Splotchy white uniformity on 13" rMBP

[jabbr]

I want to get an idea of the likelihood of getting a good panel on the new 13" rMBP.

I exchanged my first one because it had yellowing along the left side of the screen, which became very distracting while reading anything on white. My second unit has a similar issue on the bottom half the screen. I've tried to ignore this, but it's pretty obvious when scrolling through text.

I've seen plenty of 15" rMBPs over the past year with near perfect uniformity so this has been pretty disappointing. One of the main things I want to do with my computer is read a lot of PDFs and eBooks.

Is it true that LG is the only supplier for the 13"? If so I guess they have trouble meeting the demand while having good QC.

 

[Atomic Walrus]

The left-hand yellow tint would be considered a fault (though unfortunately a common one), however a fade from cooler to warmer on top to bottom may not be. That slight temperature shift is IPS's answer to TN's severe vertical angle gamma shift (I'm not sure if it's actually caused by IPS tech or by the anti-reflective filter, but either way it's common with IPS panels).

What you need to do is tilt the machine back and watch the color temperature; it should shift from warmer to cooler as your vertical viewing angle changes (when seen from above it will be warmer, from below cooler). If the area that appears warmer to you at the bottom shifts to cooler when the angle changes it's likely that everything is normal and you may just want to tilt your display back a bit when you use it. Because of, well, physics, every vertical point on the screen will be at a slightly different angle to your eyes. You will always see some minor gradient in color temperature from top to bottom (unless you get really far away from the screen).

On top of that, contrary to popular belief there is no such thing as perfect LCD panel uniformity. It's physically impossible, and if Apple required the yield quality that would result in zero human-detectable temperature and brightness variances the machines would become insanely expensive very quickly (there might also only be 50 of them).

(( Anyone want me to explain how you can force your eyes to recognize the minor temperature and brightness variations found all over even the best panels? It'll drive you nuts once you know how to look for them since they're present on literally every panel of every display technology (TN, IPS, plasma, OLED, they all have detectable variances in the panels). ))