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Could anyone with a 5k imac please do this test for me?

macmee

macmee

Suspended
Original poster
Dec 13, 2008
835
1,110
Canada
Current Results:

8 / 12 respondents observed retention (some extremely mild, some moderate, some severe)

Retention:
2 - 2014: Macmee, AfroUSA
5 - 2015: CWallace, mikeboss, IngerMan, Lunder89, allan.nyholm
1 - N/A: roadkill401

No Retention:
3 - 2015: maflynn, hfg, vddobrev
2 - N/A: merkinmuffley, roadkill401

Users with multiple iMacs with retention (not counted twice above):
Macmee, redheeler, mikeboss

Users with retention in their first unit but not in their second unit:
roadkill401

Preamble:

I've had 2 replacement screens in my 5k iMac due to image retention and I'm now on the third. It too is developing image retention. I'm getting the feeling that this problem extends beyond me and that I'm not just getting unlucky. I have reinstalled OSX 2 times throughout the ordeal to eliminate possibility of it being a software issue, and the certified repair dealer I took the mac in to signed off on the replacement panels after seeing evidence of the retention as well.

I've spent so much time dealing with apple over this issue, getting components replaced, and I've been without my (main) computer for about a month in total as this issue has been trying to be worked out.

What I want you to do:

It's simple really, and totally harmless to your display. I watched this 8 minute youtube video this morning in full screen on my rImac, and the ticker at the bottom of the video burnt into my screen in just 8 minutes, here are photos of the burn in:

annotated:
cE81Gf9.png


originals:
http://i.imgur.com/wDTQNbX.png
http://i.imgur.com/P9R1A02.png

So, I would greatly appreciate it if any kind individuals out there with a 5k imac could simply watch this entire (only 8 min) video in full screen:

link to the youtube video

and afterwards switch to this image in full screen:

link to the image you should fullscreen afterwards

and then look, particularly along the bottomish of the screen, to see if the CNN ticker got burned into your display

If you are really Awesome:

It would be totally kick a#% if you could also share with me what model, year and brightness level your iMac is set to as well - and regardless if you get retention or not - if you could share pictures after performing the steps about that would also be amazing!



--------


P.S. in the few minutes it took me to just write this ^ up, my browser window has burned into my screen!

original: https://s28.postimg.org/epuwc1xr1/IMG_0697.jpg
annotated: https://s28.postimg.org/goz4qqxal/xda.png

(I have no idea how well this comes through in my crappy images above, especially since it looks like imgur is compressing them, but I have average eye sight and I'm sitting about arms length away from my screen and I see the burn in quite clearly in person)
 
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I am not at my iMac now, out of town. But I read many of your post. At first I thought your just a negative tool lol.... But I added a grey screen in mission control and after using my iMac for hours I can goto that grey screen and see image retention of my current Desktop picture. Depending on how long I use it, I have not done any studies but given I am a low power user I would say you are right All 5k iMacs do have some form of image retention. It does Clear itself and I am not sure if it gets worse over time. But I have gone to the grey screen mission control desktop and clearly see image retention at some points.

I am not going to fuel your fire and do any research. But I would agree that it is apparent in the design, is it acceptable, I do not know. I would say after so many minutes hours of use and you switch to a grey screen, you can see it. It would never be noticeable for it is a beautiful screen, the only way you know is to switch to a solid grey screen. My conclusion is, it is there but if you don't look for it you would never know. Im ok with that. It is a beautiful screen and the only reason I am on a grey screen is because of you ;)

Keep on tormenting yourself, you will never find an iMac to date that does not show this behavior. But you really have to look for the fault in order to see it. If your looking at a grey solid screen for a good deal of time then what do you care if you have image retention. The screen your looking at explodes with plain boring image, you should be happy you can see a mountain or tree in the backround :)
 
IngerMan said:
I am not at my iMac now, out of town. But I read many of your post. At first I thought your just a negative tool lol.... But I added a grey screen in mission control and after using my iMac for hours I can goto that grey screen and see image retention of my current Desktop picture. Depending on how long I use it, I have not done any studies but given I am a low power user I would say you are right All 5k iMacs do have some form of image retention. It does Clear itself and I am not sure if it gets worse over time. But I have gone to the grey screen mission control desktop and clearly see image retention at some points.

