Penalty: An Autopsy Of Dead LCD Pixels

Acer, ADI, Apple, Belinea, Cornea, CTX, Deawoo, Dell, Eizo, Formac

Here's the first page and first examples of some strange answers given by manufacturers.

Apple hides behind its press agency to say they would "rather not say anything about it." When you go to their website, you get sent to a page where they say they cannot guarantee perfection: "a certain number of subpixel anomalies is considered acceptable. Rejecting all but perfect LCD panels would significantly increase the retail price for products using LCD displays." Full text .

OK, so then we called their customer service and were vaguely told that there is no rule. They know there is a standard for PCs but claim it does not apply to them. This service, which specializes in panels, told us that Apple works on an individual case-by-case basis, "but don't worry about it."

Cornea replaces its LCD panels under warranty when they reach five dead pixels. This is not too good for 15" ones but more advantageous (in relation to the standard) for 17".

It took us a long time, but we finally succeded in getting hold of CTX's policy. And it turns out that this manufacturer has one of the best, doing a little more than the ISO standard requires. CTX takes it further with a new rule it applies for the time being to two of its monitors. The S530 and S730 are guaranteed to have no dead pixels for 101 days following purchase. Let's hope they will extend this rule to the entire range some day.

Belinea and Hewlett Packard talk about clustered or scattered pixels. Yet the standard makes no mention of the difference. Is this an idea their sales departments have come up with?

Lastly, Formac makes no distinction between 15" and 17" panels, which they change as soon as there are three dead pixels of any kind (lit, unlit or colored).