new iPad screen: uneven brightness

canisbos said:

I've noticed an issue with my new iPad's (3rd-gen) screen that I think is related to the non-uniform green/pink tint|cast|tinge that has been discussed in other threads. My current unit has the shifting green/pink tint, as did the unit before it that I returned. I'm still thinking about whether to try another swap.

The uneven brightness is something I only noticed today, and it is quite subtle. It's not really visible when the screen is static. But if I scroll a web page and keep my eye fixed on the moving content, I can see that the page's white background (assuming it is white) is not uniformly bright. Instead, there are areas where the background is just slightly darker or grayer than the rest.

The effect is similar to what you may see when you have fingerprints on the screen and you are looking at a page with a white background: areas of slightly reduced brightness where the fingerprints are. But the dark areas I'm talking about are larger than fingerprints and less well-defined. They may or may not coincide with the areas of pink (as opposed to green) tint; I'm not sure.

If anyone still has an iPad with the green/pink tinting issue, please try scrolling a mostly-white web page (such as a Google results page) and follow one line of text with your eyes as you scroll. Do you see an unevenly bright background?

I find the effect quite distracting, perhaps even more so than the green/pink tint itself.

Click to expand...

Something seems to be wrong with it, take it to Apple and see what they say

canisbos said:

Thanks...I already know something is wrong, since it has the green/pink tint. I was just wondering if others have seen an uneven brightness.

Click to expand...

Yes sadly people have complained about this issue. All who went to apple with this issue got replacement iPads. So thats what you should be doing i guess.

I also have the green-tint issue. It's VERY subtle.....annoys me because I see it all the time. Wife doesn't see it. My mom tends to see it as yellow.

Beyond my 14 return period. Apple doesn't see it and refuses to replace it.

I'd try to replace it if I were you.

-Kevin

canisbos said:

I've noticed an issue with my new iPad's (3rd-gen) screen that I think is related to the non-uniform green/pink tint|cast|tinge that has been discussed in other threads. My current unit has the shifting green/pink tint, as did the unit before it that I returned. I'm still thinking about whether to try another swap.

The uneven brightness is something I only noticed today, and it is quite subtle. It's not really visible when the screen is static. But if I scroll a web page and keep my eye fixed on the moving content, I can see that the page's white background (assuming it is white) is not uniformly bright. Instead, there are areas where the background is just slightly darker or grayer than the rest.

The effect is similar to what you may see when you have fingerprints on the screen and you are looking at a page with a white background: areas of slightly reduced brightness where the fingerprints are. But the dark areas I'm talking about are larger than fingerprints and less well-defined. They may or may not coincide with the areas of pink (as opposed to green) tint; I'm not sure.

If anyone still has an iPad with the green/pink tinting issue, please try scrolling a mostly-white web page (such as a Google results page) and follow one line of text with your eyes as you scroll. Do you see an unevenly bright background?

I find the effect quite distracting, perhaps even more so than the green/pink tint itself.

Click to expand...

Welcome to the new iPad. It's the new normal for what your hard earned money buys apparently.

canisbos said:

My wife saw it once I pointed it out. She encouraged me to do the first swap. I think I will swap again.

Sorry to hear about your situation. I've been trying to ignore the tint thing and can't. It would be fine if the tint were uniform.

Click to expand...

My tint is most noticeable as a greenish tint in the upper left going to a white/pinkish tint in the lower right.

Hope you can get it replaced!

-Kevin

Is it normal?

I noticed in most iPads that this screen is not you even. The center tends to be brighter than the sides. Is this normal? I also noticed that the viewing angles are narrower than the iPad 2. I am not sure if I should change mine. It is a litte annoying but I don't know if I will be able to find a perfect screen if this is a hardware limitation.

In all seriousness, I think it's a matter of it being a new type of display that's been pushed out before being ready. From the technology to the manufacturing process and tolerances. As a result, there are major compromises made to gain such a high resolution. There simply should not be such variances in the screen qualities between devices.

I found this to be a common problem while playing the exchange game looking for a decent display. No way am I shelling out $900 for the units I had though.

Today I decided on a refund and will sit on the sideline for a bit. I'll buy again soon enough though.

judging by the local comments and personal experience you might get lucky once going through roughly 20 units. uneven brightness is only the beginning. even if you're able to find an uniform enough screen you'll be delighted to know that they come in both "true white" and "yellow'ish" varieties (depends on the manufacturer and it's back-light implementation as the tint has nothing to do with any magical glue or color calibration it seems) but you'd challenged to tell unless you have another unit or two by your side to compare it to. yellow screen further suffers from dullness (yes, they are visibly less sharp) and inconsistent brightness while both of them might have generic defects of light bleeding and light leakage. i guess once you find the perfect one (and trust me, it "can't be unseen", the difference is just astonishing), ignorance is your best friend with possible heat and wi-fi issues.

