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iPad Pro iPad Pro screen uniformity

M

macjoshua

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 4, 2011
524
624
Nashville, TN
Overall, my iPad screen is ok - though it gets warmer toward the top of the screen. Is anyone else's like this? It's not terrible, but the screen is definitely not impressive, which is on par with pretty much every other Apple device I've owned for the last 5 or 6 years.

I'm probably going to stick with it. I don't like the Apple screen lottery. This is the first time in a few years that I didn't order at least 2 devices and pick the best screen and return the other. It helps when you just go into it expecting disappointment. Haha.
 
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Hi, my iPad Pro screen is not uniform too.
In landscape mode (TouchID on the right) top of the screen is warmer and on the bottom, screen has a pink tint on 2-3 centimeters...
 
Sadly my screen is a little discolored too. Mine will get swapped in a few days though, since I have purchased Applecare+ and can therefor use the express replacement service of apple for free. Since this device is so expensive I'm not going to settle with "okay", as I was kind of underwhelmed by the screen quality too.
This is however just a part of the technology. Due to the manufacturing process it's really hard for Apple to get the screens perfect. Since most people usually don't notice it even if it's obviously there for people like us, Apple is better off just replacing the iPads for the people who are bothered by it than by than by discarding probably over a half or 3 quarters of the screens made.
There are good screens out there tough, as they're obviously designed to be uniformly white (the manufacturing process just makes it hard to actually realize it). There are iPad's with only imperceptible color gradients.

I've gone trough several exchanges for any iDevice I've had and after a couple of tries I always have gotten a screen I can happily settle with.

Though one thing I would highly suggest is: Try not to be bothered by overal tints (unless it's really, really bad, but that doesn't happen too often as far as I know). The overal screen tint, unlike color gradients, is usually not noticeable unless comparing screens. While I do believe there are probably screens with no (noticeable) color gradient and with a preferable tint, and while I also would like to have on of those myself, setting both those things as a requirement will probably make it near impossible to get a screen that you will be happy with.

TL;DR:
If the screen is not uniform get it replaced, Apple probably won't make a fuss out of it (from my own experience), if it is uniform but doesn't have the most preferred tint, I'd highly suggest keeping it.
 
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I agree with all you said. And good for you for not settling with okay'
Non uniform screens can vary in intensity and i have seen marginally affected screens where sometimes is just easier to accept and live with.
I have also seen more extreme cases where the screen looked positively ugly due to this dirty looking yellowing. My first air2 was intolerable due to this.

These things are expensive and you are going to be looking directly at it every day and 'for me' it better be something i can look at and not just think 'Yuk' which is honest what i thought when my original Air was in front of me. (It was stained bad)

Also, i know its controversial to say here but these 'yellow screen' and uniformity threads are everywhere lately and i think Apple have a problem here (especially since they went slim) with continuity...Why are so many screen affected and why are the degrees of affected-ness so varied and random? Why are so many hard affected units passing QC? The ipad is awesome but the beautiful retina displays are slipping..

If people are honest that it is "an issue" and not blindly defend the issue by just accepting it as "Acceptable & Normal" then apple wipll continue to Allow & manufacture "acceptable" screens. However if users are NOT prepared accept acceptable and return/replace any affected screens then apple will be more inclined to seriously Adress it as an 'Issue' to not affect future models... Seriously Yellow is not a good look nowadays!

Its a lotta cash to drop for 'acceptable' IMO
 
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Aydy said:
I agree with all you said. And good for you for not settling with okay'
Non uniform screens can vary in intensity and i have seen marginally affected screens where sometimes is just easier to accept and live with.
I have also seen more extreme cases where the screen looked positively ugly due to this dirty looking yellowing. My first air2 was intolerable due to this.

These things are expensive and you are going to be looking directly at it every day and 'for me' it better be something i can look at and not just think 'Yuk' which is honest what i thought when my original Air was in front of me. (It was stained bad)

Also, i know its controversial to say here but these 'yellow screen' and uniformity threads are everywhere lately and i think Apple have a problem here (especially since they went slim) with continuity...Why are so many screen affected and why are the degrees of affected-ness so varied and random?

