bug inside lcd screen factory

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.”

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.

A tiny insect has crawled in between the LCD panel and the backlight of my 27" iMac and died. Close inspection reveals that it is behind the LCD characters. I called Apple support, and they were sympathetic, but said I had to go to the local store. The local store told me it was not their fault I had a bug in my iMac, and in fact, this "infestation" (his words) would probably void the warranty on my 6 month old iMac.

My iMac sits on the desk in my office. My office is not "infested" with bugs. But Apple"s LCD screen is not sufficiently sealed to dust and other contaminants so it will prevent a tiny insect from being attracted to the light and crawling inside of it. I am very disappointed in their response.

Does anyone know if there is any recourse to the local Apple store? The woman at MY-APPLE assumed it would be a warranty repair. It seems to me that the LCD component should be sufficiently sealed to prevent bugs from crawling into it. And I live in Southern California, not Northern Michigan.

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.

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.

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?

I had something kinda similar (it was a bug irregular shadow) but it only appeared after the monitor had become hot after being on for quite a while. I sent it in under warranty and after a bit of back-and-forth I got a new monitor.

Slowly drag your finger to the bottom right corner without lifting. Try to move your finger slowly enough that you can count to 10 before reaching the opposite corner of the screen.

Under your Pixel 5 phone’s screen, at the top center, you can see a white dot. This white dot is your proximity sensor. When your proximity sensor is on, the dot shows through the display. The dot can blink or stay solid.

Your proximity sensor keeps your phone’s screen off while you hold your phone near your face during a call, when your screen is locked, and when used by certain apps. Keeping the screen off helps save battery and avoid accidental taps on the screen.

All Pixel phones have proximity sensors. Because the Pixel 5’s display goes almost to the edge, you can see the Pixel 5’s sensor under the screen. Check our Pixel 5 phone diagram.

Slowly drag your finger to the bottom right corner without lifting. Try to move your finger slowly enough that you can count to 10 before reaching the opposite corner of the screen.

The a7R V is the fifth iteration of Sony"s high-end, high-res full-frame mirrorless camera. The new 60MP Mark IV, gains advanced AF, focus stacking and a new rear screen arrangement. We"ve tested its image quality and video performance.

The logic on why Apple owns this problem: Apple made a big deal of the display cover glass being sealed so there is no way a wayward visiter could get in from your desk so the only place it could have is when the display was manufactured. In this case an egg was laid by a bug and it sat dormant until the conditions where right for it to hatch which is why it took awhile for the bug to be visible. I"m suspecting the foam tapes edge (when it was still in a roll) looked tempting to the mother to lay her eggs in the factory or where the tape was stored (open to the air).

Lets look at what you need to fix this on your own: Sadly, opening the display glass sandwich to get to the bug is not easy! And you may in fact damage the display in the process and in addition getting it back together so it look good will be tough as well. It may end up being easier to just get a new display assembly, which is not cheap!

That irksome dot is a dead pixel, one defective electronic pinpoint of light among the myriad that make up the liquid crystal displays in laptop screens, flat-panel monitors and flat-panel TVs.

Most manufacturers and retailers don’t warn consumers about the possibility of bum pixels, and few will fix or replace a new screen that comes with “just” one or two. Most require at least three and some 10 or more, depending on the locations, type and screen size.

To keep costs down, manufacturers don’t scrap screens that meet a minimum standard, usually one or two defective pixels for a 15-inch screen. But to a consumers’ eye, “bad is bad,” Semenza said.

After selling that laptop, Slade bought a fourth on Apple’s Web site — with a less noticeable but still defective pixel in the middle of the screen. Considering the effort it took to exchange a machine with two dead pixels, he didn’t attempt a return. But after a reporter queried Apple about Slade’s experience, the company contacted him and arranged for his monitor to be repaired or replaced.

But if electronic device makers rejected every screen that wasn’t “pixel perfect,” their costs — and consequently the price of their products — would skyrocket, said John Jacobs, an analyst with market research firm DisplaySearch in San Jose, Calif.

The quality of LCDs in consumer electronics can fluctuate with the market, Jacobs said. When screens are plentiful, manufacturers can be pickier, but when supply is tight, they may relax their standards. “They’d rather sell 100,000 more laptops even if it means more returns,” he said.

Slade, on the other hand, points out that people who buy monitors or laptops with one or two bum pixels pay the same price as those lucky enough to buy perfect screens. “It’s like gambling,” he said.

For a 17-inch monitor, Sony’s warranty requires at least four dark or bright pixels, said Robert Stevens, a San Diego-based spokesman for Sony. However, the company sometimes replaces monitors with as few as one bright pixel if it’s near the center of the screen, he said.

Slade’s string of bad pixels aside, manufacturing quality is steadily rising, Semenza said. But so are expectations, especially as more LCD TVs are sold. “If you are sitting there watching TV on your $3,000 screen, you are going to focus on that bad pixel in the corner,” he said.

Slade thinks consumers would feel less cheated if manufacturers were just more upfront about the risks of getting a flawed, non-returnable screen. “If you get a perfect one, you get a perfect one; and if you don’t, you get some money,” he suggested.