I am not going to fuel your fire and do any research. But I would agree that it is apparent in the design, is it acceptable, I do not know. I would say after so many minutes hours of use and you switch to a grey screen, you can see it. It would never be noticeable for it is a beautiful screen, the only way you know is to switch to a solid grey screen. My conclusion is, it is there but if you don't look for it you would never know. Im ok with that. It is a beautiful screen and the only reason I am on a grey screen is because of you ;)

Keep on tormenting yourself, you will never find an iMac to date that does not show this behavior. But you really have to look for the fault in order to see it. If your looking at a grey solid screen for a good deal of time then what do you care if you have image retention. The screen your looking at explodes with plain boring image, you should be happy you can see a mountain or tree in the backround :)
Click to expand...

I am a tool, but I am aggressively trying to fix it before my apple care expires. I am very critical of Apple - because the machine cost $4,000 and by all estimates they've cheaped out on the panel. But again I really just want to figure out what's going on with the screens because the longer we wait, the more of us get stuck with damaged screens after apple care expires (assuming the problem does in fact get worse over time which is what I believe!)

I'm not sure if I'm being over critical of the issue or not. Over time, for my iMac anyway, the retention gets worse. Just in the three minutes or so that it's taken me to write up this brief reply to you, Chrome has already burned into the screen.

Another user has suggested that the hotter / harder you run the iMac, the quicker you damage the screen.

My first screen I kept for about a year. The retention got so bad that I'd go to engadget.com, scroll down page 1 and the full engadget logo, basically solid blue and everything, would be aggressively burnt into my screen. The retention on that display got so bad that I was noticing it in Terminal, Photoshop, Emacs, basically half my apps!
 
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macmee said:
I am a tool, but I am aggressively trying to fix it before my apple care expires. I am very critical of Apple - because the machine cost $4,000 and by all estimates they've cheaped out on the panel. But again I really just want to figure out what's going on with the screens because the longer we wait, the more of us get stuck with damaged screens after apple care expires (assuming the problem does in fact get worse over time which is what I believe!)

I'm not sure if I'm being over critical of the issue or not. Over time, for my iMac anyway, the retention gets worse. Just in the three minutes or so that it's taken me to write up this brief reply to you, Chrome has already burned into the screen.

Another user has suggested that the hotter / harder you run the iMac, the quicker you damage the screen.

My first screen I kept for about a year. The retention got so bad that I'd go to engadget.com, scroll down page 1 and the full engadget logo, basically solid blue and everything, would be aggressively burnt into my screen. The retention on that display got so bad that I was noticing it in Terminal, Photoshop, Emacs, basically half my apps!
Click to expand...
[doublepost=1484278708][/doublepost]Well I would say your screen is like everyone else has. My i5 top base experiences the same thing. But you have to dig for it to find it. Maybe your best bet is to just get rid of it and rid of the obsession. You won't find what your looking for in the current models.
 
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IngerMan said:
[doublepost=1484278708][/doublepost]Well I would say your screen is like everyone else has. My i5 top base experiences the same thing. But you have to dig for it to find it. Maybe your best bet is to just get rid of it and rid of the obsession. You won't find what your looking for in the current models.
Click to expand...

If I had to dig to find it then I wouldn't be complaining so much about it. If you only notice retention when you look closely then I am quite jealous as it sounds like you have a much less severe version of the problem. Unfortunately I noticed the burn in from this CNN youtube video by accident. I watched the video and switched back to Emacs and this big nasty CNN ticker including the JPG artifacts was burnt into my screen. If I had to squint or sit close to the screen to notice then I'd agree with you, but this unfortunately isn't the case and the retention on my end is very visible.

Look... you clearly think I'm making a big deal out of nothing, as do other users on the forum and perhaps that's fine because from your perspectives your iMacs work fine and you don't have the same severity of retention as others do. This accusation always seems to happens when some of us complain about retention. But have you stopped to consider the possibility that perhaps, for reason X, the retention I get on my iMac is much worse than the retention you've noticed and that my loud complaints, and the loud complaints of others like me are actually well principled? Conversely, if I am infact making a big deal about nothing, as you've stated, then watching this 8 minute video should result in identical retention similar to what I experienced, right? All I'm trying to do here is get some answers, and I think the video test is actually a pretty harmless / simple way to do so!

Do you mind checking out that 8 minute video in full screen (feel free to mute the audio!) and then switching to the blue image I provided, and reporting back with some pictures of your screen to compare retentions?
 
