bug inside lcd screen price

Picture this. You’re looking forward to your favourite release of the year, a new DOOM. And you’ve got a fancy $1000 monitor to play it on. There’s just one small problem. One day, you wake up and discover a bug has somehow carked it in your screen. No problem: the monitor’s well under warranty. So everything should be OK, right?

That’s what happened to long time Australian gamer Narull. Just before Christmas, he forked out the money for a very nice 1440p IPS screen, the 165Hz ASUS ROG Swift PG279QE. It’s a good gaming screen and one that you think would be perfect for games like DOOM Eternal, with all their colour and blood.

Narull didn’t even have the option of blaming himself and wallowing in self-pity, like Kirk did. Like most people, he asked the simple question: how the hell did the bug get inside his monitor to begin with?

Yeah, I bought it end of November, been working perfectly since then this bug appears inside it on Sunday night. I assumed monitors were sealed but I guess not…?— Narull (@Narull) March 17, 2020

But all was still looking well at this point. The monitor was not only within warranty under Australian consumer law, but ASUS’s limited 12 month warranty. Parts weren’t required, because all a competent repairer needs to do is pull the screen apart and clean the gunk from the protective layer that sits between the LCD panel and the screen. There’s plenty of legitimate precedent for it being free, too. LCD screens are a bright light source, and naturally small insects and moths are going to gravitate towards them. It’s the manufacturer’s job to make sure they can’t get inside.

Well that confirmed @ASUSAU don"t deal with small problems first I guess. Over a week to take an insect out of a screen (and I"m expecting longer honestly)

It pisses me off. Screw you ASUS for having a fucking $1000 monitor that insects can get inside of. pic.twitter.com/lPjfkuJFfp— Narull (@Narull) March 19, 2020

Things were looking up. Sort of. A ticket on the official ASUS support page replied: they’d deal with the issue, but not immediately. Narull would get his PG279QE screen back on March 25, two days after DOOM Eternal‘s official launch. Not ideal, but at least someone was putting the poor bug where they belonged.

But a lot can change in 24 hours. On Thursday morning, Narull received a response from a different ASUS support member. “After inspecting the LCD, we are determined the LCD have insect inside the panel unfortunately insect damage is not covered under the manufactory warranty,” an email from ASUS read, directing Narull to ASUS’s policy for Australia and New Zealand where “contamination with hazardous substances, diseases, vermin or radiation” is not covered under warranty.

Naturally, Narull was perplexed. ASUS initially accepted the support request and said they’d send the monitor back within a week, only to say new parts were needed. Then to turn around and say the monitor couldn’t be “repaired” at all, even though the monitor doesn’t need an actual repair. It just needs the bug cleaned out of the panel (and maybe some questions answered as to how the bloody thing could get inside to begin with).

It’s not a huge stretch to say monitors should be built in a way that doesn’t allow bugs or insects to crawl inside the panel. LCD/LED screens are giant sources of light. Of course they’re going to attract moths, mosquitoes, tiny flies and whatever else comes in from outside the window. One would assume they’d be built to keep critters at bay, even with modern monitors having more aggressive cooling mechanisms.

“It makes me wonder what they lodged [the issue] as,” Narull told Kotaku Australia. “When I first called and they ask the issue I said ‘there is an insect inside the panel’ but clearly the service centre did not know that, so what did they lodge the issue as?”

It’s not the customer experience you’d expect after buying a $1000 monitor. Generally, most brands are pretty good about support on their premium products. You’ve already paid several hundred, or almost a grand in this case. Having a bug that can climb into the screen and die is obviously a suboptimal experience. I get why a company might try and reject it after a year – especially if the user is dumb enough to squish the bug themselves.

Kotaku Australia emailed ASUS’s local team for comment, asking for an explanation on how the customer service should have functioned, what steps they would take to improve logging of customer complaints in the future and their approach to dealing with small insects getting inside enclosed monitor units. I also asked what their official advice was to users who discovered bugs inside their monitor – if ASUS isn’t going to cover it, should users try and fix it themselves? Can they fix it themselves?

As for small insects, ASUS said monitors are “not a completely sealed device” and customers should be patient if they discover one. “When customers find an insect in their screen, we would suggest him or her to wait the insect to get out by itself while it’s still alive,” ASUS said. “However, if the insect has already dead in the screen, the customer should always contact our service team to arrange the repairing as soon as possible. Service fees may apply in this situation. Service fees may apply in this situation.”

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kJelt, I had the same problem with my Dell U2412M except I made it worse by pressing the bug while it was walking around so the bug was now dead and permanently stuck between the LCD panel and the back light filter.

With the help of another person, they held the monitor upright and tilted the top forward slightly until the LCD glass fell forward on an angle, the side of the glass with the ribbon remained where it was as a pivot point.

There is not much room to get in there, the glass is leaning forward less than 45 degrees and the rest of the panel is perfectly upright, I then used a damp cotton tip to clean the bug off the back light filter.