If people are honest that it is "an issue" and not blindly defend the issue by just accepting it as "Acceptable & Normal" then apple wipll continue to manufacture "acceptable" screens. However if users are NOT prepared accept acceptable and return/replace any affected screens then apple will be more inclined to Adress the issue. Seriously Yellow is not a good look nowadays!

Its a lotta cash to drop for 'acceptable' IMO
Click to expand...

Yeah exactly. the device is basically just one screen. I'm going to read books on it, draw on it, write on it and maybe even edit some photo's on it and while doing all those I don't wan't to be distracted by a subpar screen.
The iPad is an expensive device and since they even explicitly promised uniform screens for the iPad pro it's not unreasonable to ask for one that delivers that promise. If people are not bothered by it, that's great, I wish I could be like those guys, but I'm not. I'm just getting a little tired of those people that just seem to have to reply to any thread talking about any problem of an Apple product, acting like everyone bothered by that problem is some kind of of whiny child or something.

I'm happy to say however that Apples return policies are very, very good in my own experiences. One of the reasons I keep buying Apple products. No product is perfect, but at least Apple gives me the chance to get a device that is up to my (admittedly high) standards. Not to mention that the phone service employees are very well trained and have basically always been polite and friendly (even If I could notice they didn't really get my problem).
 
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My screen is pretty good, the upper right corner in portrait mode is a little dark and my OCD is killing me but I checked display models in the Apple Store and they all have this. For non-OCD, they would likely never notice. It looks much better than my Air 2 screen
 
There is another thread on here at the moment "Ipad Air 3 Wish List" and not one post has requested a wish for a uniform white screen on white background.

Perhaps we are a minority on here...Or perhaps people are more accepting of production mediocrity in the run up to 2016, IDK.

Pencil support seems to be order of the day for A3. I want a beauty of a screen first & foremost, All day long folks. It really is 'for me, the most important feature of a tablet device, before anything else...But i daren't post that there :D
 
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I can't detect anything being off with the screen on mine. I'm a photographer too... and usually fairly picky about these things. I've looked pretty hard at my screen and it looks perfectly cool white and of uniform brightness all the way to the edges and in each corner.
 
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friedmud said:
I can't detect anything being off with the screen on mine. I'm a photographer too... and usually fairly picky about these things. I've looked pretty hard at my screen and it looks perfectly cool white and of uniform brightness all the way to the edges and in each corner.
Click to expand...

My replacement A2 is not too bad and much cleaner than my first but i would love to get one similar to yours. Hopefully my next purchase.
 
jqc said:
My screen is pretty good, the upper right corner in portrait mode is a little dark and my OCD is killing me but I checked display models in the Apple Store and they all have this. For non-OCD, they would likely never notice. It looks much better than my Air 2 screen
Click to expand...

Mine is a little darker in the top right corner too.
 
Aydy said:
There is another thread on here at the moment "Ipad Air 3 Wish List" and not one post has requested a wish for a uniform white screen on white background.

Perhaps we are a minority on here...Or perhaps people are more accepting of production mediocrity in the run up to 2016, IDK.

Pencil support seems to be order of the day for A3. I want a beauty of a screen first & foremost, All day long folks. It really is 'for me, the most important feature of a tablet device, before anything else...But i daren't post that there :D
Click to expand...

Agreed. Give me that and I will buy every iPad and iPhone model in a heartbeat! That's all these things are: screens. Let them be perfectly and evenly white like a piece of paper!
 
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At the end of the day if you aren't happy with it, you should always go and have it changed. Espcially with such an expensive device.

Back when I got my iPhone 6 the top left corner of my backlight seemed just a touch darker, so I had them change the screen... Then I ended up having hardware issue after hardware issue with the iPhone 6, but that's a story for a different day.

To resume. Get it changed, otherwise it'll niggle at you forever.
 