I just ran that video full screen and then switched that image, and found no image retention.
 
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Extremely faint burn in of the large white banner about Trump's Advisors and the line above it. And I mean extremely faint.

2015 iMac 5K
i7 / 32GB / 1TB SSD / M395X
 
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as far as I can tell, every iMac 5K (late 2015) suffers from image retention. the thing is, as I already wrote in other threads, that most users don't see it. I also wouldn't have noticed it if I didn't use "Solid Gray Pro Dark" as my desktop. during normal use, I never see it (apart from the ghost-pictures on my grey desktop if all Apps are closed). and they go away when using solid white as a "screensaver". I ordered a late 2015 machine immediately when available. in december 2016 I bought the same machine as a spare (afraid of new iMacs coming equipped only with USB-C/TB3). this spare-machine also shows image retention. also, I saw it on the machines my customers use. even though it's annying to know that this phenomenon is there, I stopped worrying about it. in every other aspect, this LCDisplay beats anything else I had on my desk over the last few decades.
 
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mikeboss said:
as far as I can tell, every iMac 5K (late 2015) suffers from image retention. the thing is, as I already wrote in other threads, that most users don't see it. I also wouldn't have noticed it if I didn't use "Solid Gray Pro Dark" as my desktop. during normal use, I never see it (apart from the ghost-pictures on my grey desktop if all Apps are closed). and they go away when using solid white as a "screensaver". I ordered a late 2015 machine immediately when available. in december 2016 I bought the same machine as a spare (afraid of new iMacs coming equipped only with USB-C/TB3). this spare-machine also shows image retention. also, I saw it on the machines my customers use. even though it's annying to know that this phenomenon is there, I stopped worrying about it. in every other aspect, this LCDisplay beats anything else I had on my desk over the last few decades.
Click to expand...

I would be totally fine with the retention if not for how it gets worse over time:

http://imgur.com/a/MOxzw

It got to the point for me where it was unbearable. The most scary thing about the retention is that it gets worse over time. I keep using this as an example, but in the short period of time it takes me to open chrome, go to macrumors.com and reply to this post - chrome has been burned into the screen and wont go away for 5 minutes or so
 
What display brightness are you all running at? I have mine usually at about 1/3 brightness and haven't seen any image retention issues. Full brightness is way too much for my eyes!

27" 5K 2015 iMac
 
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hfg said:
What display brightness are you all running at? I have mine usually at about 1/3 brightness and haven't seen any image retention issues. Full brightness is way too much for my eyes!

27" 5K 2015 iMac
Click to expand...

I run at least 80%, sometimes more
 
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macmee said:
I would be totally fine with the retention if not for how it gets worse over time
Click to expand...
My late 2015 5K iMac does have very faint retention, but so far it's not getting worse like my late 2014 was. The late 2014, at least from my experience, does have a serious issue with this.
[doublepost=1484438839][/doublepost]
hfg said:
What display brightness are you all running at? I have mine usually at about 1/3 brightness and haven't seen any image retention issues. Full brightness is way too much for my eyes!

27" 5K 2015 iMac
Click to expand...
It's not always worst at full brightness, sometimes just the opposite. I think it varies from case to case.
 
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I have a late 2015 iMac 27" 5k.
And this morning I have used my Mac for about 40 minutes, and at full display brightness and a grey background I can just barely see the footprint of the icons in my Dock. Normally it is not hidden.

At a normal distance and normal brightness (50% to 75%) I can't see the image retention on mine. I have to really shove my nose all the way into the display to see it.

My iMac was unboxed and taking into use in may, 27th 2016
 
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if one thinks about how an LCDisplay works, it's becoming clear that the level of brightness has nothing to do with the image retention issue. maybe it's more visible at lower levels of brightness. but the issue won't get worse or less worse at different levels of brightness. it's the liquid cristals not "moving" back completely to their initial state. as far as I know, there's nobody else manufacturing 27" 5K panels, apart from LG Electronics. if I couldn't live with the issue, I'd have to go non-retina, which is not an option for me.

EDIT
at least for the screens I own, I can't confirm that the issue got worse over time.