Yeah it"s the following morning and I"m still pretty bummed out about it. 99.99% sure it"s a bug and not just dust. I did google "bug in computer monitor" and there is a frightening number of hits about said issue. I can"t tell if it"s behind the panel in front of the back-light or in front of the panel but behind the outer protective layer. Who knew there were air gaps between various layers. Since it was moving when I tried to swipe it I think I "bent" the outer layer (or panel?) enough to kill and maybe? squish said bug. Lots of tapping and bumping of monitor and yeah it"s stuck.

I"m a bit uncomfortable opening up monitor to wipe away said bug. And the thought of RMA"ing this huge 43" monitor seems like a nightmare. I wonder if I paid for the on-site Dell tech support. Better not mention bug and just mention dead pixels. /sad-sigh

Honestly if you have an expensive, or at least "expensive for you," monitor check out the size of the vent holes on your monitor and maybe tape on some no-see-em ultra-fine mesh screens to prevent bug infiltration. Crazy.

I turned on my late 2013 27" iMac today and found a spider crawling around on the inside. After calling Apple"s support line and hauling the computer to two different stores in the area, I ended up making an appointment to fix it a few days from now. I was hoping that the spider would crawl back into the guts of the machine and die peacefully out of the way, but nope, it ended up dying right in the middle of the screen. Gross.

My computer went out of warranty a few months ago and this is the only issue I"ve had with it. If someone made the suggestion that my place was "infested" with bugs I"d be pretty upset. I keep my surroundings clean and have a cat on pest patrol (she has been notified of this incident).

It"s a small issue, display-wise, and I"m sure that most people at Apple will treat it as such. But it"s a little worrisome that this even happens in the first place. I paid extra for a nice computer, and I take care of it accordingly. To find that there"s a bug behind the cursor and the text - it was literally crawling behind the content on the screen!! - is unnerving, especially one of this size (it was a small spider, sure, but big enough to notice). A dead pixel on the screen is one thing - a dead bug behind it is quite another. I"m really hoping Apple will take care of it, as my computer just went out of warranty a few months ago. If the screen is that difficult to remove, shouldn"t it be that much more difficult for something living to get in there?

Props go to the Apple reps I spoke with today though - they were very sympathetic and tried to help as best as they could. Hopefully they"ll be able to open the screen up, remove the spider, and put it back together with no harm done.

Argh, help! I’ve got a living bug crawling around inside my LCD computer monitor! It’s actually walking around which is quite annoying. I’ve no idea how it got in there but it’s small enough to have fit through the small holes at the back of the monitor.

On the bright side, there only seems to be one so they won’t be making babies in there any time soon. Has anyone ever had bugs inside their monitors and how did they get rid of them? The advice I’ve had so far is to wait for them to die and hope that they die off screen or somewhere where it won’t affect the picture too much.

Update (July 2010): Incredibly, this article has had 10,000 hits since it’s been published (most of them being in July each year which seems to be peak season). Please read the comments below for tips and discussion. In my case, I found that the bug disappeared after a few days providing that you don’t squish it or anything. You don’t need to do anything elaborate like taking your screen apart (and would not be advised to). Please do drop a comment below and let us know what’s working for you.  – Ken

I thought the bug was right behind the first layer, between LCD and glass. However as I found out these two layers are permanently glued and sealed. That"s a good news as no bugs get in.

I found the bug (actually 3 of them, two that I didn"t know of) between diffuser and LCD. This space can be quite easily reached with just basic tools (pry tool, flat and Phillips screwdriver) within 30 minutes. You can follow detailed steps in Acer Thin Bezel Monitor Disassembly.

The bug can’t get between the sandwiched layers of the screen. They’re all stuck together. It will be between the backlight (left-most layer), and that entire sandwiched layer to the right.

My only big tips would be to wear nitrile or latex gloves, and not take the entire LCD or backlight out of the monitor. You don’t want to handle it any more than necessary, put fingerprints on it, or allow dust specks or debris to get in. Those things would produce their own artifacts on the screen once you put it back together. Obviously you don’t want to trade the bug for another artifact. Just lift the screen a tiny amount gently, get to the bug with the gentlest blast of air duster or the gentlest swipe with a microfiber cloth, and then put everything back in place.

A few minutes ago, I found a really small bug (like a book worm) was crawling on my screen. I grabbed a piece of paper tissue, and pressed hard on the bug to kill it. I think I used at the tip of my nail on the tissue.

I could not find the dead bug, but now I have a permanent strain on the screen. It is not something on the surface because I wiped it really hard and it did not go away. The glass surface does not seem damaged when I examined with a flashlight.

Yesterday a quite strange thing happened. As I was browing the web on my laptop, I noticed a small black thing moving around on my screen. I tried to swat it away but to my surprise, I could not. Then I noticed that the little bitch is actually behind or inside my screen. Then I lightly pressed my screen and it died. It isn"t big however it annoys me and the laptop is almost brand new. I contacted a a store that fixes laptops but they said that it would be complicated to mget it done and therefore costly. Now I"m wondering if it would be worth it or will the little * somehow decompose and vanish from there? Anyone else ever had this kind of problem?

Hey buddy just wanted to say thank you for this. I got my squished dead bug of my Acer K272HUL using this is my only guide and it translated to my monitor perfectly.