Aluminium MacBook screen uneven backlighting

[patopato]

The screen on my Aluminium MacBook gets progressively lighter towards the bottom. It's easy to see in the attached photograph. In the background of the photo a NEC 20WGX2 and in the foreground the Aluminium MacBook.

Of course it's terribly annoying. As a document is scrolled though, coloured heading change colour jarringly. And on low contrast web pages (i.e. light coloured text on light backgrounds a la Apple) the text on the bottom of the screen is noticeably more difficult to read.

In essence there is no such way that you can position the screen and your head so that the colours on the top and bottom of the screen look even remotely similar.

I am now on my second MacBook and the screens on both, 9C8C panels, have behaved exactly the same. The first MacBook was manufactured in the 42nd week and the second the 45th week.

Before I send this unit back for another replacement has anyone else noticed this on their MacBooks? Do I have unrealistic expectations?

Edit: I took the first MacBook in to the Regent Street Genius Bar where the Genius agreed that this didn't seem quite right, but this could simply be due to unfamiliarity with the new MacBook's screens. The display models didn't seem to exhibit this flaw either from what I could tell, but it might've been masked by the overhead lighting.

Thank all.

 

[mac jones]

send it back. It's common problem due to cheap parts.

Mine is ok, even though there's a color shift top-to-bottom, the contrast holds up fairly well.

My particular issue is that backlight is a bit darker on the right side (just a little) , but it's noticeable. I mean, how could they screw up like this with all this non-uniform lighting?

(maybe the LCD manufacturers were to busy price fixing to make a decent product)

Cheap, parts to cuts costs.

But i like the notebook. I have access to all the other new Apple laptops but i use this one (and most likely will continue to)

 

[VSMacOne]

Mine does the same thing, maybe not quite as bad as yours. This one is going back in for other reasons, so I will post once my new one gets here. I have the 9C89 screen.
I think to a certain extent it's just normal behavior because of the screen quality. It would be interesting to see if the same thing happens on a MBP... anybody?!

 

[farlane]

I have the "other" screen, the most popular "9C89" one, and I get the exact same gradient. Are there REALLY MacBooks (Late2008) that DON'T do this? It's hard to imagine. In fact, I'd love to see a photograph under similar conditions that would prove that there are good LCDs in any MacBook out there. I basically think it's a myth.

So I'm a little confused about the "send it back" comment. What do you expect to get? You just draw another ticket in the display lottery and likely the differences will be unnoticeable.

The MBPs and MBAs have better displays (yet probably still have a gradient), but MBs probably won't get any better than that.

If any of you have photographic proof of a MB not showing a gradient, though, I'd happily return my own MacBook as well.

 

[Ryffie]

I think all macbooks have this backlight bleeding, more or less.