must likely have some sort of visual impairment..

Now I knew this might be challenging ahead of time and as much as I'm not proud of it I used a certain rainforest due to the ease of return.

The questions being here is why could I buy monitors that used to come faultless first time and required next to no calibration to what must be the panel lottery about 5/6 years later.
Now I know 2 monitors is a small sample size, but those monitors were also used where I worked. And it was very rare to see one that didn't look right!

Is monitor QA now practically non-existent or is it due to poorer panels being punted the average consumers way due to the fact we accept them?

This also makes me wonder how you average e-tailer such as OCUK is affected. I imagine quality of monitors leading people to return more frequently can't be very beneficial for them..

Does anyone have any thoughts on how we got to this point? Or better yet, if anyone knows of any tech moving forward which might resolve these issues!

 

[DrBombcrater]

From my own experiences over the last couple of years there is basically no regard for quality in the display industry any more. LCD manufacturers are happily shipping panels that are of a standard that would have been regarded as defective not so long ago. Bleeding, glow, dead pixels, colour tints, bad uniformity, are all now considered acceptable.

This is why going with expensive 'premium' brand monitors generally doesn't help; every monitor manufacturer has to buy their panels from Samsung, LG, AUO, etc, and these guys are shipping junk.

It used to be when I bought a new monitor I'd be eager to see how much better it was than the last one. Now I wonder if the problems it inevitably has will be bad enough to require sending it back. Depressingly that answer is almost always yes these days.

 

[Randomface74]

Dunno. I got 2x u2715h and they're both perfect.

 

[EvilSooty]

Yeah, I'm not having much luck either. Got a LG 32GK850G-B from OCUK on Monday and just noticed one stuck and one dead pixel within an inch of each other in the centre of the screen. The ASUS IPS I had before it had a huge cluster of dead pixels appear on it after a couple of years and the Dell TN before that just died on me. Seems like QA with monitors is very poor.

Just put in a webnote to get a replacement and hoping I'm not going to be landed with paying to ship it back as the box is huge

Shame as otherwise the monitor is good. Hopefully I win the panel lottery with the next one.

 

[razorpakk]

Yeah, I'm not having much luck either. Got a LG 32GK850G-B from OCUK on Monday and just noticed one stuck and one dead pixel within an inch of each other in the centre of the screen. The ASUS IPS I had before it had a huge cluster of dead pixels appear on it after a couple of years and the Dell TN before that just died on me. Seems like QA with monitors is very poor.

Just put in a webnote to get a replacement and hoping I'm not going to be landed with paying to ship it back as the box is huge

Shame as otherwise the monitor is good. Hopefully I win the panel lottery with the next one.

Same thing happened to me (B-Grade LG), luckily it's just stuck pixels, so with most colors they're not there.

Ended up keeping it as I go through full days of usage without seeing it. Also for 450£ it was too good to be sent back.

 

[EvilSooty]

@razorpakk Yeah, was thinking of keeping it but I've got OCD about stuff like that. Once seen it cannot be unseen If it had been in one of the corners or on the side I would have just put up with it, but it's bang in the centre like a crosshair! Typical.

Still, you got a decent deal if that's all that's wrong with it. Great monitor otherwise...not going back to IPS ever again after comparing the blacks on it. Had my old ASUS on a while ago on my wife's PC and the BLB, grey blacks are noticeable straight away now.

 

[razorpakk]

@razorpakk Yeah, was thinking of keeping it but I've got OCD about stuff like that. Once seen it cannot be unseen If it had been in one of the corners or on the side I would have just put up with it, but it's bang in the centre like a crosshair! Typical.

Still, you got a decent deal if that's all that's wrong with it. Great monitor otherwise...not going back to IPS ever again after comparing the blacks on it. Had my old ASUS on a while ago on my wife's PC and the BLB, grey blacks are noticeable straight away now.

Indeed, I went from IPS to VA about 4 years ago, leaving a decent Asus ProArt behind. Back then VA wasn't ready as far as response time and I had to endure smearing all over the place, but with this LG and hopefully all upcoming VA, I see no reason to use an IPS anymore for gaming. Dark scenes are much more immersive with actual blacks .

 

[a66as]

My previous XB271HU developed a dead pixel around a month in, my current X34P hasnt developed a dead pixel yet but there is no way i'd let that slide on a £900+ monitor i'd be getting paypal involved

 

[Rroff]

TBH some slight bleed around corners and probably less than ideal bleed in general has always been there - a little less so in some older premium lines like older Dells. While I can see people being fussy about that the reality would be far higher monitor prices to eliminate it.

That said monitor QA has largely been junk for awhile - just between myself and my immediate acquaintances we've probably RMA'd well over 50 monitors in the last 4 years - many of them due to catastrophic types of failure within the first year of use - I can count a dozen easy of the Asus ROG Swift that were RMA'd due to text going fuzzy or increasingly frequent issues with the display just going blank until you restarted it, etc.

I've seen a number of expensive gaming monitors lately where a plain black screen in a moderately lit room is almost mid-grey with splotchy green/yellow and purple hues.

 

[chrcoluk]

I agree also, my monitor the display port if you turn off the screen and back on again it has no signal LOL. Windows has to be rebooted or you can unplug the cable and put it back into the GPU to wake up the sleep mode. The cable workaround doesnt work in the bios.

Also standards have dropped.

When the dell 2209wa was launched it had a e-IPS panel, the viewing angles etc. were like £1000 monitors.
Now we have a flood of monitors marketed as IPS or "IPS type", using AHVA panels. tftcentral consider these IPS quality, but I disagree. Basically my AHVA monitors (have 2 of them) both have contrast shift off angle whilst my 2209wa does not, also expensive work IPS screens I have access to also have no contrast shift off angle. Yet these monitors are now accepted by the consumer as IPS quality.

Seems to be happening on phones as well, my galaxy s7 has much worse viewing angles than my galaxy s5 even tho they both supposed to have the same panel type. My oneplusone phone marketed as a IPS screen has the same contrast shift as my AHVA screens.

 

[EsaT]

So I've decided it was time to retire my old and dying U2312HM and U2311H monitors. Which haven't had a bad run.

Are they having problems powering on or some such problem which has appeared and increased slowly over time?
Might be just cheap enough capacitors.

 

[Quartz]

Now I knew this might be challenging ahead of time and as much as I'm not proud of it I used a certain rainforest due to the ease of return.

Huh? With Dell it's often better to deal direct.

 

[Vimes]

Of all the components or peripherals associated with a PC I dislike buying a new monitor the most
I have come to realise that it is down to a panel lottery in what you end up with, cost not always being the deciding factor in terms of a guarantee of getting a good one.
For me that cost also means that I expect better build quality etc when paying a premium, which also is not guaranteed.
When I paid over £800 for a 34" 21:9 I was very disappointed with the build quality, as much as I was about the overall picture.
The 32" 4k at over £700 had an inherent fault of half the screen glitching for a second or two at a time, varied in its frequency.

Both were returned.

I ended up keeping my BenQ 27" and just added a Dell 25" 1440p as a second monitor. That one is ok, accepting typical IPS glow.

I do not think that my expectations are too high but the build quality and panel lottery issues of buying an acceptable monitor worthy of keeping is down to more luck of the draw than it should be.

I feel that it is important to choose your retailer carefully, for ease of returns.

Goodness knows how the retailers go on with these returns.