EDIT II
there are at least three manufacturers of 27" 5K panels. but AFAIK, Apple only uses the ones from LG.
LG Electronics LM270QQ1-SDA2 (AH-IPS)
Samsung Electronics LTM270RL01 (PLS)
Sharp LQ270D1JG01 (IGZO)
 
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If my memory serves me right, I seem to remember reading somewhere that image retention is a weakness in IPS panels. Which is what Apple uses in many products. Image retention has been seen in the original rMBP from 2012, an iPad mini (or an ordinary iPad, I am not sure) and now the 5k iMac.
Just to mention the Apple products I have heard of with these issues.

The upside to IPS is the viewing angels, which has not always been great in iMac's, especially not the first aluminium ones from 2007.
 
cynics said:
Without intentionally looking how noticeable is this for people the experience it?
Click to expand...

I didn't even know my iMac had this problem until I read this thread. And it is 7 months old.
On my old 2013 rMBP 15" i noticed a severe problem after just 2 months, and just having Pages open for 3-4 minutes left a visible "white sheet" on my screen.

I havn't had any problem like that with my iMac. And when I did the test earlier today (by switching to a dark grey color) no part of desktop picture was visible on the grey screen. I couldn't see the footprint of Safari either, though it had only been open for like 10 minutes or so. And this morning I had used my iMac for about 40 minutes before the test. Only the footprint of the Dock was barely visible, when I shoved my nose into the display, at full brightness. At a lower brightness, not visible. And after just 2 minutes with the Dock hidden, the retention was almost gone, and only a few icons in the Dock was still barely visible.
 
cynics said:
Without intentionally looking how noticeable is this for people the experience it?
Click to expand...

I use lots of dark apps like photoshop, sublime, terminal, emacs and xcode so unfortunately I notice retention all the time.

I am always switching between chrome and these ^ applications so I'd say I spend about 60% of my time staring at image retention

and it keeps getting worse :(
[doublepost=1484504423][/doublepost]
Lunder89 said:
I didn't even know my iMac had this problem until I read this thread. And it is 7 months old.
On my old 2013 rMBP 15" i noticed a severe problem after just 2 months, and just having Pages open for 3-4 minutes left a visible "white sheet" on my screen.

I havn't had any problem like that with my iMac. And when I did the test earlier today (by switching to a dark grey color) no part of desktop picture was visible on the grey screen. I couldn't see the footprint of Safari either, though it had only been open for like 10 minutes or so. And this morning I had used my iMac for about 40 minutes before the test. Only the footprint of the Dock was barely visible, when I shoved my nose into the display, at full brightness. At a lower brightness, not visible. And after just 2 minutes with the Dock hidden, the retention was almost gone, and only a few icons in the Dock was still barely visible.
Click to expand...

I've noticed that the retention isn't as easy to see in the morning, but gets worse as the day goes on, as if the pixels have to warm up first or something?
 
macmee said:
I use lots of dark apps like photoshop, sublime, terminal, emacs and xcode so unfortunately I notice retention all the time.

I am always switching between chrome and these ^ applications so I'd say I spend about 60% of my time staring at image retention

and it keeps getting worse :(
Click to expand...

Was your iMac a late 2015 too? And can you make an estimate of how long it takes to go from unnoticeable to bad?

A question from a 5k iMac, late 2015 owner, who is getting a little nervous...
 
Lunder89 said:
Was your iMac a late 2015 too? And can you make an estimate of how long it takes to go from unnoticeable to bad?

A question from a 5k iMac, late 2015 owner, who is getting a little nervous...
Click to expand...

Mine is a 2014. If it is brought on by heat then you're lucky because the 2015 runs abit cooler.

I first noticed after about 1 year and 3-5 months, and it only took about 2-3 months for the retention to become such that staying on a screen for 1 minute would produce retention which would be burned in for 5-10 minutes.

^ having said this, there are only 2-3 other cases of retention that I have personally seen in this forum that were as bad as the case with my first panel.

Unfortunately though, I've been through 3 panels, and other people above have also noticed this too: the retention does get worse over time. So I'm pretty sure your retention will get worse over time but I'm not sure how quickly.

Do you have Apple Care? Once it does get bad you can get a screen replacement for free.
 
So your 2nd and 3rd panels has not been as bad as the 1st? Just to clear that up?

I have had a rMBP from early 2013 with an LG panel, and it suffered bad after just 2 months. I asked for a Samsung panel, and after almost 3 years, no more retention. So I an familiar with the problem.

I don't have AppleCare on my unit no.
 
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