No sure where to post this, in the "yellow tint" thread, or here ...
I live in France.
Ordered a refurbished i7 last wednesday, was delivered on Friday. That was fast. (price = 1689€ / 2000€ new, tax included), so:
I open the box, trying to find something that makes a difference between a new and a refurbished. The box is different, but inside the box the iMac is in perfect condition.
Then I start the beast, install the sw updates (including the risky SMC firmware 1.0), a few tools, and check the hw configuration: i7, 4GB of RAM, but Hitachi 2TB instead of the 1TB. A nice free upgrade ... The hdd and iMac fans are quiet, very happy so far.
Then time to check the screen: no grey bar, no dead pixel, but "slight" yellow in the center towards the bottom, and backlight bleed on the bottom right corner. As I won't watch movies with this machine, the backlight bleed doesn't bother me (at least not yet). I think this is very common to all edge-LED screens. (I have a Samsung LED TV, and have some backlight bleed too)
Now, about the yellow tint: I see it, it's sometimes distracting, but I still enjoy using this iMac ... have 10 days to decide if I keep it, or send it and get a refund.
I have calibrated the screen today with a Spyde3 Elite, and have done some measurements. First, the default calibration profile is very "cold", white temperatures are more "blue" than "yellow".
My measurements before / after the calibration:
Factory calibration:
middle-top : 8612K
middle-center: 8423K
middle-bottom:7915K
right-bottom: 8015K
Spyder3 profile (target =6500K, gamma=2.2, calibration performed at the middle-center):
middle-top: 6523K
middle-center: 6530K
middle-bottom: 6266K
right-bottom:6308K
Don't know if the temperature is a "linear" measurement, but:
7915/8612 = 8%
6266/6523 = 4% ; yes, after the calibration, to my eyes, the yellow tint is less obvious. Probably because the screen is more "yellow" than before overall. And when I switch back to the factory values, the picture looks "blue".
I have seen some people reading delta=500K, between top and bottom, after calibration. I have 270K here, so maybe not the worst screen. But the yellow tint is still there.
I will call Apple Care tomorrow, just curious to hear what they have to say. But I won't try a screen replacement with the risk of dead pixels, dusts, etc ... and possibly more yellow. And I don't want to exchange the machine (it's not possible with a refurbished anyway) because I would lose the 2TB hdd.
So, 2 options:
- I keep it because this is a good deal (-24% /new), and an "almost perfect" machine.
- I return it. And will have to wait for the next refresh because there is little chance they fix this issue on the current machines. I still have my Win7 PC + 3-year old Dell 27" 27WFP with quite a good color uniformity (and almost no backlight bleed !)