Am I looking at the same issue?

Looking at the display of my iPad, with a mostly white website like macrumors, the top part of the display is clearly pink, while the bottom part is clearly green. Is this the issue people are referring to?

vjacques said:

judging by the local comments and personal experience you might get lucky once going through roughly 20 units. uneven brightness is only the beginning. even if you're able to find an uniform enough screen you'll be delighted to know that they come in both "true white" and "yellow'ish" varieties (depends on the manufacturer and it's back-light implementation as the tint has nothing to do with any magical glue or color calibration it seems) but you'd challenged to tell unless you have another unit or two by your side to compare it to. yellow screen further suffers from dullness (yes, they are visibly less sharp) and inconsistent brightness while both of them might have generic defects of light bleeding and light leakage. i guess once you find the perfect one (and trust me, it "can't be unseen", the difference is just astonishing), ignorance is your best friend with possible heat and wi-fi issues.

Click to expand...

Quite an excellent summary.

I went through six of them

Hi,

I just found this thread while looking around for the issues that people are finding.

I went through six new iPads in the last four weeks. Six of them.

The first one had a uneven yellow patches on the screen. It was easy to see by just looking at it. But it became especially obvious when opening the keyboard. In portrait orientation, the bottom keys were yellowish brown. There was a darkish yellow patch in the bottom left of the screen.

The second one had a pretty even display. And it seemed pretty white. But it had a dead pixel in the middle of the screen.

The third one had uneven lighting on the bottom of the screen. I thought that I could perhaps deal with it. But then I realized that I just dropped 750 dollars, and there was no way I was settling for that. After working with it for a few days, I noticed that the uneven lighting was actually a blueish green tint that gradually worked its way toward white, moving toward the top of the screen.

The fourth one was very yellow, and had uneven brightness along the edge of the screen. I could see a bright light under the screen near the top, and the contrast difference made the top corner look grey.

The fifth one was white, but there was a big greyish spot on the top left side.

The sixth one was actually the closest to perfect. In fact I thought that I had gotten a perfect one. It turns out that it had a narrow greyish strip down the left side. While I was browsing in landscape orientation, it blended in with the browser bar. I noticed the issue while reading on the Kindle app. After about five pages, it became obvious that the lighting was uneven.

In addition to this, all six had varying levels of backlight bleeding. The fourth one was the worse. The bright light near the top of the screen was actually where the backlight bleed was the worst. In addition, the third one had backlight leakage all along the right side of the screen. It wasn't enough to affect the screen brightness, and if that was the only issue with it, I'd have kept it.

Every single one of them suffered from bad WiFi attenuation when touching the left corner while holding it in landscape orientation. I did not notice any other WiFi problems. But my house is not large, and it is a two story house. So I was never more than fifteen feet away from my router.

I did not notice any issues with battery drain or problems with charging speed. They all seemed to pick up a charge pretty quickly. Not as quickly as the iPad 2, but it has a much bigger battery, so I guess that's to be expected.

I did notice some overheating, but nothing major. Bright screens give me a headache, so I never turned the brightness up higher than about 60%

Tonight, I returned the last of the new iPad, and bought myself a 16GB iPad2. The screen is very uniform. The funny thing is that the screen on the iPad 2 is a bit yellowish, compared to the white parts of the screen on my sixth new iPad. But really, it is just a bit warmer, and the screen is very uniform. To me, uniformity of the screen is more important than overall tint. My eyes are always drawn to places where the screen is not uniform. It's distracting.

My iPads were from weeks 2, 3, 6, 7, and 13 (2 of them). Week 13 was actually last week. So screen uniformity has not been improved with newer batches.

Overall, I'm very sad about this. I have been anxiously awaiting the new iPad since the end of last year. I followed all of the rumors about its release and features. I was very excited about the new retina display. I figured that the screen would be amazing. It was anything but amazing. The resolution of the screen really is quite nice. I noticed the difference on my iPad 2 immediately. Especially when looking at small text. And the Kindle app doesn't look nearly as good. But in the end, screen uniformity was way more important to me than resolution. Maybe things will improve once they get over the initial heavy demand. Maybe things will improve when Sharp starts including their screens. This has been one big disappointment for me.