SXGA+ display uneven colors due to poor vertical view angle

[dvorak]

Hello,

Well, to make a long story short, I bought a 9UG model a few weeks ago, everything else is nice, IBM even changed my battery to Sony due ot the loose-being of Sanyo's models.

Also I had the LCD changed because of extremely slow red pixels in the lower part, they just stayed there for a good 10 seconds, specially annoying when watching movies with subtitles or simply changing presentation slides.

The new display has no dead pixels and feels great in general, but I'm sitting in front of a new problem, the vertical view angle, it's simply impossible to find an angle, where all the colors look the same, absolutely every possible angle seems to be darker on the top and brighter downwards. Like a gradient.
The only angle where I found more-or-less uniform colors was when I put the display 90degrees from the table and lifted my head so that my eyes are above the top of the display about 12-14 centimeters/5-6 inches, of course then too I was able to see the difference.

Now how should I react, change the display again, try to loosen the screws on the lower side?
I've already gone to IBM three times, once for keyboard, once for keyboard flexing and now the display, feels a little uncomfortable going there all the time, I feel that I'm the only person in my country that has visited the support that many times trying to find perfection.

Has anyone else also encountered the same problem and perhaps found a fix by him-/herself?

Thank you in advance, waiting for your answers.

[Moroner]

This problem is inherent in the technology used for the display. If you absolutely need vertical color stability, you need to switch to one of the Flexview displays, either the 15" SXGA+ or the 15" UXGA. All other notebook displays I know of have this problem to some degree.

[Kenn]

I agree. It's just the nature of the beast. If you don't mind the extra size + weight + battery drain, Flexview provides MUCH better viewing angles.

Loosening the screws probably will not help much, I've opened the LCD bezel and the screws do not apply pressure to the screen component.

[dvorak]

Thanks for those replies, altough I have a hard time understanding how the SXGA+ technology has a hard time showing even colors at one angle, compared to even an old Hewlett-Packard XGA which seems do the task nicely.

I hope you understand that I mean I'm having uneven colors at lets say 90degrees around the screen, aka looking straight at it and still it shows the top darker than the bottom, as the pixels are not aimed straight but all aimed up, hence at even looking straight at it shows a gradient of colors, from top darker to lower lighter.

[K. Eng]

I have this problem on my XGA display, though it doesn't matter much for the tasks I do (Office stuff mostly).

IBM has used some sucktackular panels in the T4x as well as some very good panels, and this has been obvious to me for the past two years. I fail to see why IBM has not done more about this.

[AlphaKilo470]

This is the perfect example of why we need for OLEDs to develop and become mainstream. On smaller TFTs, you'll get the best viewing angle since the entire thing is well within your eyes range, as opposed to larger (14in+) in which no matter the angle, there is always a part that is on the edge of your viewing range. The closest you can get to staring straight down at the display is were you will have the optimal color performance. It's not IBM's fault, the fault lies in the aging technology which will, if wqe are lucky, will be replaced by OLEDS before the end of this decade.

[syhead]

I wonder if my display is one of the good or bad ones...
All I know is that it's waaaaay better than the display of my old Toshiba
My display is a 14' SVGA+

[AlphaKilo470]

Both of my ThinkPads have superb displays. Th only drawback is the 800x600 resolution, but if they did higher, considering the physical size of 12" diaganally, they'd probably be illegible. The clarity and legibility is great. The brightness is also pretty good, sometimes, if I'm in a dark room or using my ThinkPad in the car at night, I have to turn down the brightness to keep my eyes from hurting. I even sat this thing down next to my friends laptop which is a Dell C series w/ 14" screen and a PIII 1ghz, my computer was twice as bright. Paired with a wireless card and Windows XP remote desktop, this laptop is the ultimate, it was cheap, it's comfortable and since it's used mainyas a terminal, the slow speed makes no difference.

[dvorak]

I'm going to compare my display with some other laptops' displays that also have a SXGA+ resolution to see if mine is a bit faulty.

I can understand that the technology itself produces a little uneven coloring, but it seems to me that in my case the color is a bit too much different comparing the top, middle and bottom.

Of course when it's constant on other LCDs also, I'll settle for now, but I do hope that a better technology is revealded in the future year(s) before my warranty ends, so I can get a change. I'm satisfied that there are no faulty pixels, but the impossibility to find an angle where the colors look the same is a bit disturbing.