I'm going to give it a week to see how the screen settles - and then I'll decide. I went through more than 10 iPad 3's before I just gave up and went with a Nexus tablet (which had a nearly flawless screen). I don't want to get stuck in the same return loop like that time. The screen issues are going to move me away from Apple products at some point.
 
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I wish I wasn't so sensitive to uniformity issues. A couple of points just for fun

1) Our eyes are more sensitive to variations with green/yellow light. A "cooler" white tablet may appear more uniform, but it may just be that you cannot see the variations
2) If the uniformity of the tablet is cooler in one part and warmer in another, it may also appear that it is dimmer in the cooler part. It probably isn't, but the brain sometimes gets confused between luminance uniformity and chroma uniformity

I have posted this elsewhere, but evidence of 1), is I calibrate my expensive JVC projector. Out of the box, it was a bit on the cool side with white. It looked very uniform corner to corner both in brightness and colour shading. After calibrating to D65, I could then see variations I couldn't see previously, such as one side being slightly warmer than the other.

Evidence of 2 is that I have a light meter with spot attachment, and I could have sworn the screen was dimmer where it is also more blue, but the lightmeter showed the screen is actually very uniform in brightness (which is what Apple advertise). They don't promise the same about colour shading.

So I have a uniform brightness display, but I can see various tints in different parts of the screen, particularly that it is more blue towards the right side (in portrait) and more towards red/yellow towards the left. It is not bad enough to notice when say, reading a newspaper with white background unless I flit my eyes left and right intentionally to spot the difference. It is quite noticeable to me staring at a white panel.

I should also point out that different humans have vastly different abilities to see subtle variations. I showed my wife and a friend these issues and they both thought I was totally insane and said they couldn't see anything different from one side to another. My friend was starting at it for several minutes....he also did the same with my IPhone 6S plus and couldn't see a couple of colour uniformity flaws with that either.
 
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Got another iPad Pro today. Uniformity issues are evident on this one as well. I'm going to give it a week or so and see if I can live with it. If not, I'm getting a Surface Pro.
 
I am on my 4th. The issue I keep seeing is shadow down the right side of the screen worse at the very top and when in portrate mode. The first 3 were silver which seemed to highlight the fault a lot more, latest is grey and I can still see it but not as much. Looking at the Apple Store display models they were all the same. My girlfriend thinks I am going crazy but it is really annoying especially when paying so much. Love the Pro but I want a perfect screen which I am not sure is possible?
 
I've had my iPad Pro for a few days now and I do notice that the screen is slightly warmer with a yellowish/greenish tint on the side nearest the FaceTime camera. The strange thing is that it appears worse or better at different times. I think my eyes are playing tricks on me at times. The issue is more noticeable when the iPad is used in landscape orientation.

My theory is that because the screen is so large and wide especially when used in landscape, the angle of the screen surface near the left and right edges to my eyes is greater than a small screen would be therefore it is related to the off-axis characteristics of an IPS display. If I hold the iPad in portrait orientation, the yellowing effect can be seen to occur progressively from the top to bottom across the entire screen if it is gradually tilted so that the top is further away than the bottom.

I'm not sure if I will exchange it as the screen is generally very good and has zero backlight bleed or dark areas or any other issues that I can see.

In general, I've come to accept that LCD screens are inherently prone to uniformity issues due to how they are made and how complex it is to evenly light a large screen surface with an edge positioned light source. These issues can occur on everything from phones to 80 inch TVs and everything in between.
 
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seadragon said:
In general, I've come to accept that LCD screens are inherently prone to uniformity issues due to how they are made and how complex it is to evenly light a large screen surface with an edge positioned light source. These issues can occur on everything from phones to 80 inch TVs and everything in beteeen.
Click to expand...

Good point. For me, I just am choosing to not think of this as a pro device. I had hoped to use it for design work, but the screen is too ugly for that with a white screen. So, it's just gonna be a big Netflix/gaming device and I'll see if I can sell off the pencil.
 
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