Shades in corners (2014 iMac 5K)

[goto]

Hi there,

My iMac is almost 4 years old and I started observing shades in lower corners of the display. They are visible on the bright background. Is there anything I can do about that? Apple care is over



Will this get worse if display not replaced?

 

[294307]

It's a hardware artifact, so no there is nothing you can do except take it to an Apple Store or Apple Authorised Service Provider and see what they say. Try and press for them to cover the cost of replacing the display.

If you live in the EU, you may be able to get it repaired free of charge under local consumer law, but this depends how long ago you bought it and what country you live in (some EU member states only provide the minimum level of statutory protection required under EU law, which is two years). If you purchased your iMac from Apple directly, you'll need to contact either Apple Support (in the case of Apple Online Store purchases) or the local Apple Store from which you purchased your iMac if you want to go down that route. You'll just need to tell them you want to make a consumer law claim for the problem you've got with the display.

 

[afir93]

It's a hardware artifact, so no there is nothing you can do except take it to an Apple Store or Apple Authorised Service Provider and see what they say. Try and press for them to cover the cost of replacing the display.

If you live in the EU, you may be able to get it repaired free of charge under local consumer law, but this depends how long ago you bought it and what country you live in (some EU member states only provide the minimum level of statutory protection required under EU law, which is two years). If you purchased your iMac from Apple directly, you'll need to contact either Apple Support (in the case of Apple Online Store purchases) or the local Apple Store from which you purchased your iMac if you want to go down that route. You'll just need to tell them you want to make a consumer law claim for the problem you've got with the display.

Yep to add to that, @OP the issue you're experiencing is most likely image persistance/image retention (though it's a bit hard to say for sure from the photo). I'm on a 2014 5k iMac aswell and it also has this issue since some months now; objects displayed on-screen for a few minutes or longer will "burn in" temporarily and remain visible, even after moving the on-screen objects out of the way. And just like for you, it only really happens around the edges of the screen. Especially visible when having gray or bright gaps on-screen with just one color. It doesn't seem to be a rare problem with the first-generation 5K iMacs either.

Unless you are still protected under consumer rights like bbnck suggested, you are unfortunately most likely out of luck in terms of replacements. I asked at my local Apple-certified retailer and they told me that wouldn't be covered by anything (since I was out of warranty aswell) and that they could only offer me an entire screen replacement that I would have to pay for myself. You can try if you have better luck than me but I wouldn't count on it. I decided not to do that and to instead live with it as in everyday usage I find it to be not that noticeable.

Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to temporarily (counteract) it, see for example Apple's support article about the phenomenon. In short, using something like a screensaver that constantly changes the colors of each part of the screen will usually make it disappear after a few minutes, and turning the screen off frequently when you're not using it or moving around windows/stuff on the affected parts of the display frequently might help for the issue to appear less.

 

[Guy Clark]

Same issue with my late 2015 21.5" 4k iMac. It is completely unacceptable that a three year old iMac is showing signs of hardware fatigue. Apple quality control is almost non existent.

I also have a mid 2011 21.5" iMac from the Steve Jobs era and it oozes quality and remains my daily production machine.

A seven year old machine better than a three year old machine? Something is seriously wrong at Apple.

 

[294307]

Same issue with my late 2015 21.5" 4k iMac. It is completely unacceptable that a three year old iMac is showing signs of hardware fatigue. Apple quality control is almost non existent.

Yes, quite terrible but you live in the UK so you don't need to do much to get them to repair it. If you bought your iMac directly from Apple, call Apple Support and advise them you want to make a consumer law claim. If you bought your iMac on or after October 2015, you can also ask them to replace it under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 if the problem reappears after they tried to initially repair it. You can make a consumer law claim with the retailer within six years after the purchase date for goods bought in England and Wales or within five years after the purchase date for goods bought in Scotland.

If you didn't buy your iMac directly from Apple, they can ask you to make a claim with the retailer you bought it from, but you may still want to call and ask them to undertake the repair because the retailer would probably just send it to them anyway.